Apr 3 Response

This week’s readings from Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka illuminate the systemic, structural, and social inequalities these women face and how labor and gender expectations transform their daily experiences. From the start of her ethnography, Jegathesan employs a narrative approach to writing that draws our attention to her work and connects us directly to the people who worked with her. Not unlike the other ethnographies we have read, this writing style holistically shares mundane experiences fundamentally separated from us, uncovering the lives of Tumil Women through the obvious and subtle nuances of their lives. Jegathesan adds to her comprehensive exploration of imperial, residential, and industrial landscapes of Hill Country Tumils through ongoing linguistic analyses, including an inclusive examination of the term and identity “coolies.” As an ethnographic work, Tea and Solidarity connects the label to larger systems of dispossession Tumil workers face and investigates the multiscalar impacts of its use. As we have seen, linguistic considerations are crucial for understanding the subtleties of structural oppression, with inequity coded into the daily experiences of marginalized communities. An aspect of Jegathesan’s work that I particularly enjoyed was her engagement with other scholarly work, including multimedia research and its connection to her ethnography. Wide-encompassing ethnographies include discussion of supplementary work, but before now, I had not seen an ethnographer explore film and other multimedia projects to enrich their conversations. I am very interested in exploring art in my ethnographies and resonate with the discussion Jegathesan included with emic forms of expression besides written language.