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.     

Governance in Developing Countries: Sri Lanka and South Africa Compared

In this article, we investigate the main features of the governance model in two developing democracies, Sri Lanka and South Africa. We believe that these two countries are interesting test cases for a comparative study. Both countries are former British colonies and have inherited a similar administrative system heavily influenced by the British colonial model and have experienced an ethnic conflict to different extents in the past.

This comparison allows us to examine the determining factors for and against the level of effectiveness of governance in both countries. The findings suggest that the socio-political system within which they operate is dynamic and is an important influence for integrated governance. The study concludes that the outcomes of governance in both countries are better explained by taking into account the features described in an integrated governance model. This provides a better understanding of the dynamics of governance in developing countries.     

Ethnic differentials: Sri Lanka,Malaysia, and Israel

Studies in Comparative International Development -     

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.     

Symbolic Gestures: The Development Terrain of Post-Tsunami Villages in (Southern) Sri Lanka

This article analyses how rituals and ceremonies were deployed in the post-tsunami rehabilitation process in Sri Lanka to ‘incorporate’ development projects into the habitus and social reality of local communities. It argues that even though the aid delivery process is represented as a gift, in reality it is more concerned with strengthening the social capital of the local and foreign donors. Through this process there is an expectation and an implicit demand for acquiescence from the beneficiaries, which leaves them with a social debt. This, in turn, compels them to participate in the game of development rituals and ceremonies, in order to express their (ambivalent) gratitude and thankfulness. Through two case studies, we explore how the good intentions of donors to provide aid and alleviate suffering and the acceptance of this aid by the local communities, results in an asymmetric relationship where both become accomplices of Bourdieuian notions of subtle and gentle violence.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Land and grievances in post-conflict Sri Lanka: exploring the role of corruption complaints

There is a growing academic literature on both land and corruption in relation to post-conflict peace building. This paper aims to understand what role corruption complaints play in the nexus between land and grievances in post-conflict societies. Drawing on field material collected in Sri Lanka, the paper interrogates the role of corruption complaints in relation to a number of highly politicised and ethnicised post-conflict land issues, ranging from the return of idps and alleged new resettlement schemes to land grabbing for military, ‘development’ and/or commercial purposes. The comparatively high visibility of land use, and the fact that land-related corruption is likely to affect a specific set of people who lay claim to the land, makes it a particularly important area to address in research on corruption and post-conflict peace building.     

Home Thoughts from Abroad: Diasporas and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka

This article looks at the dynamics of Diaspora groups as a possible catalyst for peace-building within violent segmented societies. With the help of two case studies, Irish-America's role in Northern Ireland and Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora's role in Sri Lanka, it locates the variable impacts of Diaspora involvement in violent conflicts within their homelands. Despite their unique histories and individual complexity, both of these cases illustrate that Diasporas have a significant role to play in peace-building, are diverse rather than homogenous communities, and that they represent an important and often underutilized resource to bring negotiated settlement to violent conflicts.     

Manufactured exports and terms of trade of developing countries: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Terms of trade implications of diversification into manufactured exports in a traditional primary‐exporting country are examined in the light of the Sri Lankan experience over the past two decades. The empirical analysis focuses on trends in both commodity and income terms of trade, employing a methodology which takes care of the ‘spurious regression’ problem. The results suggest that, contrary to the ‘new’ terms of trade pessimism, export diversification has brought about significant terms of trade gains for the Sri Lankan economy. Overall, the study casts doubt on the robustness of results coming from analyses of price trends in aggregate manufactured exports and calls for systematic time‐profile analyses of the countries which have achieved significant export diversification in order to inform the policy debate.     

The Impact of Natural Disasters on Remittances to Low- and Middle-Income Countries

In this paper, we offer novel empirical evidence on the impact of natural disasters on remittance flows towards low- and middle-income countries. We consider a panel of 98 countries over the period 1990–2010. Our findings show that remittances increase after a disaster, thus contributing ex post to the reconstruction process. At the same time, we find that remittances play a key role in terms of ex ante risk preparedness for those countries that experienced more disruptive events in the past. Finally, when taking into account the interaction with the level of development of the local financial sector, remittances seem to substitute for less efficient financial systems both in terms of ex post response to disasters and in terms of ex ante risk management strategy.     

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

This article has been retracted     

Phases of Irrigation Development in Asian Tropics: A Case Study of the Philippines and Sri Lanka

Using data for the Philippines and Sri Lanka during the last five decades, we examine three phases of agricultural development experienced by the rice sector in insular countries in tropical monsoon Asia; the first was based on land opening, the second on new irrigation construction and the third on increasing the efficiency of the existing irrigated land base. We show that these sequential shifts were induced by changes in the relative profitability of the three major means of land development for increasing food production. Rehabilitation, water management improvement and better maintenance, which are important means of irrigation development in the latest phase, are under-invested, despite their high rates of return.     

Trust and Reciprocity in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

Abstract

Beyond all the material and economic losses that natural disasters produce, post-disaster environments can alter the social capital of a community by affecting social norms, attitudes, and people’s behaviour. To analyse this issue, we empirically investigate the effect that the aftermath of a disaster can have on trust and reciprocity of people within communities. We do this by comparing outcomes of trust games conducted in earthquake-affected and non-affected rural villages one year after the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Our findings show that while trust levels do not differ across cases, reciprocity is lower in earthquake-affected areas.     

Impact of Cash Transfer Programmes on School Attendance and Child Poverty: An Ex Ante Simulation for Sri Lanka

For countries assessing whether to implement a cash transfer programme, an ex-ante evaluation is vital to assess its potential impacts. This study simulates the impact of alternative cash transfer programmes on school attendance and poverty among Sri Lankan children. We find that cash transfer programmes targeting poor children would be the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty and encourage school attendance. If means-testing is not feasible, then programmes targeting the children in households with at least three school-age children would provide a suitable second-best solution. Our findings suggest that even a limited programme budget can provide significant impacts.     

Building the Tamil Eelam State: emerging state institutions and forms of governance in LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's civil war has created a political – territorial division between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte), where ltte is engaged in a process of state building within the areas they control. The article examines this state formation with an emphasis on the functions and forms of governance that are embedded in the new state institutions. It is observed that the emerging state formation has a strong focus on external and internal security, with an additional emphasis on social welfare and economic development. In terms of governance, the ltte state apparatus is marked by authoritarian centralisation with few formal mechanisms for democratic representation, but there are also partnership arrangements and institutional experiments that may foster more democratic forms of representation and governance. Hence, resolving the security problem in tandem with political transformations towards democratic governance remain prime challenges for peace building in northeast Sri Lanka.     

The Effect of Risk Preferences on Household Use of Water Treatment

This paper uses Mexican household data on water treatment to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between risk preferences and use of preventive health measures. The main finding is that in households with children, more risk-averse mothers are more likely to treat the water the household consumes. This result suggests that while households may face external constraints on their behaviour, personal preferences are also determinants of their choices.