Dissertation Research: Production of National Identity in Export-Oriented Factories in Sri Lanka

本项目支持芝加哥大学文化人类学专业学生的学位论文研究。该研究将在斯里兰卡进行，学生将学习两家相对较新的出口导向型服装厂，这两家工厂雇佣的主要是女性劳动力。通过深入访谈、参与性观察以及对当地和地区档案的研究等民族志技术，学生将研究在这些工厂工作的经历如何改变了女性对自己作为人和国家公民的观念。传统上，女性是传统文化价值观的宝库，学生假设在工厂工作，其明确的目的是改变工人的身份，更多地与民族国家联系，而不是与当地群体联系，将产生冲突和妇女及其家庭的变化。这项研究很重要，因为全球市场变化的过程给世界上许多传统地区带来了外资拥有或主导的工作场所。了解这些跨国工厂的工作经验如何影响女工，并通过她们影响她们的家庭和家庭，将有助于我们理解和处理全球市场扩张所产生的压力和紧张关系。

This project supports the dissertation research of a student of cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago. The research will take place in Sri Lanka where the student will study two relatively new export-oriented garment factories which hire a predominantly female labor force. Using ethnographic techniques of in-depth interviews and participant observation as well as studies of local and regional archives, the student will examine how the experience of work in these factories changes the women's notions of themselves as people and citizens of the nation. Women are traditionally the store-house of traditional cultural values, and the student hypothesizes that work in the factories, which explicitly aim to change their worker's identities to relate more to the national state and less to their local group, will produce conflict and change in the women and their families. This research is important because the process of global market change has brought foreign-owned or dominated work-places to many traditional parts of the world. Understanding how the experience of work in these trans-national sites affects the women workers, and through them their households and families, will help us understand and deal with the stresses and tensions that the expansion of the global market produces.