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She walks in oblivion

  • 14/12/2002

She walks in oblivion What if Phulmai did not exist. You can meet her in the forest; follow her for a day; listen to what she says and so complete half an assignment. The other half lies in accounting for her, and all those like her who spend their lives headloading. Step out of the forest into, say, a government census report, and Phulmai disappears. You con the sociology of lifestyles, niche or otherwise; the headloader is not a consistent, indentifiable object of knowledge. Mystified, you seek development critiques. Surely there must be some ‘archipelago of the informal’ as sociologist Serge Latouche calls it, some space interstitial to capitalism or modernity