Wednesday, November 13 (4:00-5:30PM)
Parson's Gallery on the 2nd floor of the Urban Center Building
About Lecture:
The paper explores how Sri Lanka's financial crisis has disrupted traditional family obligations for elder care in the Sinhala-Buddhist village of Naeaegama. Historically, elders lived with their youngest son’s family, receiving care in exchange for property and offering posthumous merit through Buddhist almsgivings. However, the current economic turmoil has led many in the sandwich generation to migrate for work or permanent residence abroad, creating a gap in elder care. As a result, families face challenges in supporting frail elders, with some emigrants no longer valuing their parents' property and host countries often unwilling to accept aging parents. This shift complicates the previously established social reproduction system, affecting both the emotional and material dimensions of caregiving.
About the Speaker:
Michele Ruth Gamburd is Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University. A cultural anthropologist, she focuses on issues of power, politics, and identity in a Sinhala-speaking village in southwestern Sri Lanka. She writes about gender, family relations, and power struggles in The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids (2000) and Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka (2008). She explores humanitarian aid, class hierarchies, and disaster diplomacy in The Golden Wave: Culture and Politics after Sri Lanka’s Tsunami Disaster (2013) and in a volume (co-edited with Dennis B. McGilvray) entitled Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions (2010). Her most recent book, Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka (2021), addresses issues of aging, demographic transformation, and changing intergenerational obligations in rural families.