New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. viii, 284 pp. US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-809943-7.
Robinson’s book, Café Culture in Pune: Being Young and Middle Class in Urban India, marks an important contribution to the literature on youth in India. The book is neatly divided into six chapters which separately deal with various aspects of the lives of young middle-class Puneites. These include public places, clothing, education, friendships, romantic relationships, and family life. In the same vein as Craig Jeffrey’s work on young lower-class men in Uttar Pradesh’s educational institutions, Ritty Lukose’s work on college students in Kerala, Jamie Cross’s work on young working-class men in Andhra Pradesh’s Special Economic Zones and Nicholas Nisbett’s work on young men in Bangalore’s internet cafes, Robinson frames Pune’s coffee shops and night clubs as similar spaces of encounter in which identities, relationships, aspirations, and ideas are constructed, negotiated, and subverted by youth in novel ways.
First, the book’s choice to examine what goes on behind the doors of the franchised coffee shops that have been dotting India’s cities and towns with increasing frequency is an important one given that they are among the most visible symbols of India’s current phase of modernity. Second, the book’s setting, Pune, is one that has been projected by many, much like Bangalore, as a model of development for the rest of India to follow, and so it is interesting to see how the city plays into the urban middle-class youth story. Third, and arguably the book’s most important contribution, is its focus on not only young men, but also young women, who in many ways, because of their class status, share the “café culture” space with their male counterparts as equals. Much of the literature on youth in India has been male-centric yet Robinson’s book achieves a balanced account of both young men’s and women’s stories of navigating a “rapidly changing world in Pune in 2008” (257).
Robinson begins the book by stating the middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds of her participants. Their affluence can be inferred from the ease with which they are able to access Pune’s high-priced coffee shops and night clubs. However, greater detail could have been provided regarding some of the material aspects of their lives, including the types of possessions they own (although she does cover clothes), their parents’ professions, and the houses and neighbourhoods they live in (which she touches on briefly in the book’s introduction). These would have better located them within the context of India’s multi-layered and constantly shifting class hierarchy.
The constant references to certain practices in the book as “middle class,” lying “between the elite and the poor” (25), are somewhat problematic considering the sheer size of, and diversity within India’s middle class, where those with just enough capital to be considered middle class can be seen as inhabiting completely different worlds from those who are not yet quite rich enough to be considered upper class. The very term “middle class” itself is highly contested and perhaps requires further interrogation. Nevertheless, Robinson’s interpretation of middle class here is less concerned with issues of financial resources or locations within the labour market but rather its metaphorical meanings and imaginings within Indian society. These are evident from the telling interviews recorded by Robinson in which her participants convey their “middle-classness” in a variety of ways, from security and frugality to morality and social attitudes.
The book provides numerous insights into how the categories of middle class and youth intersect to create new practices, separating her participants from those of other age or class groups. For example, Robinson identifies playing football, smoking hookah, dating, and engaging in cross-gender friendships as increasingly common features of contemporary middle-class life among youth, whereas “many amongst the parents’ generation claimed to only have had same-sex friends” (181). She also links the growing individual autonomy of middle-class youth and the increasing amount of time spent outside the home and in the public space to shifting responsibilities and transforming social roles. She characterizes the influence of individualization amongst those she studied as leading to deeper and closer friendships, taking on functions such as “caring, protection, learning and communion” typically performed by the family (184). At the same time, rather than simplifying these friendships as purely resembling parent-child relationships, Robinson fleshes out the deeply layered nature of such friendships. She reveals they are equally rooted in fun, frivolity, and a sense of mutual understanding caused by being similarly aged or experiencing a similar phase of life. Numerous examples are included to illustrate these complexities, including one referring to a form of intimacy between young men that would be hard to find within a family or family-like relationship, as she writes how “in their intoxicated states of mind, they would pour out their hearts to each other about their problems with the ladies” (180).
Robinson argues how young Puneites frequently “transcended the local while domesticating the global” (183), providing an example of a young man who regularly visited the temple whilst at the same time was a DJ. However, the argument could be further developed given the ambiguities surrounding what constitutes the “local” and the “global.” Overall, the book is a powerful portrait of the agency with which Indian youth have negotiated the changes around them. As she details how the flourishing public spaces which form the sites of her study not only reflect rapidly growing markets but are also used by young adults as “tools to make and remake themselves” (79), she helps to dispel the myth that India’s youth are mere consumers of Westernization and liberalization, but rather, are active agents of change engaged in writing a new narrative for themselves of what it means to be Indian in an increasingly global world.
Rahul Advani
King’s College, London, United Kingdom
pp. 926-928