Deaf uplines and downlines: Multi-level marketing and disharmonious sociality in urban India

This article analyses how the structure of multi-level marketing, through the production of the categories of uplines and downlines, fractures deaf sociality in urban India. Hierarchies have always existed as part of a deaf moral economy in which deaf people share news and information, teach each other sign language and help each other to develop. However, the intermingling of moral and financial economies as a result of post-liberalisation political and economic changes has led to divisive fractures. More generally, this article uses the example of deaf sociality to examine how the neoliberal category of community' can be disharmonious and produced through tensions and negotiations. In addition, deaf social, moral and economic practices point to the potential and actual coerciveness of sociality. As a study of disharmonious socialities, this ethnographic account offers an analysis of what happens when community becomes a springboard for accessing multiple forms of value.