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.
Biography
Caitrin Lynch is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Olin College of Engineering and Visiting
Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University.