Exploring Narratives of Work and Family: Indo-Trinidadian Women in the Global Economy.

This paper examines changes in the lives of Indo-Trinidadian women across two generations. The focus of the paper will be on their "work lives," broadly defined. The paper begins in the standpoint of women (Smith 1987; 2005) and explores the extended social relations shaping those experiences. It is based in intensive ethnographic field work among two generations of Indians in Trinidad. The analysis suggests that their lives have to be understood in the context of modernization and globalization processes in conjunction with Indians' attempts to find their place within the society in the post-colonial period. I argue that these women's lives reveal the often ambiguous and contradictory outcomes of such processes, and that women are not simply passive recipients of extended forms of ruling but active agents in carving out a niche for themselves as material and social conditions shift. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]