Development, Capital, and Local Responses: Women’s Resistance and Agency in Rural Sri Lanka

This thesis explores how Sinhalese women in the impoverished Monaragala district of Sri Lanka exercised agency to resist economic exploitation and vulnerability between 1977 - 2022. Using a feminist activist anthropological approach, this thesis unpacks the relationship between the impact of economic policy and women's individual and collective agency. It argues that women’s organisations, diverse economic activities, and redistributive systems of care constitute enduring forms and sites of resistance to the vulnerabilities created by neoliberalism. The findings of this thesis broaden the understanding of the economy by recognising women's labour in their various livelihood activities.