Sovereignty and the other in Ecuadorian nationalist discourse

This article explores how exhortations for national unity are intrinsically linked to the symbolic displacement of a problematic other through an examination of elite Ecuadorian nationalist discourse and its construction of Indigenous activists as internal enemies. Specifically, this article looks at the role that the 2008 border row between Ecuador and Colombia played in publicly legitimating a concept of Ecuadorian citizenship rooted in racial homogeneity. Ecuador's northern border served as an ideal mechanism for performing the Ecuadorian state's authority to establish the internal borders that separated ‘citizens’ from ‘enemies’. These performances of state legitimacy highlighted Ecuador's victimisation by a more powerful neighbour/imperial proxy as a means for building regional empathy, while reinforcing the legitimacy of the Ecuadorian government to marginalise Indigenous social movements as a means to symbolically assert ‘national unity’.     

Inclusions and exclusions in law: experiences of women with disability in rural and war-affected areas in Sri Lanka

Broad and inter-disciplinary inquiry into disability is at a nascent stage in Sri Lanka. This paper looks at the intersectionality of disability and gender in the specific contexts of ‘the rural’ and the armed conflict-affected areas of the country, particularly the interaction with the law. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted among rural women with disabilities in the North Central and Eastern provinces, including women who acquired disabilities resulting from the internal conflict. Legal literacy, administrative discretion in disability-related welfare programmes, and transitional justice and reconciliation emerged as the most prominent themes in the interviews. We analyse these issues using a rights framework in an attempt to highlight some of the vulnerabilities of women with disability in the rural and war-affected contexts. The paper also reflects on a few instances where those vulnerabilities have been overcome through collective action.     

Absent bodies and present memories: marking out the everyday and the future in Eastern Sri Lanka

Drawing from ethnographic work carried out between 2005 and 2007, this article considers the ways in which a women’s network has developed strategies to find meaning around the absences of loved ones, killed or ‘disappeared’ during the decades of conflict in Sri Lanka. For most of these women, the fate of their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers is not known and the lack of answers means that they are unable to fully grieve and find closure. In order to survive, they must find ways to deal with the absent bodies and present memories of those who may never be located and accounted for. These strategies include tree-planting ceremonies carried out as a way of not only remembering and mourning loved ones but also asking questions about how one makes sense of loss and what it means to carry the burden of unanswered absences through everyday life and into the future.     

Digital media,ageing and faith: Older Sri Lankan migrants in Australia and their digital articulations of transnational religion

To date, older adults have received little attention in the newly emerging technological narratives of transnational religion. This is surprising, given the strong association of later life with spiritual and religious engagement, but it likely reflects the ongoing assumption that older adults are technophobic or technologically incompetent. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with older Sinhalese Buddhist migrants from Sri Lanka, living in Melbourne, this paper explores the digital articulations of transnational religion that arise from older migrants’ uses of digital media. We focus on how engagements with digital media enable older Sinhalese to respond to an urgent need to accumulate merit in later life, facilitating their temporal strategies for ageing as migrants. We argue that these digital articulations transform both the religious imaginary and the religious practices that validate and legitimize a life well-lived.     

The committed female fighter: the political identities of Tamil women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

This study examines the role of recruitment in explaining variation in participation for female combatants in rebel movements. I argue that recruitment has little impact on the nature of women’s participation within a rebel movement. Drawing on the case of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, I find that the political identities of individual female fighters, shaped by prior experiences of state repression, in particular militarization, can better explain variation in participation than the specific manner of their recruitment. I demonstrate that even in cases of coercive recruitment, female participation cannot be predicted and may even evidence high levels of commitment to the insurgent cause.     

Transnationalism and Diffusion: A Study of the Food Sovereignty Movements in the UK and Canada

Abstract

This paper explores a number of questions surrounding the transnational diffusion of social movements and their ideas through case studies of the food sovereignty movements in the UK and in Canada: How do social movements in one country or world region diffuse to another country or region? How do social movement participants learn about other movements and their ideas in different countries and organize and mobilize around these same ideas while at the same time adapting them to their local context? What are the channels and mechanisms of social movement diffusion? In addressing these questions, the paper contributes to our understanding of the transnational diffusion of social movements and the ways in which social movement participants adopt, interpret, and adapt new ideas, organizational forms, and agendas and causes that originated outside their own countries. It highlights the ways in which groups and communities around the world recontextualize social movement discourses to make them relevant to their own circumstances and to connect their causes and struggles to global movements.     

