Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka (Contemporary Ethnography) [Hardcover]

Sandya Hewamanne (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0812240456 | ISBN-13: 978-0812240450 | Publication Date: December 12, 2007

Anthropologist Sandya Hewamanne spent time in a Sri Lankan free trade zone (FTZ) working and living among the workers to learn about their lives. "They were poor women from rural areas," Hewamanne writes, "who migrated to do garment work in transnational factories of a global assembly line. Their difficult work routines and sad living conditions have been examined in detail. When I was with them I often wondered whether anyone noticed the smiles, winks, smirks, gestures, tones of voice, the movies they saw, or the songs they sang." Hewamanne deftly weaves theories of identity, globalization, and cultural politics throughout her detailed accounts of the workers' efforts to negotiate ever shifting roles and expectations of gender, class, and sexuality.

By analyzing how these workers claim political subjectivity, Hewamanne's Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone challenges conventional notions about women at the bottom of the global economy. The book offers a fascinating journey through the vibrant subaltern universe of Sri Lankan female migrant workers, from the FTZ factory shop floor to boarding houses, from urban movie theaters to temples and beaches and back to their native rural villages. Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone captures the spirit with which women confront power and violence through everyday poetics and politics, exploring how female workers construct themselves as different while investigating this difference as the space where deep anxieties and ambivalences over notions of nation, modernity, and globalization get played out.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A first-rate ethnography that will appeal not only to professional social scientists but to everyone concerned about the impact of global capitalism on the lives of ordinary people, especially women in the developing world."—Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University

"Hewamanne succeeds in meeting her primary objective, which is to tell us the story of these women in a way that we can see and partially apprehend the complexity of their lives through her writing. Few ethnographies are as passionate, confident, intimate, and evocative as this one."—American Ethnologist

About the Author

Sandya Hewamanne teaches anthropology at Wake Forest University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (December 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812240456
• ISBN-13: 978-0812240450
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #879,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome addition to anthropology shelves and highly recommended, April 14, 2010

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka (Contemporary Ethnography) (Paperback)

Anthropology instructor Sandya Hewamanne presents Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka, an anthropological study of the impact that the garment work opportunities in the Sri Lankan free trade zone (FTZ) has had upon the women who undertake it. Most of these women are from impoverished rural backgrounds, but unlike women who seek to earn money through domestic work for wealthy families in other nations, they are capable of banding together for mutual protection and looking out for one another's best interests. Hewamanne challenges common perceptions of how women at the bottom of a globalized economy fare, particularly in the epilogue which notes the financial difficulties some former FTZ workers have after they leave their jobs and get married. Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone personalizes its research with anecdotes about the lives of female workers, who must negotiate fluidly changing expectations of gender, class, and sexuality. A thought-provoking account that strives to bypass positive and negative preconceptions alike in its quest to uncover the truth of modern-day reality for these women, Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone is a welcome addition to anthropology shelves and highly recommended.