Labouring to Learn: Towards the Political Economy of Plantations, People and Education in Sri Lanka

by Angela Little

A day in the life of Vickneswari, the daughter of labourers in a tea plantation, provides the starting point for an analysis of educational progress among the Tamil plantation community of Sri Lanka. This analysis is embedded within historical, political, social and economic relations which stretch beyond the confines of the plantation in which Vickneswari lives within a plural society, in which the political interests of estate people have gradually become more central to the mainstream politics of Sri Lanka and within a national and global economy in which plantation production has become less central and less profitable over time.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1999