AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 49, no. 1 (Winter 2010)

SUICIDE NARRATIVES AND IN-BETWEEN IDENTITIES AMONG SRI LANKA'S FACTORY WORKERS

Sandya Hawamanne
Wake Forest University

The suicide narratives (talk, jokes, threats, and writings) of Sri Lanka's Free Trade Zone garment factory workers help them survive difficult lives in the city. The narratives mix and match the cultural discourses they straddle as young, unmarried village women who migrate to work in transnational factories. Suicide narratives are a local response to global capital and cultural flows. They let the workers express gains and losses of their in-between lives as temporary residents in an urban, transnational space. The article explores gender norms, class cultures, and what these narratives mean for transformative politics. (Suicide narratives, identity negotiations, ritual healers, Sri Lanka).

ROOTS TOURISM OF CHINESE AMERICANS

Naho Maruyama
Texas A & M University

Amanda Stronza
Texas A & M University

This study explored how second-generation Chinese Americans, born and raised in the United States, redefined the concept of homeland through visiting China as tourists. Narratives from 35 interviewees revealed that their imagined personal connection to the ancestral land was often contested in the actual encounter. The differences in language, class, family structure, and gender roles overpowered a sense of affinity. At the same time, Hong Kong, where they could speak English and blend with local people, emerged as a surrogate home where their desire for homecoming was fulfilled. (Roots tourism, Chinese diaspora, surrogate homeland).

STRUGGLES WITH SOBRIETY: ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS MEMBERSHIP IN JAPAN

Paul Christensen
University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Membership in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in Japan results in societal disjunction, the divorcing of oneself from family, friends, co-workers, and others. AA meetings and meeting dialogues over the course of fieldwork highlight the social marginalization experienced by AA members of the Central Group in Tokyo. Members are thwarted by ideological frustrations with AA and an inability to consume alcohol that clashes with societal expectations and find expression in sobriety group meetings. They are caught between AA's advocacy of a new and "joyous" life devoid of alcohol that rarely matches their daily experiences of being viewed as bearers of a shameful esoteric instead of a bested personal struggle. (Japan, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, social deviance).

THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION OF COMMUNITY IN ITALY: PROVINCIALISM AND NATIONALISM

Erick Castellanos
Ramapo College of New Jersey

Italian citizens are changing the way they construct their sense of community. While European integration and internationalization are erasing national and cultural borders, there has been a rise in provincialism and a reattachment to the local. Drawing on ethnographic data, this article illustrates how residents in Bergamo, Italy, construct their sense of belonging, favoring the local over the national. (Nationalism, community identity, Italy, provincialism).