Veiled constructions: Conflict,migration and modernity in eastern Sri Lanka

Abstract

This article analyses transformations of rural gender relations and local patterns of religious consumption amongst female Muslim migrants from eastern Sri Lanka to the Middle East. Migration has led to reconfigurations of everyday practices within a unified and unifying pan-Islamic code of conduct. It is evident, however, that women are suc cessfully negotiating and recasting their roles by utilising those very same religious discourses and practices which attempt to regulate them. Migrant women in Sri Lanka use imported consumer goods and 'Arabi' practices as a means of empowering them selves. In this context, Islamic religious practices play an empowering and progressive role in migrant women's lives.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Appadurai, A. 1997. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization . Delhi: Oxford University Press .

Bernal, V. 1994. Women and the remaking of Islamic tradition. Comparative studies in society and history 36, 1: 36-67.

Brochmann, G. 1993. Middle East avenue: Female migration from Sri Lanka to the Gulf. Boulder: Westview.

Cohn, B. 1996. Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Feldman, S. 2001. Exploring theories of patriarchy: A perspective from contemporary Bangladesh. Signs 26, 4: 1097-1127.

Gamburd, M.R. 2000. The kitchen spoon's handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka's migrant housemaids. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Gardner, K. 1995. Global migrants, local lives: Travel and transformation in rural Bangladesh. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goldberg, Ellis. 1991. Smashing idols and the state: The Protestant ethic and Egyptian Sunni radicalism. Comparative studies in society and history 33, 1: 3-35.

Hale, S. 1994. Gender practices and Islamization in Sudan. South Asia bulletin 14, 2: 51-66.

10.

Hegland, M.E. 1999. Gender and religion in the Middle East and South Asia . In M. Meriwether and J.A. Tucker , eds., Women and gender in the modern Middle East, pp. 177-212. London: Westview Press.

11.

Hussain, J. 1998. Eravur Muslims: A sociological research. Unpublished B.A. Dissertation, Dept. of Arabic and Islamic Civilization, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.

12.

Khalidi, R. 1998. 'The Middle East' as a framework of analysis: Re-mapping a region in the era of globalization. Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18, 1: 75-81.

13.

McGilvray, D. 1997. Tamils and Muslims in the shadow of war: Schism or continuity ? South Asia 20, Special Issue: 239-53.

14.

—. 1998. Arabs, Moors, and Muslims: Sri Lankan Muslim ethnicity in regional perspective. Contributions to Indian sociology 32, 2: 433-83.

15.

Meriwether, M. and J.A. Tucker. 1999. Women and gender in the modern Middle East. London: Westview Press.

16.

Mernissi, F. 1975. Beyond the veil: Male-female dynamics in modern Muslim society. New York: Schenkman .

17.

Moghadam, V.M. 1993. Modernizing women: Gender and social change in the Middle East. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers .

18.

Ong, A. 1987. Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline: Factory women in Malaysia. Albany: SUNY Press.

19.

Parrenas, R.S. 2001. Transgressing the nation-state: The partial citizenship and imagined (global) community of migrant Filipina domestic workers. Signs 26, 4: 1129-54.

20.

Said, E. 1978. Grientalism. New York: Pantheon Press.

21.

Samarasinhghe, G. 1989. The psycho-social implications of Middle East migration on the families left behind. Colombo: Centre for Women's Research (CENWOR), mimeograph.