Becoming ‘good’ women: schooling, aspirations and imagining the future among Sinhalese youth

Abstract

This thesis explores the ways in which female Sinhalese youth form ideas of who they want to become. I examine processes of becoming as interlinked to young people’s aspirations and visions of the future, which are formed within two educational sites: the school and private tuition. Drawing from the narratives of female students who attend a national school in Kandy, located in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, this thesis analyses everyday experiences of schooling and the production of identities, aspirations and futures. My focus of study is a cohort of 18-year-old students in Grade 13, in their final year of schooling. The students share many social characteristics; they are largely Sinhalese Buddhist, come from middle class backgrounds and live in the outskirts of Kandy. They also share similar aspirations, dreams and visions of the future. Situating my research within two educational sites, I conceptualise the process of ‘becoming’ amongst this group of youths within complex social and local landscapes. Anthropology as a discipline has offered much insight into formal schooling and youth experiences of such across the Global South. Social reproduction (Rival, 2002), cultural transmission and production of citizens (Levinson et al., 1996; Froerer, 2007) have been important contributions towards understanding the function of schooling. Despite this, tuition - and young people’s engagement with formalised tuition spaces - remains an unobserved field which offers valuable insight into how youth engage in formal education. Framing my thesis on theories of social reproduction (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), I present the school and private tuition as important sites of influence on how young people come to form ideas about their identity, aspirations and future. My findings reveal that the school serves as a significant base for cultural production, particularly in reproducing ethno-religious hegemony under the guise of ‘good’ Buddhist children. In contrast, the tuition space allows young people to play out their own cosmopolitan aspirations, by granting them freedoms away from the school and home. Through my thesis, I demonstrate the important interplay between the school and tuition in how youths engage in the intricacy of ‘figuring out’ who they want to become.