Soft Sovereignty,Rising Powers,and Subnational Foreign Policy-Making: The Case of India

Abstract

The rise of ‘new powers’ in international politics has been frequently associated with a re-emergence of traditional notions of sovereignty as a backlash against the weakening of nation-state sovereignty related to globalization. We argue that the coexistence of these trends has led to new forms of ‘soft sovereignty’. Soft sovereignty means that rising powers both gain and lose authority: From above, their freedom from interference within the international state system is strengthened due to their new status and influence. At the same time, rising powers’ governments are losing authority due to the rise of a multiplicity of sub and transnational actors from below. We apply the concept of soft sovereignty to the analysis of foreign policy-making in India as a least-likely case of a weakening of sovereignty from within a sovereignty-oriented rising power. The analysis of India's relations with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reveals the huge impact that subnational governments have had on India's policies towards its South Asian neighbours over the past years. The dynamics observed in the case of India reflect many of the traits of current globalization processes, from regionalization to identity politics to the multiplication of actors in the conduct of foreign politics.     

Broadening the Land Question in Food Sovereignty to Northern Settings: A Case Study of Occupy the Farm

Abstract

Land access is an accepted corollary to food sovereignty, long promoted by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC). LVC's land access politics have evolved with increased incorporation of diverse perspectives, but remain largely focused on achieving ‘integral agrarian reform’ in the global South. Here, I take a case where food sovereignty activists (‘Occupy the Farm’ (OTF)) occupied land owned by a public university in California, the USA, in order to broaden food sovereignty's land access considerations beyond the South, and to analyze conditions where political actions (including occupations) can help achieve changes in land access regimes. The OTF action was successful in challenging cultural norms about property and achieving access, partly due to the occupation having foregrounded multiple appealing narratives that invited participation and wider support. These narratives included agroecology versus biotechnologies; community/public access versus privatization; participatory versus bureaucratic governance structure; and green space/food production versus urban development. The article tests the use of the ‘land sovereignty’ frame in expanding food sovereignty's land politics, to encompass land contestation contexts globally and deal with the particular conditions surrounding lands. The case indicates that land occupations in the North are potentially useful—but uncertain, and very context-dependent—tactics to promote land and food sovereignty.     

Buddhist extremism,anti-Muslim violence and civil war legacies in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

A post-civil war country may cease military activity, but the social rupture impacts political discourse and ethnic relations, and can lead to collective violence against minorities. Sri Lanka has witnessed multiple examples of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence since the civil war termination, most infamously in 2014 when ethnic riots affected large numbers of people. Buddhist monks appeared to play a prominent role. The lengthy war and ethnonationalist ideologies have produced politico-religious shifts associated with ‘Buddhist extremism’, implicated in these riots and other aggressions. This paper uses interview data to explore the question: what causal mechanisms link post-civil war and extremist ideologies, and how this can lead to ethnic rioting. Interview respondents argue that promoting a monolithic national identity in a heterogeneous country enhances divisions, which can be politically expedient. An outright war victory, militarization of society and lack of peacebuilding sustain ethnic tensions that can be mobilized for further anti-minority violence.     

Language shift and the family: Questions from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora1

Fishman's Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) emphasizes the family in maintaining the heritage languages of immigrant communities. This study uses interview data from Sri Lankan Tamil communities in the U.S.A., U.K., and Canada to explain how families account for the rapid loss of Tamil in the diaspora. It shows how the positive valuation of English since British colonization, the need to make up for past deprivations because of caste, religious, and gender inequality, the pressure for migrants to join the social mainstream, and the need to resolve intergenerational tensions influence the family to forego language maintenance goals. The findings encourage us to situate the family in macro‐social institutions, power, and history in order to understand the prospects for language maintenance. The article provides an inside view of the Sri Lankan Tamil migrant families to explain how they resolve the tensions of valuing cultural identity and yet disregarding heritage language proficiency.     

Climate and food inequality: the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign response

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on climate and food inequalities while highlighting food sovereignty responses. It provides an analysis of climate inequalities ramifying through the world today. At the same time, food inequality is conceptually clarified as a counter approach to food security. It is argued that food inequality is consistent with the case for food sovereignty. Moreover, the combination of climate and food inequalities also highlight the complexity of climate crises and the challenges they pose for food regimes. The article further highlights the emergence of the food sovereignty response and systemic alternative. Taking this further is a case study of the transformative politics of the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign and its constitutive approach to various forms of power from below.     

