Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Soap Operas, Gender and the Sri Lankan Diaspora

  • 127 Accesses

Abstract

A body of research on soap operas and audiences of women set stage for feminist scholarship on television in the backdrop of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1970s. Since then, this scholarship has continued to grow with diverse studies of soap operas and audiences of women across the world. This chapter in Soap Operas, Gender and the Sri Lankan Diaspora situates a home-grown Sri Lankan soap opera genre known as ‘mega-teledramas’ and their female audiences across global cultural flows of migration and mobility. The production, reception and circulation of mega teledramas are examined, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Melbourne, Australia, with audiences of women in national and diasporic contexts. This chapter traverses the intersections of gender, media and migration by particularly examining how gendered nationalist meanings act as cultural capital for the construction of female characters in soap operas and their audience interpretations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The civil war lasted between 1983 and 2009 in Sri Lanka. Ethnocentric tensions between majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils transformed into violent civic acts through ethnic riots against the Tamils and retaliations against government military. The Tamil liberation fighters Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demanded a separate state along the north-east part of the island, while the government forces fought to sustain a unitary state. In 2009, a government military offensive crushed the rebels, killing their leader, marking the end of the conflict. The 21 million population in Sri Lanka contains 75 per cent Sinhalese, 11 per cent Tamil and 9 per cent Muslim composition.

  2. 2.

    Transliterations of Sinhalese soap opera titles.

  3. 3.

    See De Votta (2017); Haniffa (2019).

  4. 4.

    BBC News. 2015. Organisers of Iglesias Sri Lanka gig ‘should be whipped’. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35186892. Accessed 22 October 2019.

  5. 5.

    Ruwanpathirana, Thyagi. 2017. Three years since Aluthgama: hopes for co-existence remain more elusive than ever. Groundviews. https://groundviews.org/2017/06/15/three-years-since-aluthgama-hopes-for-co-existence-remain-more-elusive-than-ever/. Accessed 22 October 2019.

  6. 6.

    See Schonthal and Walton (2016).

  7. 7.

    Jeyaraj, DBS. 2018. ‘Wanda pethi’, ‘Digakalliya’ and the violence in Amapara. Daily FT. http://www.ft.lk/columns/Wanda-Pethi-Digakalliya-and-the-violence-in-Ampara/4-651431. Accessed 24 October 2020.

  8. 8.

    Sri Lanka was colonised by the Portuguese from 1505 to 1656, the Dutch from 1656 to 1802 and the British from 1815 to 1948.

  9. 9.

    See Brunsdon (1997: 9–11) for a discussion on how the ‘metaphorical significance’ of Crossroads in the 1970s, deemed as low-brow television in British culture, made way to the defence of soap operas in her essay, along with Hobson (1982). Brunsdon discusses why she chose Godard films as an example to point out about the importance of cultural capital in soap operas, mainly responding to critical film appreciations of avant-garde cinema in Screen magazine.

  10. 10.

    Museum Victoria. 2013. History of immigration from Sri Lanka. http://museumvictoria.com.au/origins/history.aspx?pid=58. Accessed 4 April 2015.

  11. 11.

    Cooper, Hayden. 2013. Asylum seeker ‘enhanced screenings’ dangerous: former official’. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-10/asylum-seeker-enhanced-screenings-dangerous-former-official-says/4744628. Accessed 17 November 2020.

  12. 12.

    See McRobbie (2000: 259–260) for a discussion on interviewing cultural workers and how their attempts for self-promotion are important forms of analysis.

  13. 13.

    See my latter work on digital journalism and feminism in the project Women Talk https://womentalksl.wordpress.com/. (Gamage 2017). Accessed 13 January 2021.

References

  • Abeysekera, Sunila. 1989. Women in Sri Lankan Cinema. Framework 37: 49–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • ABS. 2015. State and Territory Composition of Country of Birth. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Accessed 26 October 2020. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/BEF8BD30A177EC39CA257C4400238EED?opendocument.

  • ———. 2017. State and Territory Populations by Country of Birth. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Accessed 8 February 2020. https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412.0Main%20Features32017-18?opendocument-&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2017-18&num=&view=.

  • ———. 2020. National, State and Territory Population. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/latest-release.

  • Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1988. Fieldwork of a Dutiful Daughter. In Arab Women in the Field: Studying Your Own Society, ed. Soraya Altorki and Camilla Fawzi El-Solh, 139–162. New York: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1990. Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography? Women and Performance. Journal of Feminist Theory 5 (1): 7–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1993. Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. The Interpretation of Culture(s) after Television. Representations 59: 109–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000. Locating Ethnography. Ethnography 1 (2): 261–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2002. Egyptian Melodrama—Technology of the Modern Subject? In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, ed. Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, 115–133. Berkley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aksoy, Asu, and Kevin Robins. 2003. Banal Transnationalism: The Difference that Television Makes. In The Media of Diaspora, ed. Karim H. Karim, 89–104. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Jennifer. 2010. From ‘Accompanying Spouse’ to ‘Dutiful Daughter’: Fieldwork Roles in Sri Lanka, Java and Sarawak. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 1 (1): 14–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allor, Martin. 1988. Relocating the Site of the Audience. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (3): 217–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Altorki, Soraya, and Camillia Fawzi El-Solh. 1988. Introduction. In Arab Women in the Field: Studying Your Own Society, ed. Soraya Altorki and Camillia Fawzi El-Solh, 1–24. New York: Syracuse University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Television Fictions around the World: Melodrama and Irony in Global Perspective. Critical Studies in Television: Scholarly Studies in Small Screen Fictions 2 (2): 18–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Mobilising Hybridity. Around the Globe 5 (1): 24–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Claiming Chinatown: Asian Australians, Public Art and the Making of Urban Culture. Journal of Australian Studies 41 (3): 336–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ang, Ien, Gay Hawkins, and Lamia Dabboussy. 2008. The SBS Story: The Challenge of Cultural Diversity. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7 (2): 295–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dynamics of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2001. Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination. In Globalization, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 1–21. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Athique, Adrian. 2006. Bollywood and ‘Grocery Store’ Video Piracy in Australia. Media International Australia 121: 41–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Transnational Audiences: Geocultural Approaches. Continuum 28 (1): 4–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ball, Michael S., and Gregory W.H. Smith. 2001. Technologies of Realism? Ethnographic Uses of Photography and Film. In Handbook of Ethnography, ed. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Lofland, 302–319. London: Sage.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Behar, Ruth, and Deborah A. Gordon, eds. 1995. Women Writing Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, Elizabeth S. 2003. The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2009. Travels in Nowhere Land: Ethnography and the ‘Impossible’: Audience. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (3): 250–260.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blumenthal, Dannielle. 1997. Women and Soap Opera: A Cultural Feminist Perspective. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boccagni, Paolo, and Loretta Baldassar. 2015. Emotions on the Move: Mapping the Emergent Field of Emotion and Migration. Emotion, Space and Society 16: 73–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolak, Hale C. 1996. Studying One’s Own in the Middle East: Negotiating Gender and Self-Other Dynamics in the Field. Qualitative Sociology 19 (1): 107–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. J. B. Thompson. Cambridge: Polity Press and Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brow, James. 1999. Utopia’s New-Found Space: Images of the Village Community in the Early Writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy. Modern Asian Studies 33 (1): 67–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Mary Ellen. 1994. Soap Opera and Women’s Talk: The Pleasure of Resistance. California: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunsdon, Charlotte. 1981. Crossroads: notes on soap opera. Screen 22 (4): 32–37.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. Screen Tastes. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000. The Feminist, the Housewife, and the Soap Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brunsdon, Charlotte, and David Morley. 2005. The Nationwide Television Studies. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Budarick, John. 2015. Belonging-Security across Borders: News Media, Migration, and the Spaces of Production. International Journal of Communication 9: 2583–2600.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cabalquinto, Earvin. 2018. ‘We’re Not Only Here But We’re There in Spirit’: Asymmetrical Mobile Intimacy and the Transnational Filipino Family. Mobile Media and Communication 6 (1): 37–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cassidy, Marsha F. 2005. What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Census and Statistics. 2012. Census of Population and Housing. Accessed 20 October 2020. http://www.statistics.gov.lk/PopHouSat/CPH2011/Pages/Activities/Reports/FinalReport/FinalReport.pdf.

  • Chatterjee, Partha. 1990. The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question. In Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 233–253. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • City of Greater Dandenong. 2015. Population and Social Conditions in Dandenong Report. Accessed 01 February 2020. https://www.greaterdandenong.vic.gov.au/about-us/statistics-and-data.

  • Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coffey, Amanda. 1999. The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. London: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • De Alwis, Malathi. 1998. Motherhood as a Space of Protest: Women’s Political Participation in Contemporary Sri Lanka. In Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, ed. Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu, 1–29. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2002. The Changing Role of Women in Sri Lankan Society. Social Research 69 (3): 675–691.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Mel, Neloufer. 2001. Women and the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Mel, Neloufer, Kumudini Samuel, and Champika K. Soysa. 2012. Ethnopolitical Conflict in Sri Lanka: Trajectories and Transformations. In The Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, ed. Dan Landis and Rosita D. Albert, 93–118. New York: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • De Votta, Neil. 2017. The Civil War and the Quest for Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka. Asian Security 13 (1): 74–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diminescu, Dana. 2008. The Connected Migrant: An Epistemological Manifesto. Social Science Information 47 (4): 565–579.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Enloe, Cynthia. 1989. Bananas, Beaches, Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamage, Shashini. 2017. Women Talk. Accessed 26 November 2020. https://womentalksl.wordpress.com/.

  • ———. 2018. Soap Operas, Women, and the Nation: Sri Lankan Women’s Interpretations of Homegrown Mega Teledramas. Feminist Media Studies 18 (5): 873–887.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2019. Sri Lankan Migrant Women Watching Teledramas in Melbourne: A Social Act of Identity. In Handbook of Diaspora, Media and Culture, ed. Roza Tsagarousianou and Jessica Retis, 401–414. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell and International Association of Media and Communication Research.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2020. Migration, Identity, and Television Audiences: Sri Lankan Women’s Soap Opera Clubs and Diasporic Life in Melbourne. Media International Australia 176 (1): 93–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, Ernest. 1964. Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgiou, Myria. 2007. Transnational Crossroads for Media and Diaspora: Three Challenges for Research. In Transnational Lives and the Media: Re-imagining Diaspora, ed. Olga G. Bailey, Myria Georgiou, and Ramaswami Harindranath, 11–32. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012a. Between Strategic Nostalgia and Banal Nomadism: Explorations of Transnational Subjectivity among Arab Audiences. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (1): 23–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012b. Watching Soap Opera in the Diaspora: Cultural Proximity or Critical Proximity? Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 (5): 868–887.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geraghty, Christine. 1991. Women and soap opera. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. The Study of Soap Opera. In A Companion to Television, ed. Janet Wasko, 308–323. Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geraghty, Christine, and Elke Weissmann. 2016. Women, Soap Opera and New Generations of Feminists. Critical Studies in Television 11 (3): 365–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillespie, Marie. 1995. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin. 2002. Introduction. In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, ed. Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, 1–38. Berkley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Glaser, Barney and Strauss, Anselm. 2017. The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gledhill, Christine. 1987. Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray, Anne. 1987. Women and Video. In Boxed In: Women on and in Television, ed. Helen Baehr and Gillian Dyer, 38–54. New York: Pandora.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/Decoding. In Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies 1972–79, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 128–138. Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1981. Notes on ‘Deconstructing the Popular’. In People’s History and Socialist Theory, ed. Raphael Samuel, 227–240. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halstead, Narmala, Eric Hirsch, and Judith Okely, eds. 2008. Knowing How to Know: Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present. New York: Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hammersley, Martyn, and Paul Atkinson. 2007. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handapangoda, Wasana S. 2012. Can Money Buy Them Power? A Re-evaluation of Women’s Transnational Labor Migration and Their Household Empowerment in Sri Lanka. Women’s Studies 41: 558–582.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haniffa, Farzana. 2019. Sri Lanka’s Muslims after the Easter Sunday Bombings. East Asia Forum Quarterly 11 (3): 19–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hewamanne, Sandya. 2008. Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers: (Un)disciplined Desires and Sexual Struggles in a Post-colonial Society. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, Dorothy. 1982. Crossroads: The Drama of a Soap Opera. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyndman, Jennifer, and Malathi De Alwis. 2003. Beyond Gender: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Humanitarianism and Development in Sri Lanka. Women’s Studies Quarterly 31: 212–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2004. Bodies, Shrines, and Roads: Violence, (Im)mobility and Displacement in Sri Lanka. Gender, Place and Culture 11 (4): 535–557.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jayatilaka, Danesh, Rajith W.D. Lakshman, and Iresha M. Lakshman. 2018. Urban Community Profiles: Safe Relocation and Resettlement in Post-war Sri Lanka. In Social Theories of Urban Violence in the Global South: Towards Safe and Inclusive Cities, ed. Jennifer Erin Salahub, Markus Gottsbacher, and John de Boer, 79–94. London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Jayawardena, Kumari. 1986. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000. Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka. Colombo: The Social Scientists’ Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jayawardena, Kumari, and Rachel Kurian. 2015. Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jupp, James. 2002. From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1991. Identity and Its Discontents: Women and the Nation. Millennium 20 (3): 429–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kedourie, Elie. 1970. Nationalism in Asia and Africa. London: Frank Cass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, Youna. 2011. Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kondo, Dorinne. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lakshman, Iresha M., Mohideen M. Alikhan, and Abdhullah Azam. 2019. Finding ‘Reasons to Stay’ amidst Issues of Well-being: A Case Study of Two Undeserved Communities in Colombo. CMRD Working Papers. Colombo: Centre for Migration and Research Development. Accessed 20 November 2020. http://www.cmrd.lk/en/publications/working_papers/wp2019_01.pdf.

