Jan Breman is a Professor Emeritus at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Gujarat and Java mainly, and also in Pakistan and China between 1962 and 2015. His empirical research focusses on the bottom segments of the rural and urban workforce and discusses the changing plight of labour in the colonial and postcolonial era. Some of his works include Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India (1974), Footloose Labour (1996), At Work in the Informal Economy of India (2013) and Capitalism Labour and Inequality in India (2019). His most recent book is Fighting Free to Become Unfree Again: The Social History of Bondage and Neo-Bondage of Labour in India (2023).