Acting ethically,responding culturally: framing the new reproductive and genetic technologies in Sri Lanka

The spread of new reproductive and genetic technologies to the developing world stimulates reflection on the ethical issues they generate. The ‘built-in-ness’ of assumptions about personhood and relationality within these technologies means that local professionals must, perforce, engage with attempts to make sense of new technology with reference to local meanings and traditions or take positions which reject them. This paper explores such attempts to indigenise bioethics in contemporary Sri Lanka with reference to ethical/ cultural conflicts surrounding two practices: donor insemination and consanguinity counselling. The former is discussed in relation to the now defunct practice of polyandry and the latter in relation to matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. The final discussion takes up the consequences of this detailed parsing of local relationality for the larger project of rendering bioethics in some sense comparative.     

Repositioning in the global apparel value chain in the post‐MFA era: Strategic issues and evidence from Sri Lanka

This article examines structural adjustment in the world apparel trade following the abolition of Multi‐Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas through a case study of the apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The evidence suggests that, in a quota‐free global market, individual exporting countries have room for carving out a niche in specific products. The Sri Lankan apparel industry has managed to maintain growth dynamism through specialization in intimate apparel and upmarket casualwear. The expansion of the industry and its adjustment to MFA abolition was aided by an easily trainable domestic workforce and collaborative actions of industry associations and the government, with foreign buyers playing a pivotal role in linking the Sri Lankan firms to the global value chain.     

Sri Lanka: an exploration of the systemic erosion of stability

Abstract

In Sri Lanka tremendous expertise is employed in thinking and manoeuvring around the personalities that shape the outcomes that beset the country. Such expertise is the bread and butter of the political and business circles, which is equally well reflected in the media and realistically respected in the NGO and international circuit.

What is disconcerting however is the almost oblivious attention paid to matters of structure and functionality. Yet Sri Lanka is rife with structural and functional anomalies, which is positioned to terminally gnaw at advantages gained by changes in governments, peace talks, poverty reduction, etc. Using the example of the Public Administration System and the democratically elected Presidential and Parliamentary process explained is the structural and functional impediments that are crying out for serious remedy.

There is a vital homeostatic balance that is exercised between the parliament and the Public Administration System as a result of the former being elected and the latter employed on tenure. This translates to the Public Administration System being able to afford to think long term (since their tenure is secure) whilst being tempered by parliament's shorter range thinking occasioned by the politician's need to show results to entice its next bout of votes. In essence, this twofold structure serves to foster the seeking of a homeostatic balance between the long-and short-term needs of the country.

In Sri Lanka by constitutional and other legislative enactments various homeostatic relationships between races, languages, time spans etc. have been (un)wittingly flouted. These aspects are diagnosed using the cybernetic concepts of homeostasis and ultrastability.     

Translating the Politics of Food Sovereignty: Digging into Contradictions,Uncovering New Dimensions

Abstract

Food sovereignty, as a movement and a set of ideas, is coming of age. Rooted in resistance to free trade and the globalizing force of neoliberalism, the concept has inspired collective action across the world. We examine what has changed since food sovereignty first emerged on the international scene and reflect on insight from new terrain where the movement has expanded. We argue that to advance the theory and practice of food sovereignty, new frameworks and analytical methods are needed to move beyond binaries—between urban and rural, gender equality and the family farm, trade and localism, and autonomy and engagement with the state. A research agenda in food sovereignty must not shy away from the rising contradictions in and challenges to the movement. The places of seeming contradiction may in fact be where the greatest insights are to be found. We suggest that by taking a relational perspective, scholars can begin to draw insight into the challenges and sticking points of food sovereignty by training their lens on shifts in the global food regime, on the efforts to construct sovereignty at multiple scales, and on the points of translation where food sovereignty is articulated through historical memory, identity, and everyday life.     

A Recipe for Change: Reclamation of Indigenous Food Sovereignty in O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation for Decolonization,Resource Sharing,and Cultural Restoration

Abstract

O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation (OPCN), an Indigenous community in northern Manitoba, Canada, was flooded and forced to relocate from ancestral lands to a nearby settlement under such circumstances. Regaining strength from their inherent cultural values grounded in their relationship with the land, OPCN eventually formed a community-based food program called Ithinto Mechisowin (IMP) (‘food from the land’). This article uses OPCN's concept of resource (wechihituwin) and decolonization (pasekonekewin) to present a nuanced understanding of Indigenous food systems in Canada. We argue that the ways in which IMP inspires reconnection with land, thereby improving access to culturally appropriate healthy food, are steps forward in strengthening Indigenous food sovereignty.     

