Sri Lanka : history and the roots of conflict
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Sri Lanka : history and the roots of conflict
Routledge, 2015
- pbk
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the past decade, Sri Lanka has been engulfed by political tragedy as successive governments have failed to settle the grievances of the Tamil minority in a way acceptable to the majority Sinhala population. The new Premadasa presidency faces huge economic and political problems with large sections of the island under the control of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) and militant separatist Tamil groups operating in the north and south.
This book is not a conventional political history of Sri Lanka. Instead, it attempts to shed fresh light on the historical roots of the ethnic crisis and uses a combination of historical and anthropologial evidence to challenge the widely-held belief that the conflict in Sri Lanka is simply the continuation of centuries of animosity between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. The authors show how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period with the war between Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place-name etymologies, and the political use of the national past. The book is also one of the first attempts to focus on local perceptions of the crisis and draws on a broad range of sources, from village fieldwork to newspaper controversies. Its interest extends beyond contemporary politics to history, anthropology and development studies.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1 Chapter oneIntroduction: the power of the past, JonathanSpencer
- Part I Colonialism, history and racism
- Chapter 2 The generation of communal identities, Elizabeth Nissan, R.L. Stirrat
- Chapter 3 Chapter threeThe people of the lion: the Sinhala midentity and ideology in history and historiography, R.A.L.H. Gunawardana
- Chapter 4 Chapter fourHistorical images in the British period, John D.Rogers
- Chapter 5 Chapter five The politics of the Tamil past, DagmarHellmann-Rajanayagam
- Part 2 Part II History at a moment of crisis
- Chapter 6 Chapter six Nationalist rhetoric and local practice: the fate of the village community in Kukulewa, James Brow
- Chapter 7 Chapter sevenA compound of many histories: themany pasts of an east coast Tamilcommunity, Mark P.Whitaker
- Chapter 8 Chapter eight Rural awakenings: grassroots development and the cultivation of a national past in rural Sri Lanka, Michael D. Woost
- Part 3 Part IIIThe politics of the past
- Chapter 9 Chapter nineJ.R.Jayewardene, righteousnessand realpolitik, Steven Kemper
- Chapter 10 Chapter tenNewspaper nationalism: Sinhala identity as historical discourse, SerenaTennekoon
- Chapter 11 Chapter elevenAfterword: scared places, violent spaces, DanielE.Valentine
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