School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemWe have voices, too: literacy, alternative modernities, and Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong( 2015)Migrant domestic workers are arguably one of the most exploited and subordinated groups of women in the international division of labour under global capitalism. However, they are active in negotiating the prevailing power structures in the transnational labour market. My thesis examines the significance of literacy practices to the cultural and subjective experience of Indonesian Domestic Workers (IDWs) in Hong Kong. Using three sites of culture as case studies—the Forum Lingkar Pena Hong Kong (Pen Circle Forum, FLP-HK) writing community, IDWs’ blogging community, and the practice of suitcase libraries—I argue that IDWs actively exercise agency by engaging in literacy practices, which embody various forms of self-modernisation. Through extensive ethnography and textual analysis of IDWs’ writings, the study reveals that IDWs in the FLP-HK writing community define their own meaning of Islamic modernity by writing to maintain and develop self-reflexive and spiritual interiority. Meanwhile, IDW bloggers are engaged in digital literacy practices that consciously challenge the stereotypes of stupid and uneducated maids and create new images of smart and technologically literate women. Furthermore, their engagement in ICTs—a key element of modernity—for social and political activism enables their elaboration of and participation in an alternative public sphere. Finally, IDWs’ suitcase library practices aimed at fostering reading practices carry the literacy mission as another element of modernity. More importantly, suitcase libraries serve as literacy hubs in which the various forms of IDWs’ literacy practices converge, and thus facilitate IDWs’ participation in an alternative public sphere, in which IDWs create forums of literacy-related public discussions. The above three sites of culture and the elements of modernity they negotiate are the manifestations of IDWs’ definitions of their own meanings of modernity.