Recent work in anthropology has translated systemic disjuncture to individual subjectivity, under the premise that "disordered" political economies cause "disordered" identities. However this work underplays the role of affect in "gathering" subjectivity amidst external transformation. The following thesis proposes a concept of "mood" as a set of conjoined, low-level affects that provides continuity in contexts of neoliberalism and change. It investigates women's "moods" in an urbanizing region of Uttarakhand, India. Drawing from ethnographic interviews in a village, and a migrant community, mood is shown to involve components of capitalist anxiety that articulate with attitudes of docility and duty. Experiences typically described as "postmodern" including "incompleteness", "estrangement" and "alienation", are common to, and produce "classical" gendered affects in both rural and urban settings. Although anxiety can be destabilizing, it joins paradoxically with these affects to lubricate women's sense of "belonging" in a place.

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