Metallic Modern

Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka

Nira Wickramasinghe

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781782382423
• eBook ISBN: 9781782382430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction — Exploring Sri Lanka's 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 — The 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 Tailor's Tale and Machines in the Home
• Chapter 8 — Working like Machines
• Conclusion — Metallic Modern
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index