Resistance to Resolution: Explaining the Intractability of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka

A brief history of the current ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is presented. Next, a discussion of the characteristics of intractable conflict is offered. The conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka is viewed in this light. Discussed are core aspects of Sinhalese and Tamil identity, each based on a mythic past and contentious present in which the two are antagonists. How this plays out and contributes to the intractability of the struggle is highlighted. Suggestions as to how this conflict might begin to be resolved are offered.     

The Self at a Time of War in Northern Sri Lanka

The article takes one young Tamil woman, Vasantha, and her account of growing up in the northern war zone of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Vasantha's narrative and her adolescence, like others of her generation, was framed by living at the margins of the Sri Lankan state (though under its bombardment) and under the control of a repressive quasi-state actor, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In this article, I twin Vasantha's fashioning of her life-story with a meditation on the ways in which the Sri Lankan war, specifically LTTE control over Tamil lives, has come to ambivalently frame and produce particular understandings of selfhood, articulations of collectivity and individuality. Here, I argue that individuation takes many different forms, and, specifically, that the ruptures of war produces individuation in unexpected ways. I take Vasantha's story to explicate the experiences of young people in northern Sri Lanka, and, as an illustration of the contraction and expansion of particular possibilities of selfhood in the midst of political.     

对打造西关文化品牌的若干思考

西关文化是岭南文化的重要组成部分。西关文化包含物质文化和非物质文化两个层面,以西关小姐、西关名人、西关民俗为代表的西关人文,以西关大屋、骑楼街、西关五宝为代表的西关物品,以及记载包括十三行文化在内的大量历史文献典籍成为研究西关文化的三类重要载体。打好人、物、志三张牌,对于培育、宣传西关文化品牌具有重要的历史价值和现实意义。     

Culture and Its Discontents: Recent Theorizing on the Cultural Dimensions of Protest*

Recent analyses of the cultural dimensions of protest have gone some distance in correcting the structuralist and instrumentalist biases of early resource mobilization and political process models. They remain limited, however, by their retention of dichotomous conceptions of culture and structure in the emergence of protest, of cultural and instrumental orientations in ongoing collective action, and of cultural and political targets of protest. As a result, they have neglected, respectively, continuities between structured inequalities and the movement challenges that are made to them, the cultural shaping of instrumentally rational decisionmaking, and the strategic possibilities that lay in cultural challenge made within the sphere of institutional politics. I draw on recent theorizing in the sociology of culture and on several case studies of collective action in order to highlight these lacunae and to propose analytical alternatives.     

Ethnic Conflict and Healthcare: Cultural Dimensions of the Healthcare Delivery Crisis in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The internecine conflict that erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 was only one episode in hundreds of years of ethnic tension that also produced culturally rich communities. The city of Mostar once known for its interethnic tolerance is now torn between Croatians and Muslims living together in what has been described as an armed truce. This is especially well demonstrated in the failure to rebuild the regional healthcare system, even as the health status of the population continues to deteriorate. Nonetheless this failure provides an opportunity to begin a dialogue that can lead to well being through both improved healthcare and enhanced civility.     

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.     

Child sexual abuse in Sri Lanka: the current state of affairs and recommendations for the future

This article focuses on child sexual abuse in Sri Lanka. The background of child sexual abuse in the country and its current status are discussed. The role of the National Child Protection Authority, the primary governmental body concerned with child protection, is also explored. The article also brings to light various cultural dimensions that serve to call attention to the issue of sexual abuse of children in Sri Lanka. These are explored and illustrated with case vignettes from the author's clinical experience. Finally, the article elucidates the main issues and barriers in Sri Lanka that need to be surmounted in order to have an integrated service delivery in the care of the sexually abused child.     

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.     

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.     

杭州历史文化遗产保护的思考与对策

加强杭州文化遗产保护利用,建设＂东方名城文化强市＂,对于树立杭州文化形象品牌,增强城市文化软实力、综合竞争力,提升杭州核心价值观,增强市民凝聚力创造力,促进杭州科学发展,都具有重要的现实价值和历史意义。     

Ethnic monitoring in higher education: Some reflections on methodology

Ethnic Monitoring in higher education has been limited and piecemeal. It often fails to explore the relationships between ethnicity and student progress and achievement, and to account for any ethnic inequalities revealed. In this paper an approach to ethnic monitoring that utilizes quantitative and qualitative methods is discussed. We argue that such an approach gives a clear statistical picture of group progress and achievement, identifies social, economic and institutional factors that might account for ethnic inequalities, and highlights the processes of racism and discrimination in higher education. All of these aspects are vital to a thorough understanding of ethnic inequalities in the higher education sector in the United Kingdom.     

The relationship between the community participation of disabled youth and socioeconomic factors: mixed-methods approach in rural Sri Lanka

Mixed methods were applied to examine the association of community participation by disabled youth with socioeconomic factors in rural Sri Lanka. There was a significant association between community participation and socioeconomic factors in the quantitative survey (n = 116): participants living in socioeconomically disadvantaged conditions had lower levels of community participation than those living without these disadvantages. Consistent with the findings of the survey, previous educational experiences, household economic conditions, and perceived resource information were common themes in the qualitative study (n = 26). The dynamics of these factors, including marginalisation of disabled youth within the household, were also observed.     

Indian Ocean Tsunami and its influence on the resurgence of social work as an academic discipline in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

In December 2004, the massive Indian Ocean Tsunami hit the coastal areas of Sri Lanka causing a devastating impact on the lives of people. National and International humanitarian aid received in the aftermath was unprecedented. Among this was a team of professors and students from the faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, who conducted a summer camp as a social work practice project together with Sri Lankan undergraduates. The objective was to initiate a project for support based on an action research model adopting a short-term design built upon a needs assessment. While critically looking at the process of international support in the context of country’s long history of state welfare and community support systems, the paper also focuses on one major lapse among others, negligence of people’s needs during disaster interventions. The paper attempts to view this situation in relation to the absence of an established social work profession in the country and examines the applicability of an international framework and concepts of social work in developing academic and professional social work in a context as diverse as Sri Lanka.     

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.     

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.     

Refugee Women in Europe: Some Aspects of the Legal and Policy Dimensions

This article presents an overview of the legal and policy issues affecting refugee and asylum-seeking women in European host societies. First, it explores the unique types of persecution experienced by women and shows that the asylum determination process, along with the status of women relative to men, mitigates against the effective protection of women. The legal basis for asylum, the evidential requirements and the procedural norms all reduce the protection which is likely to be conferred upon asylum-seeking women. Second, the article provides an overview of responses to female refugees and asylum-seekers in European countries of asylum. Although there are differences between countries, there is also a large degree of uniformity. For example, there is a lack of recognition and understanding of the diversity and the range of experiences which refugees bring with them, including different social and cultural norms. Moreover, European policies do not provide special provisions to facilitate the settlement of refugee women and instead place barriers to their social and economic participation. Third, the article examines policies for family reunion in different countries and shows that such unfavourable and unsympathetic policies mitigate against the settlement of refugee women. Finally, the article argues that if refugee and asylum-seeking women are to have their cases recognized and to be successfully settled, then there needs to be a complete rethink of legislation and policy in Europe.