Colloquium Series: Shehzad Nadeem, Lehman College, CUNY

In the Indian outsourcing industry, employees are expected to be “dead ringers” for the more expensive American workers they have replaced-complete with Westernized names, accents, habits, and lifestyles that are organized around a foreign culture in a distant time zone. Dead Ringers chronicles the rise of a workforce for whom mimicry is a job requirement and a passion. The book explores the complications of hybrid lives and presents a vivid portrait of a workplace where globalization carries as many downsides as advantages.

Shehzad Nadeem is assistant professor of sociology at Lehman College, City University of New York. Over the years, Nadeem’s research has focused on the intersection of labor, culture, and globalization. His book, Dead Ringers: How Outsourcing is Changing the Way Indians Understand Themselves(Princeton University Press, 2011), examines the effects of global outsourcing on Indian employees paid to mimic Americans’ accents, habits, and customs. Nadeem’s research has been featured in Nature, The Guardian, Fast Company and Asian Affairs, and he has appeared on the BBC World Service and Radio-Canada. His current project, “The Fugue of Globalization,” explores the prevalence of copying in our cultural and economic life, and the resulting search for authenticity. Nadeem currently teaches courses on urban and global sociology.