Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry - Softcover

"Accessibly written and cogently argued, Juki Girls, Good Girls is an important addition to the ethnographic literature on gendered labor in the global economy. Weaving together images and rhetoric of nationalist politics and popular culture as well as the words and daily lives of workers, parents, neighbors, and factory managers, Caitrin Lynch offers a nuanced portrait of Sri Lankan women toiling on the global assembly line. In Sri Lanka women's participation in factory wage labor is viewed both as an important avenue to nationalist modernity and development and as a potential vehicle of moral and cultural decay. Lynch's engaging analysis highlights the women's complex and contested agency as they confront and respond to these circumstances not of their own making. Juki Girls, Good Girls explores the volatile intersections and gendered dynamics of globalization, development, and nationalism in ways that will resonate far beyond the Sri Lankan setting."-Mary Beth Mills, Colby College "This is an extraordinary book that is almost unique among studies of third-world factory workers in looking beyond the shop floor to explore the meaning of women's labor for nation-building and nationalism. With rich and vivid ethnographic detail, Caitrin Lynch documents the intersections of the gendered status of workers and citizens. Juki Girls, Good Girls shows a whole nation pondering the question of whether using women's labor for economic development is compatible with expecting women to socially reproduce the values of the nation; a whole nation asking what kind of citizens women should be."-Jane Collins, University of Wisconsin-Madison "In Juki Girls, Good Girls, anthropologist Caitrin Lynch powerfully displays women's ability to contest and adapt to larger social, political, and economic structures as they fashion identities that are both modern and traditional. Above all, it is about women's agency and thus challenges the victim-oriented globalization literature. Lynch illustrates how even when women enact subordinating practices, they do so on their own terms in an ongoing process of subject formation. Juki Girls is an instant classic, highly recommended to generalists, undergraduates, and graduate students for his accessibility, clarity, and significance."-Nancy Plankey Videla,Feminist Studies "Anthropologist Caitrin Lynch writes a provocative ethnography about women workers in Sri Lanka's 200 Garment Factories Program, a state initiative that brought international industry to rural villages. Working at the intersection of globalization, gender studies, and labor relations, Lynch discusses the localization of production, examining how transnational capitalist dynamics settle into local contexts. This engaging book is based on eighteen months of qualitative research performed in two garment factories. The pages brim with lively characters and trenchant analysis."-Michele Ruth Gamburd, Journal of Asian Studies "In keeping with the best traditions of anthropology, Lynch connects individual experience to the politico-economic structures within which women act on and understand their worlds. Juki Girls, Good Girls is an empirically rich and theoretically informed account of gender as a site of struggle and change; few readers will be disappointed. It reminds us that women's empowerment, while a laudable development goal, is far more complicated than many of us suspect. There is much in this book that will interest development scholars as well as those in gender and feminist studies, and both seasoned and novice researchers."-Dawn H. Currie, Pacific Affairs

When a government program brought garment factories to rural Sri Lanka, women workers found themselves caught between the pressures of a globalizing economy and societal expectations that villages are sanctuaries of tradition. These women learned quickly to resist the characterization of "Juki girls"-female garment workers already established in the urban sector-as vulgar and deracinated, instead asserting that they were "good girls" who could embody the nation's highest ideals of femininity. Caitrin Lynch shows how contemporary Sri Lankan women navigate a complex web of political, cultural, and socioeconomic forces. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research conducted inside export-oriented garment factories and a close examination of national policies intended to ease the way for globalization, Lynch details precisely how gender, nationalism, and globalization influence everyday life in Sri Lanka. This book includes autobiographical essays by garment workers about their efforts to attain the benefits of being seen as "good" while simultaneously expanding the definition of what sort of behavior constitutes appropriate conduct. These village garment workers struggled to reconcile the role thrust upon them as symbols of national progress with the negative public perception of factory workers. Lynch provides the context needed to appreciate the paradoxes that globalization creates while painting a sympathetic portrait of the individuals whose life stories appear in this book.