Selective notes on: Fernandes, L  (1997) Producing Workers. ThePolitics of Gender, Classand Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dave Harris [A TIE piece -- theoretically informed ethnography.  Lots of S Hall and allied feminists (incl Haraway) with bits of  Giddens on space and deCerteau on shopfloor politics.No exploration of quantitative ways to assess the relevance of class, gender and 'community' though --she says we need local understandings of these without imposing western conceptions. The whole thing looks like a step towards 'closure' or distancing models of class,  although these are not mentioned — Bourdieu does get mentioned but only for his work on capitals] This is about the politics of social categories and identities.  They are related, but binaries 'have often obscured by the dynamism of working class politics in India' (xiv), sometimes by measuring them against European workers.  Various disciplinary approaches are drawn upon including Giddens on everyday experience and spatiality, de Certeau on shopfloor practices, Bourdieu on the effects of capital.  A variety of methods including PO.  An interdisciplinary approach. The first example of an industrial conflict beginning as a dispute between two workers, and operative and a mechanic.  The operative was supported by his caste group, but this angered the union.  Management intervention was met with a fracas and all the workers involved were suspended.  The union men took action on behalf of all four.  The mechanic was supported by a smaller caste group.  A wildcat strike was not supported from other departments.  Class and caste were interwoven, and both management and union tried to maintain their official roles and saw symbolism in their development.  The union was also trying to recruit from the dominant caste.  An ideological battle ensued over the meaning and history of the conflicts and this came to dominate.  The conflict took on different meanings as it developed.  This sort of thing is common in the jute mills, and can include gender—a female was assaulted and her community protested, management fired a male worker so the workers' union men organized a wildcat strike (unsuccessfully). Stuart Hall can be cited to argue that social categories are not natural but are created and marked by the production of boundaries.  These are sometimes contingent on other boundaries and hierarchies.  There is struggle over the boundaries.  Different categories and identities can emerge as more important than others—class rather than gender or community, for example.  The boundaries have to be policed and this involves 'hegemonic representation of the relationship' with our other differences (5).  Feminists argue that this is the case with the category of woman, which clearly intersects with those of race and class in America, for example, and if essentialized can look as if it is excluding these other dimensions and thus put some women off.  Intersectionality is important. The boundaries that result are 'the product of hegemonic practices and discourses' (6).  Gender and community structure the labour market.  Particular models of the family life of workers are both created and enforced by the management and trade unions.  Continual negotiation takes place in everyday life.  Gramsci would see these as part of the trench systems, part of the superstructure of civil society.  This is the central activity in hegemony.  Activists can underestimate their effects by exclusionary definitions and especially their dynamics.  There is contestation over relevant spaces—for example trade union practices can be exclusionary, nonunion workers can organise around other communities.  This will provide 'alternative conceptions of class' (7).  The category of class is a construction, following 'a dynamic political process that produces both hegemony and resistance.' This is was overlooked by binary thinking, including some found in feminism. Marks and Weber alike address the structural dimensions of class (discussed 8f).  Marx assumed class consciousness would develop from polarisation.  Weber still did not prioritise sufficiently political activity, and saw cultural and social characteristics as belonging to status not class, including religiosity and notions of honor [opposite in the Parkin reading of Weber]. Comparative studies have often challenged western notions of working class behaviour, especially feminists.  There are three 'tiers—structure, consciousness and political activity' and each in turn is constructed through gender and community.  This means that class on the factory floor is constituted by status, although the boundaries vary and there can be conflicts.  Class is not just discursive, but economic structures are not determinate.  Communities are not to be seen as something primordial to or opposed to class, as is often seen in third world conceptions of traditional societies.  There are cases in India in which unions can 'assert their legitimacy as leaders through religious ritual practices' (11).  Gender is not biologically determined or natural either but is best seen as 'a form of habitus'producing negotiating social patterns—but it is not just discursive.  It can signify power relationships, as can spatial distances, say between managers wives and workers.  Caste distinctions have a role in the relations between women.  However, these arrangements can also provide critique and critical practice to challenge hegemony. Doesn't this just confuse the categories?  We need to consider them all if we want to produce a general 'analytical framework that can generate generalities without creating a hierarchy of cases', say when we are doing comparative work—we can avoid the notion that the western European context is determinate, or that there are traditional societies opposed to modern ones.  