Metallic Modern Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka [Hardcover]

Everyday life in the Crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was characterized by a direct encounter of people with modernity through the consumption and use of foreign machines  in particular, the Singer sewing machine, but also the gramophone, tramway, bicycle and varieties of industrial equipment. The metallic modern of the 19th and early 20th century Ceylon encompassed multiple worlds of belonging and imagination; and enabled diverse conceptions of time to coexist through encounters with Siam, the United States and Japan as well as a new conception of urban space in Colombo.Metallic Modern?describes the modern as it was lived and experienced by non-elite groups  tailors, seamstresses, shopkeepers, workers  and suggests that their idea of the modern was nurtured by a changing material world.

List of Illustrations and Maps
Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction:Exploring Sri Lankas modern: Multiple Loops of Belonging

Chapter 1.Following the Singer Sewing Machine: Fashioning a market in a British Crown Colony
Chapter 2.Creating a Market Imaginary
Chapter 3.Paths to a Buddhist modern: From Siam to America
Chapter 4.Gramophone. Soulful Sounds and Sacred Speeches
Chapter 5.An Asian Modern. Japan
Chapter 6.Trams, Cars, Bicycles: Modern Machines in the City
Chapter 7.A Tailors Tale and Machines in the Home
Chapter 8. Working like Machines

Conclusion:Metallic Modern

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Nira Wickramasingheis Professor and Chair of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her most recent books areSri Lanka in the Modern ?Age. A History of Contested Identities(2006) andLInvention du V?tement National au Sri Ll³%