Lost in translation: The World Bank and the Paris Declaration

The Paris Declaration embodies the consensus that country ownership of donor programmes is vital, and above all the principle that donors should base their programmes on developing country priorities. The Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) has assessed the World Bank as performing relatively well against the Paris targets, though not moving towards full compliance. In Sri Lanka and Côte d'Ivoire, however, the Bank pays only lip service to the governments’ priorities. The Paris commitment is swamped by the influence of the Bank's governing Board and its US‐nominated President, its lending imperative and the professional preoccupations of its staff. Real implementation of the Bank's Paris commitment would entail, ideally, a reform of Bank governance and a contractual mechanism for developing countries to hold the Bank (and other donors) to their Paris promises. Less ambitiously, the Bank and other donors may still take limited but precise action to ensure that country priorities are respected and ownership becomes a reality. In the Bank, it might be enough for the Bank's President to make true adherence to the Paris Declaration a personal priority, and to nominate one of his senior managers to follow up.     

Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina's Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years

Abstract

This article explores how human rights framing by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) has evolved over the last 20 years. It discusses how the movement has worked towards institutionalizing new categories of rights, such as the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and the ‘rights of peasants’, thereby contributing to the creation of new human rights standards at the United Nations (UN). It also critically addresses some of the challenges the movement has been confronted with when framing its demands in terms of rights. Its overall argument is that LVC has managed to tap the potential of the rhetoric of rights to find common ground, thanks to its innovative use of non-codified rights. This has enabled activists to ‘localize’ human rights and make them meaningful to their various contexts. However, it contends that further advancing the movement's goals will require serious consideration of some of the key limits of the human rights framework.     

Globalization and the Politics of Indigeneity

Indigenous peoples inevitably associate globalization with imperial expansion and the colonization of their territories. One associated scholarly view is that globalization's focus on capital accumulation sets aside indigenous cultural priorities to undermine self-determining authority over lands and resources (Fenelon and Hall, 2008; Friedman, 1999; Kelsey, 2005a, 2005b; Stewart-Harawira, 2005). Alternatively, globalization is an ambiguous paradox also providing significant benefits to indigenous peoples. In two very different Pacific countries, Fiji and New Zealand, the globalization of political and jurisprudential thought on the rights of indigeneity provides a significant counter to state assertions of absolute sovereignty. Globalization creates economic opportunities to reduce indigenous dependence on the state and in its contemporary expression is less significant than domestic factors in inhibiting indigenous aspirations.

Inevitablemente, la población indígena asocia a la globalización con la expansión imperial y la colonización de sus territorios. Una visión académica asociada es que el enfoque de la globalización en la acumulación de capital, desestima las prioridades culturales indígenas para entorpecer la autoridad autodeterminante sobre la tierra y los recursos. (Fenelon and Hall, 2008; Friedman, 1999; Kelsey, 2005a; 2005b; Stewart-Harawira, 2005). Por otro lado, la globalización es una paradoja ambigua que también provee beneficios a las poblaciones indígenas. En dos países diferentes del Pacífico, Fiyi y Nueva Zelanda, la globalización del pensamiento político o jurisprudencial sobre los derechos del indigenismo, provee una lucha importante contra las afirmaciones estatales de una soberanía absoluta. La globalización crea oportunidades económicas para reducir la dependencia indígena del estado y su expresión contemporánea es menos importante que los factores domésticos que inhiben las aspiraciones indígenas.

伴随着帝国的扩张和其领土的被殖民化,土著居民无可避免地被卷入全球化中。一种相关学术观点认为,全球化对资本积累的关注不顾土著民的文化优先权,损害了土著民对土地和资源的自决权力。（Fenelon 和 Hall, 2008; Friedman, 1999; Kelsey, 2005a; 2005b; Stewart-Harawira, 2005）另一种观点认为,全球化是一种不确定的悖论, 也为土著民带来了巨大利益。在两个截然不同的太平洋国家———斐济和新西兰,关于土著民权利的政治和法律思考的全球化对国家声称的绝对主权提出了挑战。全球化为土著民减少对国家的依赖创造了经济机遇;而且在抑制土著民的权利主张方面,其当今表现作用不及国内因素显著。

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