If we study interactions between gender, caste and class in India we get a broader picture that might lead in turn to a better understanding of race, class and gender in the USA.  This should inform modern understandings of labour practices'—for example that the European industrial trade union is universal in capitalism.  Difficulties in developing these and communist parties in India has led to a view that India is somehow exceptional and the classes are relevant (further explained 14 F).  This study shows that pre- capitalist and capitalist identities interact differently and there is no ideal type.  This necessary to fully include 'identities of religion, language, and ethnicity' (15),  and to see these as no less narrow than class.  The same point is been made by feminists about idealised notions of cultural traditions affecting women. We need a 'genealogical approach the addresses the process of production of categories' (16), and distinguish contexts of discovery from contexts of justification (the latter seems to involve specifying causal mechanisms).  We have to be aware that there are different national variants, so that class can't be understood in the USA without looking at race and gender. This research was conducted over 18 months and involved interviews.  She chose Calcutta because of a long history of militant labour activism especially in jute mills.  The workforce is very diverse there.  The development of the jute industry is interesting and shows the influence of colonialism and foreign conflict.  Jute used to be a major product but is now in decline, producing increased conflicts in factories, the reduction of women workers.  She participated in meetings as well and informal conversations, religious rituals and festivals.  She tried to understand how political processes unfolded. She valued an interpretative approach as in Geertz, which included advice not to see the Indian case as a distinct field.  She is aware of increasing critiques of ethnography including the effects of the researcher and of the writing.  Self reflexivity is one response, but the field itself often imposes social relationships of otherness on the researcher.  The researched imposed conditions, and their efforts had an effect on the perceived class position of the researcher.  Gender class and caste affected her opportunities to access particular areas and she used her own treatment by management and workers as a source of data—for example she could not intrude in spaces which were inappropriate for someone of her class and status as a woman (in one case, she could have used her superior class to insist on her presence in the factory despite the low status of woman, but did not do so). This leads her to criticise some of the presuppositions inherent in the claim to be an outside observer unaffected by reactions, but she became aware of 'the construction of the ethnographer's otherness…  [As]…  a continually shifting process' (22).  This varied according to the groups involved.  This helps her introduce an addition to the narrative, and recognise the important constructions of others being researched, and this is supported by Haraway on agency.  There are no authentic or innocent narratives unaffected by textual practices. Conventional conversations were not always useful as a research technique, sometimes because others would intervene, and sometimes because they could not tap 'silence resistance' (23).  She tried to turn interviews into conversations, abandoning any assumption of control or attempt to structure the interview, which would be an implicit kind of political conflict.  The technology was also intrusive sometimes, and she found it more useful just to 'memorise the interview'.  She was impressed by the flexibility of participants trying to accommodate her, for example even allowing her to attend a mosque which broke gender codes.  She did think she had become accepted, but this did not remove the affects of class and gender.  So much depends on the construction of your identity, but understanding this helps understand that the broader picture of the intersections at work.  Some the reaction she received, especially from women, might be seen as resistance to class. Chapter 3 The jute factory gives the 'impression of a masculine space' (58). Normally, work conditions might be expected to help form a polarised working class, but in the jute mills, the 'politics of gender and community' are just as important. We can investigate this in 'a single analytical space' — the shop floor. There is no strict separation between structural and ideological factors at work on class identity, the objective and subjective dimensions of class. Instead there are 'contests over space, time, and movement' (59) workers are positioned on the factory floor both through recruitment practices and a division of labour, but here the politics of gender and community are important. The gendering of space does mean class hierarchies between workers and managers as well as between male and female workers. For Foucault, we would be seeing a disciplinary model partitioning time, space and movement, but these are not focused on individual docile bodies, rather on producing 'analytical material borders between class, gender and community'. She arrived at the mill by car and realised that that was itself 'a symbol of power' suggesting affiliation to management. Inside, the mill also offers 'strongly codified system of power articulated through movement, space and position' (61) [with a diagram of the layout on page 60]. It seems that both management and workers live on site, but in different residences, some of them fairly makeshift. Proximity threatens class-based segregation nonetheless, and so 'gender codes become a central means to preserve class distinctions' [good point]. The movement of women is also restrained because space is gendered, marginalised and excluded from public arenas [quite dramatically so, women were not allowed to sit on chairs to be interviewed]. There