Within any human community, human hair is intertwined with all sorts of gendered, racial, class, and religious politics and mean making. To make matters even more complex, at times hair entangles communities that are geographically far from each other in often intimate ways. In this episode Bani talks about the motivations and experiences of African entrepreneurs who travel to Delhi in search of the coveted ‘indian hair’, hoping to clench upward social mobility in the weave business, as well as the values and practices through which the business of hair becomes a multibillion-dollar market.
Dr Bani Gill is a postdoctoral researcher at The Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford. Her research interests include South- South migration, Africa- India connections, race, gender, urbanism, informal transnational economies, and the anthropology of law, bureaucracy, and the state.
Simphiwe is reading for a PhD/DPhil in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford.
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