Restitching Identities in Rural Sri Lanka: Gender, Neoliberalism, and the Politics of Contentment

Sandya Hewamanne's book explores how female factory workers in Sri Lanka's free trade zones challenge conventional notions about marginalized women at the bottom of the global economy. It follows these women to explore how they negotiate their social and economic lives once back in their home villages. It illustrates how neoliberal attitudes within local contexts result in new articulations of what it is to be an entrepreneur and a good woman.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 28 September 2020
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Abstract:
Sandya Hewamanne's book, "Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone," delves into the lives of female factory workers in Sri Lanka's free trade zones, challenging prevailing notions about marginalized women at the bottom of the global economy. In her subsequent work, "Restitching Identities in Rural Sri Lanka," Hewamanne explores the ways in which these women negotiate their social and economic lives once they return to their home villages. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork spanning fifteen years, the book examines how former free trade zone workers utilize diverse forms of capital, including social, cultural, and monetary resources, to establish themselves as local entrepreneurs and community leaders. At the same time, they initiate gradual changes in rural social hierarchies and gender norms. Hewamanne argues that free trade zones expose Sri Lankan women to neoliberal ways of self-fashioning, showcasing how neoliberal attitudes manifest in different local contexts, leading to new expressions of entrepreneurship and womanhood. By focusing on how former workers decenter neoliberal market relations while using their entrepreneurial and civic activities to reimagine social life in more fulfilling ways, the book offers insights into emerging political possibilities in contexts where both the reproduction of neoliberal economic relations and the implementation of alternatives co-exist.

Weight: 472g
Dimension: 159 x 235 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780812252408