is a high level of noise and dust on the factory floor and machines are noisy and can cause hearing loss. There are also breathing problems among the workers because there is no ventilation. Production takes place in various departments where the jute is transformed into fibre which is then woven into cloth, having been softened first, carded and combed. Then the fibres are spun into yarn, with one worker tending four frames. Worker productivity is measured here [a chalkboard and some kind of meter] then sacks are sewn together. Machines have been added at various stages leaving little space. Workers can congregate in small groups and talk to each other, despite management efforts. We can see this as a form of resistance and political conflict. Productivity meters were certainly resisted at first and the equipment damaged — management had to install a nightwatchman to prevent sabotage. Meters can still be altered, however. Nevertheless, management seem to be on top and these techniques are not particularly effective in challenging repression [despite some romantics]. As an attempt to regulate the entire life of the worker, through a rotating shift system which obviously affects families and individuals — this might be Foucault's regimentation by time. Again it is gendered because female workers have different shifts — they may not work at night. There are no creches for women workers, though — a 'selective enforcement of the protective legislation' (64). In effect, it disciplines women making sure they can 'perform their shift of reproductive labour' at their homes at night. The workforce is still assumed to be mostly masculine, more so into the future. Some mills do not even have separate toilets for women. All this shows how class politics are 'constructed through and contingent on the politics of gender and community' [I'm not sure about this — gender and community seem to be mostly added onto class? It all follows the logic of accumulation] There is an internal labour market reflecting distinctions of gender and community and producing job differentiation, recruitment and particular allocations of occupations. The workforce itself, some 4200 workers, is composed of different sorts of rural migrants, both Hindu and Muslim, while management is mainly Bengali. There are diverse castes. There are only 180 women. Foucault's 'cellular power'is evident in the ordered system of classifications of job and ranks — six categories, differences in permanent employment status, and corresponding benefits. There are differences in opportunities for social mobility, seemingly depending on personal patronage with both management and union leaders. Recruitment operates from a particular system involving worker supervisors who can recruit members of their own communities. This is a residue of the colonial period. The company chooses the supervisors and these are usually permanent. However, supervisors have lost authority recently, tending to become mere mechanics working on the machines, and receiving uncomplimentary terms from union leaders ['coolies']. Trade unions have become more powerful with recruitment, often using their own family or community ties in the case of individuals, sometimes with payments involved. Supervisory staff can accumulate personal power. Management informally consults with trade union leaders. Payments seem more important, however, as a particular feature of this labour market — workers have to 'purchase the capacity to sell their labour'(68), often by acquiring loans. This affects actual wages as compared to official structures with standardised categories and wage grades. There is a rational system for the grades according to occupation, skill, piece rate and so on. However, there is no clear relationship with skill. Wages can vary within departments as well as between them. The differences between the wages of male and female workers is largely accounted by working in different categories. There are some other benefits including Social Security ones. There is an appearance of security among jute workers, but not all workers benefit — casual workers do not, for example. Sometimes managers flout the official agreements. There are significant hierarchies in the workforce, ranging from those who enjoy some economic and political power to those who are in effect 'bonded labour' (70). Informal occupations like moneylender and job broker are found among the workforce. We are far from typical free wage labour based on contract, but the precapitalist forms actually maintain the capitalist ones. Jobs can also be inherited, sometimes by a widow or daughter, but male kin relationships are the most important. Again there is a family dimension [she prefers to argue that a kinship system 'is thus used to construct the working class' (70), which is true if we are looking at literal membership of individuals]. Patriarchy can shape the labour market. Kinship ties personalise some of the work processes and impersonal ties do not dominate. As a result, public and private are not separated. Kinship system is officially recognised as a recruiting mechanism Displacement and inferior recruitment of women has made the factory into a male sphere. The standard arguments to exclude women is that they are more expensive, eligible for benefits, and cause scheduling problems. This is how 'hegemonic discourses are translated into everyday practices' (71). There are assumptions that women belong in the home, and are subsidiary to men. Certain tasks are thought to be more appropriate for workers in particular communities, or gendered — women are better at sewing. In other ways, different castes prepare their members for particular jobs, and this is seen as a reflection of natural ability. Naturalisation affects gender as well by assigning assumptions about skill and ability — women are less able to manage machines, for example, or to do more difficult work [Willis