![]() | Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka Subjects: Women plantation workers -- Sri Lanka -- Social conditions; Women Tamil -- Employment -- Sri Lanka; Women Tamil -- Sri Lanka -- Social conditions; Feminism -- Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka -- Social conditions -- 21st century; Beyond nostalgic tea industry ads romanticizing colonial Ceylon and the impoverished conditions that beleaguer Tamil tea workers are the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their families and lives in line houses on tea plantations since the nineteenth century. The tea industry's economic crisis and Sri Lanka's twenty-six year long civil war have ushered in changes to life and work on the plantations, where family members now migrate from plucking tea to performing domestic work in the capital city of Colombo or farther afield in the Middle East. Using feminist ethnographic methods in research that spans the transitional time between 2008 and 2017, Mythri Jegathesan presents the lived experience of these women and men working in agricultural, migrant, and intimate labor sectors. Mythri Jegathesan is assistant professor of anthropology at Santa Clara University. |
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