Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A landmark book across a range of disciplines, and it makes for compelling and enjoyable reading."
* Asian Studies Review *
"Mumbai Taximen accomplishes several things. While it offers an ethnographic account of an automobility that is part of a distinctively non-Western mode of capitalism, first and foremost it constitutes an intriguing case study of how a vehicle may be appropriated as a metaphor of social identity and moral agency. . . [T]he book includes sharply drawn vignettes that bring us into the practices and concerns of daily life. These will make the volume especially useful in the classroom."
* Ethnos *
"[T]heoretically and empirically rich. . . This book is an important contribution to work on the critical occupation of taxi-driving (related to urban mobility), which is currently undergoing a rapid transformation driven by technology and the aspirations of post-colonial citizens and the state."
* Pacific Affairs *
"Mumbai Taximen’s narrative genius lies in the author’s “sensuous approach” which effectively transports the reader into the embodied, lived worlds of Indian automobility. . . [B]y inviting (indeed impelling) the reader into the lives of Mumbai’s taximen, in all its material messiness, palpable precariousness, quiet comforts, and dignified dangers, Bedi’s narrative puts up a roadblock to the charting of any easy path from social critique to straightforward solutions. This book unsettles. Which is why it needs to be read."
* Journal of Asian Studies *