is cited here on the conflation between masculinity and manual work] (73). Again this is not just a rational policy from management. Union subscribe to it too. It becomes a kind of hegemonic common sense. These gender relations are produced as well as reproduced, manufactured. They link intimately with other components of the division of labour in the jute mill. There is still significant resistance, however, and assumptions of female inferiority are not accepted on the whole: they are however sometimes enforced by coercion. There is a whole 'dialectics of authority and resistance' shown in struggles over 'time, space, and movement' (75). Managers do surveillance and try to control time and movement, they monitor classify and document workers and work. Community links mean that surveillance can extend to home as well. There are watchman to oversee residents. Political meetings are documented and information circulated to jute mill owners. There are no video cameras, however but it is the same regime of modern power that Foucault talks about, for example in prisons. Any disturbances to factory discipline, whether disobedience or drunkenness attracts a series of responses. This replaces the earlier colonial pattern of physical coercion and beating, which was seen as less efficient. There are gender differences. Women move about on the factory floor less visibly. Sometimes managers classify women as men so that they will not qualify for additional benefits, and sometimes wives unofficially substitute for husbands on the shop floor. Male workers are controlled to become docile bodies, but female bodies are effectively erased. Control is never absolute, and there is resistance, such as countersurveillance to monitor the movements and activities of management, with information passed through a network in the mill. Drivers are particularly important in this network, and she found she was incorporated into it, and sometimes helped it track managers. She was herself monitored, and this clearly limited her field research. This confirms with recent studies of the importance of 'subaltern agency and resistance' (77) in contrast to the usual emphasis on official politics and political organisations. However, sometimes 'resistance' is defined so generally that it loses analytic rigour — examples are resistance as a strike, a form of clothing [Hebdige is cited], a theft. She wants to pin it down to 'tactics, confrontation, and organisation'. Tactics are common forms of resistance such as loitering or wasting time, but  also tampering with meters, sleeping on the job, leaving work in order to attend to nature's call. DeCerteau's definition of tactics is used here to describe negotiation within fields of power, on a particular imposed terrain, often isolated and opportunistic, using the cracks in surveillance. Conditions themselves are not changed and even more severe supervision and discipline can result — games are only temporary [for example new arrangements were made to deliver tea to the workplace to avoid wasting time]. Specific measures of time can be allocated and tea breaks spatially rearranged to destroy any collective or off-site activity. There are more organised forms of mobilisation too, arising from spontaneous incidents which lead to open confrontation — for example a visiting manager was pelted by bobbins during a power failure and as a result the bobbin became 'an instrument of resistance' (78), although the manager restored his authority and picked off eight individuals to break collectivity and invited them to throw something at him — 'the symbolic appropriation of the act of resistance' (79). Managers do not always win, and workers can support individuals and escalate the conflict — again space helps if there are opportunities to assemble quickly. There is sometimes a shift from specific issues to more general ones such as the honour of the workers [in an incident involving theft]. There were seven trade unions, some affiliated to political parties, and they had a central role. Sometimes they picked up individual concerns such as transfer between departments, but there were long-term questions of workload and job status, and resisting [deskilling and intensifying] changes introduced by management. Management sometimes defuse conflict by awarding different job titles, or ending temporary employment status in exchange for consent, say to mechanisation. Workers have direct access to union offices at the factory level. Union leaders are workers, but of a higher status, able to leave their machines and negotiate with management — they became key informants for her as go-betweens. Trade unions can mobilise the workforce in militant actions, but they often depend on the authority of management, especially if management insists that they are the only channel for issues. They can often facilitate  bureaucratic procedures such as those that affect absence for ill-health, and can become powerful sponsors. Management can build up particular leaders by awarding them special favours. Managers of even created unions in this way. Multiple unions can be divided, an individual ones rewarded. There is much 'bribery and patronage', on the part of union leaders who will help management — in one case, a union leader received a gift for his daughter's marriage, and this acted as 'a form of insurance' (82) for future behaviour. This does not prevent any kind of protest, but does provide it with 'boundaries that are acceptable to management', playing a game in some cases. These tactics are 'always complemented by coercion or the threat of coercion' where people do not follow these rules. Militant leaders are constantly harassed and threatened. Legal redress takes far too long to be practical, but strikes can also be met with lockout. Political parties can help sometimes. In one case, a union activist encountered three kinds of power configurations. In the first case, he