This article examines migration, styles of masculinity and male trajectories through the lifecycle in Kerala, South India, in a region with a long history of high migration, most lately to the Persian Gulf states. Ethnography suggests that migration may be integrated into wider identity projects and form part of local subjectivities. The article considers four important local categories: the gulfan migrant, typically an immature unmarried male; the kallan, a selfinterested maximizer or individualistic anti-social man; the pavam, an innocent good-guy, generous to the point of self-destruction; mature householder status, a successful, social, mature man holding substantial personal wealth, supporting many dependents and clients. Another theme to emerge is the relationship between masculinity and cash: migration appears as particularly relevant to masculinity in its enhanced relationship with money, an externalizable (detachable) form of masculine potency: maturity means being able to use such resources wisely.

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Muslim entrepreneurs from Kerala, South India, are at the forefront of India's liberalizing economy, keen innovators who have adopted the business and labour practices of global capitalism in both Kerala and the Gulf. They are also heavily involved in both charity and politics through activity in Kerala's Muslim public life. They talk about their ‘social mindedness’ as a combination of piety and economic calculation, the two seen not as excluding but reinforcing each other. By promoting modern education among Muslims, entrepreneurs seek to promote economic development while also embedding economic practices within a framework of ethics and moral responsibilities deemed to be ‘Islamic’. Inscribing business into the rhetoric of the ‘common good’ also legitimizes claims to leadership and political influence. Orientations towards self‐transformation through education, adoption of a ‘systematic’ lifestyle, and a generalized rationalization of practices have acquired wider currency amongst Muslims following the rise of reformist influence and are now mobilized to sustain novel forms of capital accumulation. At the same time, Islam is called upon to set moral and ethical boundaries for engagement with the neoliberal economy. Instrumentalist analyses cannot adequately explain the vast amounts of time and money which Muslim entrepreneurs put into innumerable ‘social’ projects, and neither ‘political Islam’ nor public pietism adequately captures the possibilities or motivations for engagement among contemporary reformist‐orientated Muslims. Résumé Les entrepreneurs musulmans de l’état indien du Kerala sont en première ligne dans l’économie indienne en voie de libéralisation. Ces innovateurs ont adopté les pratiques d’entreprise et de gestion de la main‐d’œuvre du capitalisme global, aussi bien dans le Kerala que dans le Golfe Persique. Ils sont également très engagés dans la bienfaisance et la politique, par leur activité dans la vie publique des musulmans du Kerala. Ils parlent de leur « esprit social » comme d’une combinaison de piété et de calcul économique, lesquelles sont perçues non pas comme mutuellement exclusives mais comme se renforçant mutuellement. En promouvant une éducation moderne des musulmans, ils tentent de favoriser le développement économique tout en plaçant leurs pratiques économiques dans un cadre d’éthique et de responsabilités morales considéré comme « islamique ». En inscrivant les affaires dans la rhétorique du « bien commun », ils légitiment du même coup leurs revendications de leadership et d’influence politique. L’orientation vers la transformation de soi par le biais de l’éducation, l’adoption d’un mode de vie « systématique » et une rationalisation généralisée des pratiques ont été largement adoptées parmi les musulmans sous l’effet de l’influence croissante des réformistes, et elles sont à présent mobilisées à l’appui de nouvelles formes d’accumulation de capital. Dans le même temps, on invoque l’islam pour fixer des limites morales et éthiques à l’engagement dans l’économie néolibérale. Les...

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In this paper, we explore some ways through which the adoption of specific consumption practices enables members of a South-Indian ex-untouchable community, Izhavas within Kerala, to objectify and redefine their self-perceived and other-perceived social position, and to concretize and make sense of their attempts to achieve generalized upward mobility. Located within individual, familial and group mobility strategies and developmental cycles, consumption assumes a long-term dimension, oriented towards present and future. Consumption practices also take on a normative aspect: youthful orientations towards transience and ephemerality should be replaced by a mature demeanour directed towards duration and permanency, and achievement of householder status. ‘Householders’ negotiate their paths through a complex consumer culture where values of transience and durability articulate with a local/foreign continuum. The labouring poor, whose consumption is severely limited, remain unable, in the eyes of the majority, to attain mature householder status. While Dalit castes withdraw into virtuosity in arenas such as fashion, labouring Izhavas struggle unsuccessfully to maintain distinction and join the mainstream.