Psychological analysis of the Sri Lankan conflict culture with special reference to the high suicide rate

The extremely high suicide rate in Sri Lanka is explained by a psychological analysis of the way in which Sri Lankans deal with conflicts. This "conflict culture" includes psychological factors, such as high rates in collectivism and power distance, repressive education, influence of foreign cultures, religion, and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Structural changes toward another "conflict culture," including conflict prevention and conflict solution in families and communities, are proposed.     

The importance of household asset diversity for livelihood diversity and welfare among small farm colonists in the Amazon

Taking a small farm colony on the Amazon frontier as a case study, this article examines the relationships among household assets, livelihood diversity and welfare. The findings show that: (1) few households diversified into non-agricultural income sources, but those that did also had agricultural incomes comparable to households primarily reliant on agriculture; (2) distinct household assets influence the extent of agricultural and non-agricultural diversity, implying that households with combinations of specific assets were best able to diversify their livelihoods, and (3) while specific types of household assets influence household welfare, livelihood diversity does not exert an additional effect on welfare. A key issue that emerges is that different arrays of assets are important for agricultural and non-agricultural diversity as well as for household welfare, implying that households need diverse assets for diverse livelihoods as well as better welfare.     

Comparing village characteristics derived from rapid appraisals and household surveys: A tale from northern Mali.

This paper investigates whether inferences drawn about a population are sensitive to the manner by which those data are obtained. It compares information obtained using participatory appraisal techniques with a survey of households randomly drawn from a locally administered census that had been carefully revised. The community map tends to include households that do not, in fact, reside in the enumerated locality. By contrast, the revised official census is slightly more likely to exclude households who actually lived in the surveyed area. Controlling for the survey technique, we find that the revised official census produces higher estimates of average household size and wealth but lower estimates of total village size or wealth, than the community map. Pairwise comparison of the survey techniques, holding the households constant, shows that the community map leads, on average, to higher estimates of household size and lower estimates of wealth.     

Cultural Capital and Sustainable Livelihoods in Sri Lanka's Rural Villages: Towards Culturally Aware Development

Increasing attention is being directed towards the role of culture in the development and well-being of rural communities. Systems of knowledge, beliefs, customs, norms and a wide range of culturally related activities, such as arts, crafts and music, can play a significant role in the everyday lives of people and contribute to the sustainability of human societies. The means through which culture can be effectively incorporated into development processes requires further research. This article develops the concept of ‘cultural capital’ to explore how cultural assets sustain an artisan class in three rural villages close to the city of Kandy in central Sri Lanka. The field research found that embodied cultural traditions and subsequent material outputs are vital ‘resources’ in achieving livelihood objectives and meeting family aspirations. We argue that the development industry needs to reconsider cultural assets and traditions and incorporate them into its work at conceptual and programmatic levels. Conceptually development needs to see itself as a cultural as much as economic or social process, and programmatically we see openings within sustainable livelihoods approaches for a greater explicit appreciation and awareness of locally-specific cultural traditions, strengths and perspectives.     

徜徉在斯里兰卡的宝石城

曾有幸到过斯里兰卡的宝石城--拉特纳普拉进行观光游览,能亲眼目睹众多稀有宝石,也算是我人生的一大快事.     

Reconstructing the past in a post-Ottoman village: Turkishness in a transnational context

This study analyzes transformations of historiography and identity discourses by focusing on the Memory House of Ali R?za Efendi (the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) as a “site of historical consciousness” which was reconstructed in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia. The House, referred to by the villagers as the “Memory House of Atatürk,” was opened in 2014 in a Muslim village, Kocac?k, with the support of the Turkish state. Through material and textual representations of Atatürk’s life, the House speaks to the Turkishness and Turkish presence in the Balkans. The Turkishness, however, is imagined through the neo-Ottoman and Islamic prisms. The House thus becomes the locus of alternative interpretations of the past, and, consequently, narratives of Muslims’ identity and origin in the region. Moreover, as it is reconstructed at the nexus of the local and the transnational, the House is also called a symbol of the “politics of brotherhood” between Macedonia and Turkey. In this way, the institution embodies the reconstruction of the past not only at the local and national levels, but also at the international level.     