fully accepted management's authority while trying to present his own demands, engaging in an ideological battle to define power — denied by management. Management offers a personal kind of patronage, paternalism rather than contract. The activist constantly 'reproduces position of subordination through the subtleties of tone, language, and body gestures' (84). In the second case the leader came into complain on behalf of the worker, but the whole conversation 'began to take on a humorous and dramatic turn', because the personnel manager involved had a lower status leaving 'a wider political space': this shows the effect of context on class relations. In the third case, the activist recognised that management could easily divide and rule, give bribes and favours as well as threaten. These views were transmitted in an interview with the researcher, but she is not claiming that they are therefore more authentic — rather they could be 'a critique of my academic project' (85). Each of these situations would seem to offer different pictures of the nature of class relations, which shows that we must look at process and context. Union leaders must comply with management, but also gain worker support. Most of that support is utilitarian. Union leaders sometimes have a similar approach and pursue personal gain. Workers cannot approach management directly. Non-literate workers are also dependent on literate ones to manage factory rules — the literate person is often the union leader, and this preserves his power. Workers are aware of the complexity of interests and patronage and this awareness produces hierarchies among workers, when combined with gender and community. These provide the actual relationships that unions build on. Hierarchies inside working class communities themselves offer 'inequalities and forms of dependency' (87) with consequences inside the factory. Women are less active and are less well represented, and this is reinforced by their exclusion in the workplace and in communities. Once a group of women tried to organise themselves to resist intensification,, but failed in their negotiations and management closed down the whole department for six months, affecting other workers. They could do this because most of the women were casual workers only. This was an explicit divide and rule strategy and it led to male labourers pressuring the women workers to stop resistance, and eventually to union pressure as well. Community relations are less directly manifested. Union support can cut across community identities, but they also use community relations of patronage. Sometimes they might campaign on behalf of particular powerful castes. Sometimes ethnic groups form their own unions. On the whole though, everyone has an interest in maintaining networks. It is not that unions represent ethnic groups directly, more that they reconcile their own interests with the interests of dominant communities. This again compromises their ability to militantly oppose capital because they have to maintain their bases of power which means accepting local inequalities. Overall, hierarchical social relations are dominant and must be understood as affecting the work of unions and as influences on class identity and its boundaries. 'Class interests are articulated through conflict, hierarchy and exclusion' (88). [From what I can see, the location of machines on the shop floor specifically also reveal the intention to develop a disciplinary regime by management, but also encounter resistance in the various ways described. The layout of housing seems every bit as important. There is no separate entry in the index for 'machines' — most of its discussed under the entries on space and the spatial] Conclusion There are 'continual contests of power over the boundaries between categories' (159). This should replace an excessive interest on historical context or processes evolving over time. Relations with other categories and identities are also important. Political activity cannot be reduced to a singular identity except as 'a political act' itself. Theoretical searches for a pure category are misguided and participate in policing the boundaries and setting up hierarchies. Politics involves 'institutional, discursive and everyday social practices' and is located in labour market, family and community organisations. Active groups, and the political interests have to be constructed. We can however detect a more fundamental 'dialectics of hegemony and resistance' (160) as particular representations emerge and are contested. Trade unions are still wedded to a hierarchy where class is superior to gender and community. They continually try to make class a discrete entity, but in practice 'particular meanings of gender and community' interact at shop floor, at the symbolic level and in sexual politics. For example, 'meanings of class are produced by religious ritual practices… Sexual politics makes access to union resources contingent on the reproduction of a patriarchal model'.There are no authentic or natural identities in gender or community Hegemonic representations are 'usually rigid and act as significant structural constraints' (161) [rigid definitions of class exclude women from permanent employment]. There is no consent, however and the exclusionary nature of activities can be contested. However, boundaries are neither arbitrary nor 'perpetually fluid'. 