Economy, knowledge, families: practices of appropriation

The expansion process of a Western multinational corporation in India is investigated using ethnographic tools. In particular the paper deals with the processes of knowledge appropriation enacted by the Indian workforce employed at the Research & Development Center in Bangalore. Young Indian professionals in the early stages of their scientific or corporate careers seem to take advantage of the investments that the corporation makes in the competitive Indian industrial district, by frequently changing job and finding new positions. The underlying strategy is that of subtracting competences and applied knowledge from the corporation in order to appropriate them and then reinvest them locally and more profitably. Working for a multinational corporation is investigated in its material and metaphorical dimensions, demonstrating the methodological shift required to analyze a very large productive organization through the eyes of its employees. One consequence of scaling down in the ethnographic analysis is that the family is introduced as an economic actor contributing to shaping decisions and public policies.