Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Labor Revolt in India
FAIN: FZ-266824-19
Laura Teresa Murphy
Loyola University, New Orleans (New Orleans, LA 70118-6143)
Research and writing leading to publication of a book documenting the after-effects of a 2002 labor revolt in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Freedomville tells the story of how a small group of impoverished, malnourished, and transgenerationally-enslaved men and women fought to liberate themselves from their overseers, wrest control of the rock quarry in which they worked, and become masters of their own fates. A closer look at Freedomville, however, also reveals that grassroots freedom struggles, compelling as they may be, are often haunted by the unsustainability of freedom in the current economy. Activists fight to maintain their grasp on freedom after liberation without the literal and figurative tools or the elite connections necessary to run their own businesses, develop their towns, and improve the opportunities available to their children. Employing in-depth interviews the people of Freedomville over the course of fourteen years, this book zooms in on the way local organizing efforts address the deep economic and cultural structures that make slavery possible.
Media Coverage
Nearly 40 Million People are Still Enslaved Worldwide (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Adeel Hassan
Publication: New York Times
Date: 10/2/2021
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/enslaved-people-worldwide.html
Briefly Noted (Media Coverage)
Publication: The New Yorker
Date: 9/20/2021
URL: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/matrix-damnation-spring-love-lockdown-and-freedomville
Associated Products
Freedomville: The Story of a 21st Century Slave Revolt (Book)Title: Freedomville: The Story of a 21st Century Slave Revolt
Author: Laura T. Murphy
Abstract: A community of rock quarry miners in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India gave their tiny cluster of thatched roofed houses the name Azad Nagar. Freedomville. But it hasn't always been identified by that auspicious moniker. The miners renamed their village in 2000, after they staged a revolt that overthrew the profit-driven landowners who held their families in debt bondage for generations. Non-profits celebrated their tenacity; a film promoted their non-violent grassroots efforts; their success inspired other villages to fight for their own freedom. But the complex story of Freedomville, the murder that these revolutionaires nearly got away with, and the short-lived freedom its inhabitants created for themselves has never before been told until now.
Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, spent years following the story of a small group of transgenerationally-enslaved men and women who fought to liberate themselves from their overseers, wrest control of the rock quarry in which they worked, and become masters of their own fates. Their journey reveals the precarity of that hard-won freedom, as those rock quarry miners fight to sustain their freedom after liberation without the literal and figurative tools necessary to run their own businesses, develop their village, and improve the opportunities avaiable to their children. Their struggle suggests that the effort to sustain freedom after liberation is as much about successful revolution as it is about the stories we tell about societal change. In the process of capturing the constanty changing narrative that emerged, Murphy reveals how it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century, how the slow and possibly interminable dissolution of the caste system has led to a veritable class war in India, and how the global construction boom has contributed to the continued alienation of impoverished people around the world.
Year: 2021
Secondary URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Freedomville-Story-21st-Century-Slave-Revolt/dp/173442074X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=freedomville&qid=1616325619&sr=8-1Secondary URL Description: Amazon listing.
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1734420746
Copy sent to NEH?: No