Author: Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226789527
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Focusing on the historical events of post-independence Sri Lanka, S. J. Tambiah analyzes the causes of the violent conflict between the majority Sinhalese Buddhists and the minority Tamils. He demonstrates that the crisis is primarily a result of recent societal stresses—educational expansions, linguistic policy, unemployment, uneven income distribution, population movements, contemporary uses of the past as religious and national ideology, and trends toward authoritarianism—rather than age-old racial and religious differences. "In this concise, informative, lucidly written book, scrupulously documented and well indexed, [Tambiah] trains his dispassionate anthropologist's eye on the tangled roots of an urgent, present-day problem in the passionate hope that enlightenment, understanding, and a generous spirit of compromise may yet be able to prevail."—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor "An incredibly rich and balanced analysis of the crisis. It is exemplary in highlighting the general complexities of ethnic crises in long-lived societies carrying a burden of historical memories."—Amita Shastri, Journal of Asian Studies "Tambiah makes an eloquent case for pluralist democracy in a country abundantly endowed with excuses to abandon such an approach to politics."—Donald L. Horowitz, New Republic "An excellent and thought-provoking book, for anyone who cares about Sri Lanka."—Paul Sieghart, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author: Stanley J. Tambiah
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520206428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
"In recent years much has been written about what Tambiah calls 'the strange malformations' that have resulted at the end of the twentieth century from complex combinations of nationalism, ethnicity, demands for self-determination, and social groups defining each other in terms of religious identity. No one, however, has analyzed how these factors lead to the violence that has become the characteristic of our time as brilliantly as Tambiah has in this remarkable book. His insights as a social science into the political and cultural history of South Asia are informed by a passionate humanism that gives us a new understanding of the dark tragedies of our time."—Ainslie Embree, Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University "Resolutely transgressing disciplinary and spatial boundaries, Tambiah offers a scholarly but accessible, a focused but wide-ranging analysis that places ethnicity on the borderlines of the old and the new, the past and the present, politics and culture...With uncanny skill, he turns the contemporary worry about ethnic politics and violence into a brilliant meditation on the history of nationalism, nation-states, and world-capitalism—in a word, modernity itself. No student of modernity, let alone ethnicity in South Asia and other regions, can afford to ignore this thoughtful inquiry into our modern history."—Gyan Prakash, Princeton University
Author: Felicity Aulino
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823241890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Contributions from scholars in anthropology, religion, and area studies--stemming from research in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas collected to represent a form of historically grounded, ethnographically driven social science that seeks to understand social phenomena by dialogically engaging global and local perspectives.
Author: Nikolaos Biziouras
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317805526
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
At the point of independence in 1948, Sri Lanka was projected to be a success story in the developing world. However, in July 1983 a violent ethnic conflict which pitted the Sinhalese against the Tamils began, and did not come to an end until 2009. This conflict led to nearly 50,000 combatant deaths and approximately 40,000 civilian deaths, as well as almost 1 million internally-displaced refugees and to the permanent migration abroad of nearly 130,000 civilians. With a focus on Sri Lanka, this book explores the political economy of ethnic conflict, and examines how rival political leaders are able to convince their ethnic group members to follow them into violent conflict. Specifically, it looks at how political leaders can influence and utilize changes in the level of economic liberalization in order to mobilize members of a certain ethnic group, and in the case of Sri Lanka, shows how ethnic mobilization drives can turn violent when minority ethnic groups are economically marginalized by the decisions that the majority ethnic group leaders make in order to stay in power. Taking a political economy approach to the conflict in Sri Lanka, this book is unique in its historical analysis and provides a longitudinal view of the evolution of both Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic drives. As such, this interdisciplinary study will be of interest to policy makers as well as academics in the field of South Asian studies, political science, sociology, development studies, political economy and security studies.
Author: Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226789500
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
This volume seeks to answer the question of how the Buddhist monks in today's Sri Lanka—given Buddhism's traditionally nonviolent philosophy—are able to participate in the fierce political violence of the Sinhalese against the Tamils.
Author: Kanchan Chandra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521891417
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Why do some ethnic parties succeed in attracting the support of their target ethnic group while others fail? In a world in which ethnic parties flourish in both established and emerging democracies alike, understanding the conditions under which such parties rise and fall is of critical importance to both political scientists and policy makers. Drawing on a study of variation in the performance of ethnic parties in India, this book builds a theory of ethnic party performance in 'patronage democracies'. Chandra shows why individual voters and political entrepreneurs in such democracies condition their strategies not on party ideologies or policy platforms, but on a headcount of co-ethnics and others across party personnel and among the electorate.
