Chapter 1. Becoming a Mayadevian: Schooling, Nation-Building, and the Construction of a National Identity
Chapter 2. ‘Who do I want to become?’ Ways of Aspiring Among Female Youth
Chapter 3. School Is Where You Should Be Learning; Tuition Is Something Extra
Chapter 4. Interrogating Ideas of Freedom and Becoming Within the Tuition Space
Chapter 5. Future Imaginings and Social Possibilities
Chapter 6. Becoming Someone: A Landscape of Social Possibilities

Conclusion

Bibliography

Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Laura Shamali Batatota

160 pages, 13 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80539-762-5 Hb Published (November 2024)

eISBN 978-1-80539-763-2 eBook

Details

For female Sinhalese students attending a national school in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, the school serves as a significant base for cultural production, particularly in reproducing ethno-religious hegemony under the guise of ‘good’ Buddhist girls. It illustrates that tuition space acts as an important site for placemaking, where students play out their cosmopolitan aspirations whilst acquiring educational capital. Drawing on theories of social reproduction, the book examines young people’s aspirations of ‘figuring out’ their identity and visions of the future against the backdrop of nation-building processes within the school.

Laura Batatota has extensive experience in working within applied research and evaluation and has led impact functions across the not-for-profit and social sectors. Her research interests span anthropology of education, youth identities, social reproduction theories and aspirations, with a focus on South Asia.

Series: Volume 7, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area: Asia

LC: LC2410.S72 B37 2025

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Laura Shamali Batatota

Series: Volume 7, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area: Asia

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Contents

Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Laura Shamali Batatota

Series: Volume 7, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality

Area: Asia