People

Dr Maitrayee Deka

Senior Lecturer
Department of Sociology and Criminology
Dr Maitrayee Deka
  • Email

  • Telephone

    +44 (0) 1206 873539

  • Location

    6.328, Colchester Campus

  • Academic support hours

    On zoom via email appointment

Profile

Biography

Before joining Essex, I did my PhD from the Graduate School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan and have spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Milan, working on the research project P2PValue, funded by the European Commission's FP7 program. My research is in the area of Economic Sociology, STS, Consumer Cultures and Social Theory. I am interested in looking at alternative systems to global capitalism to frame them as a distinct analytical and political category. Part of this interest emerges from examining global bazaar economies as a popular economic system based on my ethnography in Delhi's Electronic Bazaars and developed as a monograph, Traders and Tinkers: Bazaars in the Global Economy, published with Stanford University Press. I am currently researching the Whitechapel market in East London to investigate bazaars as intellectual places drawing from the literature on public space, and Autonomist Marxism. The other strand of my research focuses on marginal cultural spaces, particularly young adults' social media use in the Global South, to see how they engage with global platforms in unique ways. Overall, I am interested in building a more embedded social theory through observations and practices often ignored in the dominant academic framework.

Qualifications

  • MPhil (Sociology) Delhi School of Economics

  • PhD (Sociology), Graduate School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan.

Research and professional activities

Research interests

Economic Sociology

Open to supervise

Consumer Culture

Open to supervise

New Media

Open to supervise

Social Theory

Open to supervise

STS

Open to supervise

Teaching and supervision

Current teaching responsibilities

  • Rethinking Modernity (SC301)

  • Quantitative Research Project (SC830)

  • Research Project: Sociology (SC831)

  • Research Project: Anthropology (SC832)

  • Topics in Contemporary Social Theory (SC901)

Previous supervision

Keyu Chen
Keyu Chen
Degree subject: Government (Ideology and Discourse Analysis)
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 2/10/2024

Publications

Journal articles (8)

Deka, M. and Arvidsson, A., (2022). “Names doing rounds”: On brands in the bazaar economy. Journal of Consumer Culture. 22 (2), 495-514

Deka, M., (2022). For a Sociology of India - III: Three years into the pandemic: What changed in Delhi’s electronic bazaars. Contributions to Indian Sociology. 56 (1), 88-93

Deka, M., (2021). Bazaar aesthetics: On excess and economic rationality. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 24 (3), 470-484

Deka, M., (2021). A Note on Bazaar Consumer Collectives. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. 6 (4), 509-514

Deka, M., (2018). Embodied Commons: Knowledge and Sharing in Delhi's Electronic Bazaars. The Sociological Review. 66 (2), 365-380

Deka, M., (2017). Calculation in the pirate bazaars. Journal of Cultural Economy. 10 (5), 450-461

Deka, M., (2017). Bazaars and Video Games in India. BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies. 7 (2), 172-188

Deka, M., (2017). Street level tinkering in the times of 'Make in India'. Ephemera : Theory and Politics in Organization. 17 (4), 801-807

Books (1)

Deka, M., (2023). Traders and Tinkers: Bazaars in the Global Economy. Stanford University Press. 1503636003. 9781503635333

Book chapters (1)

Deka, M., (2021). Postcolonial Peer Production. In: The Handbook of Peer Production. Editors: O'Neil, M., Pentzold, C. and Toupin, S., . Wiley-Blackwell. 322- 333. 978-1-119-53710-6

Contact

maitrayee.deka@essex.ac.uk
+44 (0) 1206 873539

Location:

6.328, Colchester Campus

Academic support hours:

On zoom via email appointment

More about me