  • Lim, Sun, and Becky Pham. 2016. If You Are a Foreigner in a Foreign Country, You Stick Together: Technologically Mediated Communication and Acculturation of Migrant Students. New Media & Society 18 (10): 2171–2188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lovell, Terry. 1981. Ideology and Coronation Street. In Television Monograph: Coronation Street, ed. Richard Dyer, 40–52. London: British Film Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lull, James. 1988. World Families Watch Television. Newbury Park: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lynch, Jake. 2008. Debates in Peace Journalism. Sydney: Sydney University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madianou, Mirca, and Daniel Miller. 2012. Polymedia: Towards a New Theory of Digital Media in Interpersonal Communication. International Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (2): 169–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malkki, Liisa. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. London: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mankekar, Purnima. 1993. National Texts and Gendered Lives: An Ethnography of Television Viewers in a North Indian City. American Ethnologist 20 (3): 543–563.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2002. India Shopping: Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 67 (1): 75–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Unsettling India: Affect, Temporality, Transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Marcus, George E. 1998. Ethnography through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, Fran, and Fazal Rizvi. 2014. Making Melbourne: Digital Connectivity and International Students’ Experience of Locality. Media, Culture & Society 36 (7): 1016–1031.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matelski, Marilyn J. 1988. The Soap Opera Evolution. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

    Google Scholar 

  • McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Feminism and Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000. The Return to Cultural Production Case Study: Fashion Journalism. In Mass Media and Society, ed. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, 255–267. London: Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. The Uses of Cultural Studies. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metykova, Monika. 2010. Only a Mouse Click Away from Home: Transnational Practices of Eastern European Migrants in the United Kingdom. Social Identities 16 (3): 325–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Midden, Eva, and Sandra Ponzanesi. 2013. Digital Faiths: An Analysis of the Online Practices of Muslim Women in The Netherlands. Women’s Studies International Forum 41: 197–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Modleski, Tania. 1982. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. New York: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morley, David. 1986. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. London: Comedia.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1992. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Cultural Studies, Common Sense and Communication: The Infra-Ordinary, the Interdisciplinary and the Particular. Cultural Studies 29 (1): 23–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mulvey, Laura. 1981. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Popular Television and Films, ed. Tony Bennett, Susan Boyd-Bowman, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott, 206–215. London: BFI Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mumford, Laura Stempel. 1995. Love and Ideology in the Afternoon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Patrick D. 1999. Doing Audience Ethnography: A Narrative Account of Establishing Ethnographic Identity and Locating Interpretive Communities in Fieldwork. Qualitative Inquiry 5 (4): 479–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Niriella, Chandrasiri. 2017. Emerging Social-Spatial Polarisation within the Housing Market in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal 11 (2): 43–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oakley, Ann. 2005. The Ann Oakley Reader. Bristol: Policy Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Okely, Judith. 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography: Participatory Experience and Embodied Knowledge. In Anthropology and Autobiography, ed. Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, 1–28. London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1996. Own or Other Culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okely, Judith, and Hellen Callaway, eds. 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ong, Jonathan Corpus. 2009. Watching the Nation, Singing the Nation: London-Based Filipino Migrants’ Identity Constructions in News and Karaoke Practices. Communication, Culture and Critique 2: 160–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parameswaran, Radhika. 2001. Feminist Media Ethnography in India: Exploring Power, Gender, and Culture in the Field. Qualitative Inquiry 7 (1): 69–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2020. Digital Diasporas: Postcoloniality, Media and Affect. Interventions. Online. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2020.1718537.