Author: Sidharthan Maunaguru
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295745428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
The civil war between the Sri Lankan state and Tamil militants, which ended in 2009, lasted more than three decades and led to mass migration, mainly to India, Canada, England, and continental Europe. In Marrying for a Future, Sidharthan Maunaguru argues that the social institution of marriage has emerged as a critical means of building alliances between dispersed segments of Tamil communities, allowing scattered groups to reunite across national borders. Maunaguru explores how these fragmented communities were rekindled by connections fostered by key participants in and elements of the marriage process, such as wedding photographers, marriage brokers, legal documents, and transit places. Marrying for a Future contributes to transnational and diaspora marriage studies by looking at the temporary spaces through which migrants and refugees travel in addition to their home and host countries. It provides a new conceptual framework for studies on kinship and marriage and addresses a community that has been separated across borders as a result of war.
Author: Asoka Bandarage
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113597084X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
The book provides a detailed historically-based analysis of the origin, evolution and potential resolution of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka over the struggle to establish a separate state in its Northern and Eastern provinces. This conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is one of the world’s most intractable contemporary armed struggles. The internationally banned LTTE is considered the prototype of modern terrorism. It is known to have introduced suicide bombing to the world, and recently became the first terrorist organization ever to acquire an air force. The ‘iron law of ethnicity’ – the assumption that cultural difference inevitably leads to conflict – has been reinforced by the 9/11 attacks and conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka. However, the connections among ethnic difference, conflict, and terrorism are not automatic. This book broadens the discourse on the separatist conflict in Sri Lanka by moving beyond the familiar bipolar Sinhala versus Tamil ethnic antagonism to show how the form and content of ethnicity are shaped by historical social forces. It develops a multipolar analysis which takes into account diverse ethnic groups, intra-ethnic, social class, caste and other variables at the local, regional and international levels. Overall, this book presents a conceptual framework useful for comparative global conflict analysis and resolution, shedding light on a host of complex issues such as terrorism, civil society, diasporas, international intervention and secessionism.
Author: Eva Gerharz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317692799
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Sri Lanka’s conflict and peace processes have gained global attention during recent years. This book presents a comprehensive insight into the politics of reconstruction and development in Sri Lanka, focussing on the ceasefire which was negotiated between the Government of Sri Lanka and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2002 and which lasted until 2006. Based on extensive empirical fieldwork, the book provides a unique ethnographic account of this specific historical period of peace. It explains how development was shaped by interplay and cooperation, but also by the disparities and conflicts between a variety of local and intervening actors, including local organizations and civil society, LTTE, Government of Sri Lanka, international development cooperation and the Tamil diaspora. Starting from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, the author integrates findings from development sociology with new perspectives on transnationalization and the migration-development-nexus. This provides a fine grained analysis of the emerging development visions and perspectives in relation to transnationalization and global interconnectedness. Making an innovative contribution by linking the analysis of local reconstruction with contemporary phenomena of transnationalization, diasporization, and globalization, this book will appeal to those with an interest in Sociology, Social Anthropology and Political Science.
Author: Daniel Bass
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415526248
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Focusing on notions of diaspora, identity and agency, this book examines ethnicity in war-torn Sri Lanka. It highlights the historical development and negotiation of a new identification of Up-country Tamil amidst Sri Lanka's violent ethnic politics. Over the past thirty years, Up-country (Indian) Tamils generally have tried to secure their vision of living within a multi-ethnic Sri Lanka, not within Tamil Eelam, the separatist dream that ended with the civil war in 2009. Exploring Sri Lanka within the deep history of colonial-era South Asian plantation diasporas, the book argues Up-country Tamils form a "diaspora next-door" to their ancestral homeland. It moves beyond simplistic Sinhala-Tamil binaries and shows how Sri Lanka's ethnic troubles actually have more in common with similar battles that diasporic Indians have faced in Fiji and Trinidad than with Hindu-Muslim communalism in neighbouring India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Shedding new light on issues of agency, citizenship, displacement and re-placement within the formation of diasporic communities and identities, this book demonstrates the ways that culture workers, including politicians, trade union leaders, academics and NGO workers, have facilitated the development of a new identity as Up-country Tamil. It is of interest to academics working in the fields of modern South Asia, diaspora, violence, post-conflict nations, religion and ethnicity.