'Structural conditions for group formation are important', as are particular kinds of economic social and cultural capital. Interesting relationality not just producing a list of identities 'that randomly interact to each other'. There are distinct relationships between gender class and community. For example shared meanings of gender interact with narratives of class and community — meanings of gender are seen as a 'rest' for the others, but not transcendent. There is no occasional interaction. Researchers themselves might be producing boundaries, especially if they are interested in theory. A genealogical approach is required see how social identities and categories are formed 'through both temporal and spatial processes' (162), drawing on Giddens. Categories produce discursive meanings through time and material and appear in spatial terms. There are other effects of time, such as the displacement of women workers, partly supported by the state and the union. There might be a materialisation of the 'construction of the purity of class interests' if women are displaced, but gender can still play a central if indirect role. We can analyse 'reproductive narratives' and also enquire into possible interruptions. For example women might resist the place assigned to them by managers unions and community organisations, if only by 'imagining a future for their children does not reply unemployment in the mill' [which apparently is structured partly by a patriarchal concept of community -- Khandani]. The spatial representations of categories show the link between 'discursive contingencies and structural constraints'. This includes spatial positioning of workers on the factory floor which 'mark class, gender, and community' (163). This avoids determinism and reduction, since space is 'a "practised place"' [quoting DeCerteau], never static. We can go beyond specifying particular causal mechanisms to explore our own '"context of discovery"' [reference to Harding which I believe Barad sees as an alternative for the present positivist science]. Conventional understandings, say of displacement, rust be revised — there is no single causal event such as modernisation or economic crisis, but rather 'daily negotiations of power over the boundaries between class and gender' which can themselves get 'overdetermined' in crisis. The central argument here involves 'exceptionalism' which has been used to explain the absence of successful class based parties or unions as something particularly 'Indian'. But there is no monolithic singular working class with shared interests, despite the implications in Marx and Weber. Politicians use this exceptionalist argument and so miss a lot of the actual detail of Labour politics in India. For example, there are often dichotomies opposing class to religion or ethnicity — but these are actually linked. Similarly, it is reductive to see class interests as articulated by trade unions all political parties: there are other forms of expression of class involving the other identities — class underpins female resistance to sexual harassment by managers, religious rituals that require time off can help workers 'break management control of time and space'. There is a different logic to workplace activity, although the unions themselves are often unable to grasp this, for example in their promotion of unity. This shows that we are interested in more than theoretical exercises. Union should no longer take class as fundamental an add-on special considerations for women. Unions themselves have 'an initial exclusionary structure or agenda' [but no development this, via Parkin for example.] There is a paradox because the unity of workers can also rest 'on exclusion', and unions can become 'limited interest groups rather than a mass movement', (165) preserving hierarchies within workforces — we need to acknowledge difference and its connections with equality. In particular, gender has been neglected and so there are limits on the development of 'an autonomous subaltern public sphere'. Union attempts to discipline women or enforce gendered codes 'inadvertently converge with management constructions of social and sexual disorder in working class communities' and with local operations of power. The official union framework is far too limited for effective political activity We need more of this sort of stuff as the Indian economy develops, including economic restructuring and retrenchment of workers. We might expect this would proceed through picking off the weak sections of the workforce first. Union efforts to resist by mobilising based on a unity of workers and homogeneity will not challenge these hierarchies. It is still common, however, to argue that somehow women's issues are only of secondary importance — they are in fact central to policies of redundancy and retrenchment. Reserve army theories are also inadequate — too economically functionalist and ignoring political dynamics. Political processes are crucial and how they shape and are shaped by structural constraints. Stuart Hall's emphasis of symbolic boundaries between categories is particularly useful, revealing political outcomes and also helping us do some comparative work, comparing say women workers or women of colour in the USA. The Indian context is not just different from European social theory, but it does reveal post-colonialty, producing specificities. This should help us revise notions of modernity take for granted technologies of power [with Foucault cited here — might also be applied to Barad?]. The analysis reveals 'a deeper epistemological move' that has criticised 'a series of [binary] juxtapositions' — class and culture, modern and traditional and so on. These are assumed to be paired, and this assumption is deep in the 'intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment'. We need to move away from easy opposition in binary thinking. This work will have 'very real political and material effects' (167). Pure concepts, even 'a benign ideal type' facilitating analytic rigour should be recognised as an 'effect of power', a 'hegemonic representation', involving boundaries defined through other social hierarchies. Need to move beyond just developing analytic categories and see that 'politics is about the production of distinctions in relationships among social categories'. We can test those boundaries, and avoid 'externalising or exoticizing the politics of difference'. back to Barad Meeting ...