Gold, Gender, and Circuits of Commerce: An Ethnographic Inquiry into the Gold Economy in India

Public Lecture by Anindita Chakrabarti
25 November 2025, 07:00 p.m. 
Strohsackpassage, Nikolaistr. 8-10, room 4.55  

Gold, an object of immense economic, historical and cultural significance, has largely escaped sociological investigation. India, one of the largest importers of gold in the world, has the reputation of being an insatiable market for the yellow metal. Gold enjoys a dual life as both a sacramental object and the most fungible and reliable investment option. As gold moves between banks, temples, and life-cycle ceremonies, it offers interesting material to think through sociological theories of consumption, wealth accumulation, and gender. Drawing on Viviana Zelizer’s concept of circuits of commerce, I track and trace how gold inhabits and circulates through trust networks, kinship obligations and the gift economy. By doing so, I ask and answer the question: what does gold consumption mean in India (and elsewhere) where modernization has failed to dent the sacramental, sartorial as well as financial supremacy of the 'barbarous relic' and the precious metal continues to inhabit different economic circuits in its many avatars?

Anindita Chakrabarti, Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Kanpur, teaches and researches in the areas of sociology of religion, religion-based family law, and economic sociology with a focus on inheritance, entrepreneurship and family business.

The lecture is jointly organized by the Institute for South and Central Asian Studies in cooperation with the KFG “Multiple Secularities”.