Sri Lanka's Global Factory Workers: (Un)Disciplined Desires and Sexual Struggles in a Post-Colonial Society

145 Pages·2016·1.136 MB·English

by  Sandya Hewamanne

Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers
I n Sri Lanka, the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) employs thousands of unmarried rural
women, and their migration has aroused deep anxieties over female morality and
ideal conduct. This book focuses on the global factory workers based in the FTZ,
and analyzes intersections of gender, class and sexuality by looking at the sex-
ual lives and struggles of the female workers.
Exploring the alternative sexual world created by Sri Lanka’s female global
factory workers who engage in practices—such as premarital sex, unmarried
cohabitation, and, to a lesser extent, lesbianism—that mainstream Sinhalese Bud-
dhist culture considers taboo, the author demonstrates that the articulations of
good and bad women in relation to sexual behavior has rendered global work-
ers’ sexual lives “unutterable,” leading to zones of silence, contradictory articu-
lations and performances. Taking the reader into the forbidden zones of sexual
discourses, choices, acts, and texts enacted and expressed in visible arenas yet
remain unseen, unread or misread by onlookers, the book critically investigate
how cultural, economic and political processes are implicated in the construction
and expression of working class female sexualities.
A n important contribution to the field of gender studies, the book addresses
issues surrounding sexuality, particularly how it is shaped by global production
networks as well as patriarchal nationalist projects. It is of interest to students and
scholars of South Asian Studies and Gender Studies.
Sandya Hewamanne teaches Anthropology at the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK. Her research interests include globalization, identity,
cultural politics and feminist and post-colonial theory.
Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
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M. Saiful Islam
113 India’s Approach to Development Cooperation
Edited by Sachin Chaturvedi and Anthea Mulakala
114 Education and Society in Bhutan
Tradition and modernisation
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115 Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers
(Un)Disciplined desires and sexual struggles in a post-colonial society
Sandya Hewamanne
Sri Lanka’s Global Factory
Workers
(Un)Disciplined desires and sexual
struggles in a post-colonial society
Sandya Hewamanne
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Sandya Hewamanne
The right of Sandya Hewamanne to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hewamanne, Sandya, author.
Title: Sri Lanka’s global factory workers : (un) disciplined desires and
sexual struggles in a post-colonial society / Sandya Hewamanne.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge
contemporary South Asia series | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002029 | ISBN 9780415819862 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315543741 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Sexual behavior—Sri Lanka. | Women—
Employment—Sri Lanka.
Classification: LCC HQ29 .H49 2016 | DDC 306.7082095493—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016002029
ISBN: 978-0-415-81986-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-54374-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For two women, who in their own varied ways, shaped the
woman I have become:
My mother Soma Hewamanne and my aunt Nirmala Herath
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Global factory workers and forbidden zones 1
2 “Secret” lives of good girls: on romances, sexualities, and
unuttered desires 23
3 Romance on the street: sexual banter and sexual harassment 42
4 “Would good girls read such filth?”: reading and writing
sex among global factory workers 62
5 In the service of the nation: sex, marriage, and social mobility
in times of war 80
6 Guardians of girls: policing and saving global workers
in crises of love and sex 101
7 Man-power workers, contract workers, and Tamil workers:
sexual empowerment, from here to where? 121
Bibliography 129
Index 135
Acknowledgements

The sole reason I have been able to write this book is because the Katunayake
Free Trade Zone (FTZ) workers I befriended over many years allowed me entry
into their public and private spaces. Their strength, skill, and creativity when
negotiating unpalatable situations even while contesting dominant cultural norms
have long inspired me, and made this project an uplifting exercise. I will forever
be grateful for their kindness, acceptance, affection, and sympathy.
I dearly hope local and global policymakers take note of these workers’ pre-
dicaments and initiate policies to make exercising sexual and reproductive rights
“normal.” As for myself, I plan to use the material in this book to push relevant
policymakers to pursue programs that empower global garment workers in Sri
Lanka and elsewhere, and thereby partly pay back for my long research collabora-
tion with the island’s FTZ workers.
James and Judy Brow, Kamala Visweswaran, Polly Strong, and Kamran Ali
have provided intellectual inspiration, mentorship, and friendship in equal mea-
sure through the years. Without them my career trajectory would have been quite
different. My friends Ritu Khanduri, Denni Blum, Jenny Huberman, Bambi
Chapin, Catherine Harnoise, Robin Simon, Ana Wahl, and Steve Gunkel have
also influenced my work in various positive ways. I thank them all. A special
thank you to Jenny Huberman for suggesting the book’s provocative subheading.
My heartfelt gratitude to Anne Blackburn at Cornell University’s South Asia
Program for arranging a visiting scholar position in 2014 that provided a much
needed change in intellectual climate that spurred me to finish this book. Portions
of chapters 3, 4, and 5 were previously published in Ethnography, Feminist Stud-
ies, Cultural Dynamics and the book Stitching Identities. I thank the publishers for
granting permission to reuse this material.
And then there is Neil and Sadie: thank you for lighting up my life!
1 Global factory workers and
forbidden zones
The Scent of the Lotus Pond (B ora Diya Pokuna ), a feature film by Satyajit Mai-
tipe, portrays the intimate lives of three Free Trade Zone (FTZ) workers. One
woman, Gothami, is not conventionally beautiful and is never the first choice for
a man seeking a girlfriend. She lusts after her beautiful friend’s boyfriend, Vipula,
and has sex with him when he is drunk, sick, and sad. She gets pregnant, but Vip-
ula thereafter reviles her and she is forced to abandon her baby at a train station.
All three friends, together with others, flirt with and lead men on. Although the
beautiful girl, Mangala, is able to marry her boyfriend, Vipula, she later reveals
that she had an abortion when her affair with another man, while dating Vipula,
resulted in pregnancy.
Bora Diya Pokuna contains sexually explicit scenes and dialogue when por-
traying Gothami’s sexual agency and her subsequent humiliation at the hands
of Vipula and his friends. This 2003 movie was banned in Sri Lanka until 2015.
The reason, according to the director, was because it included “the first female
masturbation scene ever.” The censors, and by extension the government, were
apparently afraid of publicly acknowledging that unmarried, young women have
sexual desires and can freely express such desires. Many older people I talked to
seemed to share this view, for they said the movie focused on the few “bad” girls
in the FTZ to make money. While the movie, by depicting the three people who
transgressed sexual norms being punished for their acts, ended up reiterating a
common Buddhist understanding of the karmic cycle, also portrays rural to urban
migrant women’s lives in a manner that aroused intense anxieties among middle
class people, older generations, and the government.
This book deals with such anxieties by exploring the alternative sexual
world created by Sri Lanka’s female global factory workers who engage in
practices – such as premarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, and, to a lesser extent,
lesbianism – that mainstream Sinhalese Buddhist culture considers taboo. This
new articulation of desires, pleasure, and empowerment arouse deep fears over
female morality and ideal conduct especially among Sri Lanka’s elite but also
among ordinary people, which they express through surveillance and by policing
workers’ behavior.
By showing how migrant factory workers manage sexual lives under the ever-
present gaze of neighbors, police, NGOs, and middle class people and ascertain