  • Ponzanesi, Sandra, and Koen Leurs. 2014. On Digital Crossings in Europe. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 5 (1): 3–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Press, Andrea. 1991. Women Watching Television. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

    Google Scholar 

  • Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Capital Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1988. Reception Study: Ethnography and the Problems of Dispersed Audiences and Nomadic Subjects. Cultural Studies 2 (3): 359–376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2008. What’s the Matter with Reception Studies? In New Directions in American Reception Study, ed. James Machor and Phillip Goldstein, 327–351. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Risseeuw, Carla. 1991. Gender Transformation, Power and Resistance among Women in Sri Lanka: The Fish Don’t Talk About the Water. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samaratunga, Chaminda Thushara. 2013. High-Density High-Rise Low-Income Housing: An Appropriate City Planning Solution for Colombo, Sri Lanka?. PhD Thesis. Bond University, Queensland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schonthal, Benjamin, and Matthew J. Walton. 2016. The (New) Buddhist Nationalisms? Symmetries and Specificities in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Contemporary Buddhism 17 (1): 81–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seiter, Ellen. 1999. Television and New Media Audiences. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seiter, Ellen, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-Maria Warth. 2013. ‘Don’t Treat Us Like We’re So Stupid and Naïve’: Towards an Ethnography of Soap Opera Viewers. In Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power, ed. Ellen Seiter, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner, and Eva-maria Warth, 205–223. Oxon: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Silva, Neluka. 2003. Casting Ethnicity: Representation of Ethnic Identities in Contemporary Sri Lankan Teledrama. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4 (1): 93–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. A Peace of Soap: Representations of Peace and Conflict in Popular Teledramas in Sri Lanka. In South Asian Media Cultures: Audiences, Representations, Contexts, ed. Shakuntala Banaji, 163–180. London: Anthem Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer, Jane. 2009. Ethnography. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 86 (1): 191–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skeggs, Beverley. 2001. Feminist Ethnography. In Handbook of Ethnography, ed. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Lofland, 426–442. London: Sage.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Slade, Christina. 2014. Watching Arabic Television in Europe: From Diaspora to Hybrid Citizens. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smets, Kevin, Sofie Van Bauwel, Philippe Meers, and Roel Vande Winkel. 2016. Film-Viewing in Turkish and Moroccan Diasporic Families: A Gender and Place Perspective. Gender, Place and Culture 23 (4): 556–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Anthony. 2010. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2009. Nationalism and the Imagination. Lectora 15: 75–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stacey, Jackie. 1988. Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography. Women’s Studies International Forum 11 (1): 21–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1994. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stokes, Jane. 2003. How to Do Media and Cultural Studies. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsagarousianou, Roza. 2001. A Space Where One Feels at Home: Media Consumption Practices among London’s South Asian and Greek Cypriot Communities. In Media and Migration: Constructions of Mobility and Difference, ed. Russell King and Nancy Wood, 158–170. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. European Muslim Diasporic Geographies: Media Use and the Production of Translocality. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 9 (1): 62–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsagarousianou, Roza, and Jessica Retis. 2019. Diasporas, Media, and Culture: Exploring Dimensions of Human Mobility and Connectivity in the Era of Global Interdependency. In The Handbook of Diaspora, Media, and Culture, ed. Roza Tsagarousianou and Jessica Retis, 1–20. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell and IAMCR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Victoria State Government. 2018. Sri Lanka-Born: Victorian Community Profiles: 2016 Census: The State of Victoria—Department of Premier and Cabinet. Accessed 24 October 2020. https://www.multicultural.vic.gov.au/images/2016_Census/CommunityProfiles2016/Sri-Lanka-Community-Profile-2016-Census.pdf.

  • Visweswaran, Kamala. 1994. Fictions of Feminist Ethnography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wheatley, Elizabeth. 1994. How Can We Engender Ethnography with a Feminist Imagination? A Rejoinder to Judith Stacey. Women’s Studies International Forum 7 (4): 404–416.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wickramasinghe, Maithree. 2010. Feminist Research Methodology: Making Meanings of Meaning-Making. Oxon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilding, Raelene, and Loretta Baldassar. 2018. Ageing, Migration and New Media: The Significance of Transnational Care. Journal of Sociology 54 (2): 226–235.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilding, Raelene, Loretta Baldassar, Shashini Gamage, Shane Worrel, and Samiro Mohamud. 2020. Digital Media and the Affective Economies of Transnational Families. International Journal of Cultural Studies 23 (5): 639–655.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winarnita, Monika. 2019. Multimedia, Mobility and the Digital Southeast Asian Family. Migration, Mobility and Displacement Journal 4 (1): 1–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Witteborn, Saskia. 2018. The Digital Force in Forced Migration: Imagined Affordances and Gendered Practices. Popular Communication 16 (1): 21–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1993. Gender and Nation. Ethnic and Racial Studies 16 (4): 621–632.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1997. Gender & Nation. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Floya Anthias, eds. 1989. Woman-Nation-State. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia

    Shashini Gamage

Authors
  1. Shashini Gamage
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gamage, S. (2021). Introduction. In: Soap Operas, Gender and the Sri Lankan Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70632-6_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation