Michele Gamburd (Portland State University)

Michele Ruth Gamburd 
Professor of Anthropology 
Anthropology Department
Portland State University 
P.O. Box 751
Portland, OR 97207-0751  USA

phone: 503-725-3317 
fax:   503-725-3905 
email: gamburd@pdx.edu  
url:   http://web.pdx.edu/~b5mg/" 

description of work:

Teaching and Research Interests: Cultural Anthropology, transnationalism, 
globalization, migration, alcohol consumption, aging, identity, rural 
development, social change, violence, gender, hierarchy, aging, social 
constructionism, political economy, South Asia, Sri Lanka, West Asia.  

Publications

Books 

2010	Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions, 
edited by Dennis McGilvray and Michele Gamburd. Routledge.

2008	Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka. 
Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

2005	Wisdom of the Kitchen Spoons Handle. Swarnakanthi Rajapakse, 
translator. Nugegoda, Sri Lanka: Sarasavi Publishers. (Sinhala translation 
of my 2000 book).

2002	Transnationalism and Sri Lankas Migrant Housemaids: The Kitchen 
Spoons Handle. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. (South Asian reprint of my 
2000 book). 

2000 	The Kitchen Spoons Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lankas Migrant 
Housemaids. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 

Articles

2009	Advocating for Sri Lankan Migrant Workers: Obstacles and 
Challenges. Critical Asian Studies 41(1):61-88. 

2008	Milk Teeth and Jet Planes: Kin Relations in Families of Sri Lankas 
Transnational Domestic Servants. City and Society 20(1):5-31. 

2004	Money that Burns Like Oil: A Sri Lankan Cultural Logic of Morality 
and Agency. Ethnology 43(2):167-84.

2003	In the wake of the Gulf War: assessing family spending of 
compensation money in Sri Lanka. International Journal of Population 
Geography 9 (6): 503-515. 
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/106567007/ABSTRACT
posted 21 Nov. 2003.  

1999	Class Identity and the International Division of Labor: Sri Lankas 
Migrant Housemaids Anthropology of Work Review (19)3:4-8 

1997  Wearing a Dead Mans Jacket: State Symbols in Troubled Places in 
South Asia Special Issue No. XX.: Conflict and Community in Contemporary 
Sri Lanka. Siri Gamage and Bruce Watson, eds. pp. 181-194.

1995  Sri Lankas Army of Housemaids: Control of Remittances and Gender 
Transformations.  Anthropologica 37: 49-88.  

1990-1994 Images of Working Women. Kalyani: Journal of Humanities and 
Social Sciences of the University of Kelaniya, 9-13: 352-357.

1993  A Village View of the Provincial Council Elections. The Thatched 
Patio, 6(5): 32-47. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic 
Studies. 

Book Chapters

2010: The Golden Wave: Aftermath of the Tsunami on Sri Lankas Southwest 
Coast. In Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions, 
edited by Michele Gamburd and Dennis McGilvray. Routledge.

Co-authored with Dennis McGilvray: Introduction and Conclusion In Tsunami 
Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions, edited by Michele 
Gamburd and Dennis McGilvray. Routledge.

2005	Lentils There, Lentils Here: Sri Lankan Domestic Labour in the 
Middle East. In Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, edited by 
Shirlena Huang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh, and Noor Abdul Rahman, pp. 92-114. 
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish. 

2004	The Economics of Enlisting: A Village View of Armed Service in 
Economy and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Deborah Winslow and Michael 
Woost, eds. Pp. 151-167. Indiana University Press. 

2002	 Breadwinner No More, in Global Women: Nannies, Maids, and Sex 
Workers in the New Economy, edited by Arlie Hochschild and Barbara 
Ehrenreich. New York: Metropolitan Books: pp. 190-206. (Reprint of chapter 
7 of my 2000 book.)

2000	Nurture for Sale: Sri Lankan Housemaids and the Work of Mothering, 
in Home and Hegemony: Domestic Service and Identity Politics in South and 
Southeast Asia, Sara Dickey and Kathleen M. Adams, eds. University of 
Michigan Press: 179-205.

1999 	Wearing a Dead Mans Jacket: State Symbols in Troubled Places  in 
Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka. Siri Gamage and Bruce 
Watson, eds.  Sage India. Pp. 165-177. (Reprint of my 1997 article by the 
same title.) 

1998 	Absent Women and Their Extended Families: Sri Lankas Migrant 
Housemaids in Negotiation and Social Space, a gendered analysis of 
changing kin and security networks in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, 
Carla Risseeuw and Kamala Ganesh, editors. Sage India. pp. 276-291.