Religious change in a minority context: transforming Islam in Sri Lanka

Scholarly work exists on how Muslim minority positioning affects identity and politics, but what is less known is its impact on religion. Sri Lanka’s 9% Muslim population, the country’s second largest minority, has undergone a series of recent changes to religious identity, thinking and practice, which have been shaped by its relationship to the dominant and warring ‘ethnic others’. As Sri Lanka plunged deeper into armed conflict in the 1990s, Muslims experienced significant shifts in religious thinking and practice, identifying strictly with a more ‘authentic’ Islam. After the war ended in 2009, Muslims became the target of majoritarian Sinhala-Buddhist violence, resulting in a reinterpretation of Islam and a counter process of change. Using the Sri Lankan Muslim case study to engage with scholarly critiques of majority–minority binaries, this article analyses how religious change is brought about through the interjection of minority status with ethno-nationalisms and conflict. Its focus on Islam in Sri Lanka contributes to area studies and to Islamic studies, the latter through a rare analysis of Islamic reform in a Muslim minority context.     

Diversification and livelihood sustainability in a semi-arid environment: A case study from southern Ethiopia

This paper examines the recently growing adoption of non-pastoral livelihood strategies among the Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia. A large portion of the current non-pastoral participation is in petty and natural resource-based activities. Pastoral and crop production functions are estimated using the Cobb-Douglas model to analyse the economic rationale behind the growing pastoralist shift to cultivation and other non-pastoral activities. The low marginal return to labour in traditional pastoralism suggests the existence of surplus labour that can gainfully be transferred to non-pastoral activities. An examination of the pastoralist activity choices reveals that the younger households with literacy and more exposure to the exchange system display a more diversified income portfolio preference. The findings underscore the importance of human capital investment and related support services for improving the pastoralist capacity to manage risk through welfare-enhancing diversified income portfolio adoption.     

Commitment issues: security and belonging in a white Kenyan household

Once the archetype of romantic colonialism, white Kenyans with personal or familial ties to colonialism face a multitude of challenges with respect to their history and political status. In this article, I examine how discourses related to whites “belonging” in Kenya have constellated around the issue of security, especially in Nairobi, where crime (and recently, terrorism) makes security a potent and political topic. Of particular importance is the staff that white Kenyans employ in their homes. In contexts where African neighbours are predominantly impoverished, I emphasise employer–employee relationships as a key performance of commitment to the Kenyan community. As amendments to the Kenyan constitution have brought forth new issues related to citizenship and “commitment” by white Kenyan citizens, I also proffer that domestic projects of securitisation help to establish their investment or commitment to Kenya, constituting both a grounded and discursive defence against crime or political antagonism.     

Balancing risk: village de-mining in Cambodia

Informal mine clearance by villagers in Cambodia has been a controversial subject among mine action practitioners for the past decade. Discussions have centred on the ethical question of whether these villagers should be provided with training in de-mining techniques. This article explores the circumstances under which villagers conduct mine clearance. It suggests that the engagement of villagers in this high-risk activity largely results from a combination of their vulnerability to other risk factors and their ability to conduct basic de-mining. On this basis, it is suggested that the most effective way of addressing village de-mining is not through transferral of expertise or prohibition of such activity, but through a focus on the underlying vulnerabilities that force people intentionally to take risks.     

From global workers to local entrepreneurs: Sri Lanka’s former global factory workers in rural Sri Lanka

Abstract

Working in Sri Lanka’s urban free trade zones (FTZs) introduces Sri Lanka’s rural women to neoliberal ways of fashioning selves, which subsequently not only shape village entrepreneurial activities but also initiate negotiations in kinship, marriage, domestic arrangements, and community relations. The knowledges and networks that they develop while at the FTZ allow former workers to connect with global production networks as subcontractors, making them part of the cascading system of subcontracting that furthers the precarity of regular FTZ work. This article explores how these former workers manipulate varied forms of capital – social, cultural and monetary – to become local entrepreneurs and community leaders, while simultaneously initiating changes in rural social hierarchies and gender norms. When neoliberal economic restructuring manifests within local contexts it results in new articulations of what it is to be an entrepreneur and what it is to be a worthy, young, married woman. Overall, the paper sheds light on the fragmented and uneven manner in which neoliberal ethos take root in rural South Asia.     

Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict: at a crossroad between peace and war

In the 1990s the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka had acquired the reputation of an orphaned and dirty war. Hence, there was widespread support when in the new millennium Norway tried to facilitate a dialogue between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the main Tamil insurgent group, and the Sri Lankan government. The peace process led to a ceasefire agreement and six rounds of face‐to‐face meetings. Although progress was understandably slow, a political framework that allowed Tamil national self‐determination while simultaneously protecting Sri Lankan sovereignty and territorial integrity seemed near. However, by late 2003–early 2004, such optimism lay shattered and a return to the days of warfare seemed a real possibility. In this paper, I offer an explanation for the onset of peace talks, assess its achievements and explore whether the peace process is still salvageable or a return to warfare is more likely to mark the future.     

African Green Revolution,food sovereignty and constrained livelihood choice in Mozambique

This article examines the complicated food security agendas of the African Green Revolution and the food sovereignty models in Mozambique. Drawing on fieldwork conducted by the author in Mozambique in 2014 and 2015, the paper analyses how smallholder farmers engage with these two agrarian models. Whereas the literature frequently presents the African Green Revolution and the food sovereignty in oppositional frames, this paper finds that farmers in Mozambique utilize some of the tools that these models offer in complementary rather than competing ways. One such area is the use of commercial hybrid seeds and herbicides by some farmers associated with food sovereignty, an approach that runs counter to food sovereignty’s principles of agroecology. In Mozambique, farmers’ “lived experience” of food sovereignty is more a strategic response to their limited livelihood options, using whatever tools are available to them, rather than a resistance to power.     

Trade,taxes and debt repayment in Sri Lanka

The purpose of this article is to estimate the cost of taxing the export, import or domestic sectors of Sri Lanka for the purpose of reducing the national debt. A simple GNP model is used to estimate the elasticities that characterise the three aggregate sectors and are used to simulate the effects of taxing for debt servicing. The results show that a tax on the import sector generates the largest net savings on trade balance and that the savings from not importing can be substantial. However, for the period 1977–87 a 10.0 per cent tax on the import sector caused a decline in the growth of the economy by 3.0 per cent. The burden of the tax falls heavily on the domestic sector in terms of lost production and increased unemployment.     

The state and rural development in Tanzania: The village administration as a political field

The Village Administrations (VAs) created by the Tanzanian state in the 1970s have been regarded as new state apparatuses intended to facilitate control over a recalcitrant peasantry. Field research in Dodoma revealed two kinds of factions competing for their control: Christians, who co‐operated with higher level state apparatuses in establishing working institutional structures, and Traditionalists, who sought to reconstruct the VA as an entity performing predominantly ritual functions and, by tactful non‐compliance, to insulate households from the demands of the state. If the VA is to be regarded as a state apparatus then it must be recognised that it has substantial autonomy, conditioned by its internal constitution as a political field.     

Democracy,development and the executive presidency in Sri Lanka

This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale and unfolding trajectory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it sets out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years, 1978–93, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis from 1994–2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Between 2005–14, the presidency regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite–mass power relationship to facilitate elite-led reform agendas.     

Romance of Leadership in the Public Sector Higher Education in Sri Lanka

This article has been retracted