Thammasat University students interested in South Asian studies, Sri Lanka, history, political science, international relations, diplomacy, area studies, development geography, peace studies, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 22 November Zoom book launch for a new Open Access volume available for free download, Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka.
The event, on Friday, 22 November 2024 at 7:30pm Bangkok time, is presented by the Bandaranaike Center for International Studies in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Its website explains:
A brainchild of the late, great Hon. Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, BCIS was established in 1974 to spearhead Sri Lanka’s knowledge development in the sphere of International Relations. From then to now, BCIS has been able to fulfil the vision it was founded on; To be the premier South Asian Institute for research, training, and knowledge dissemination in International Studies, Policy Advocacy, Empowerment, and Sustainability, by gaining both national and regional-level recognition for the fields of study we engage in.
Having played a monumental role in international affairs through her capacity as Sri Lanka’s Premier, Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike strongly believed in the need for an institution that could provide a world-class education in International Relations. Even as far back as the early 70’s, she understood the importance the discipline would hold in a world that was fast becoming one interconnected community. […]
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Sri Lanka.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/routledge-handbook-of-contemporary-sri-lanka-tickets-1043002457427
The publisher’s description states:
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka offers a comprehensive survey of issues facing the island country and an overview delineating some key moments in the country’s contemporary polity, economy, and sociality.
This book outlines aspects and influences foundational to understanding a country defined by its economic and political turmoil, and rift with public distrust in today’s shifting geopolitics. Chapters by various established scholars highlight this book’s pivotal contribution in situating Sri Lanka’s turmoil and deprivation in this current conjuncture.
The handbook is structured in seven parts:
- Nations and Nationalism
- Politics, State and Institutions
- Economy and Political Economy
- Work and Life
- Environment and Environmental Politics
- Society, Social Systems, and Culture
- Moment of Flux, Looking Ahead
Each part includes on average six chapters covering the social sciences and humanities to survey emerging and cutting-edge areas of the study of Sri Lanka. Multi-disciplinary in focus, the book also includes an introductory section and concluding section, which creates the space and platform for senior, mid-ranking, and junior academics to engage in dynamic conversation with each other about contemporary Sri Lanka. Including scholarship from Sri Lankan experts, the handbook creates academic output, which chimes with broader calls in academia on decolonising the academic landscape.
An important reference work, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students from wideranging academic disciplines and a focus on Sri Lanka, Asian and South Asian studies, sociology, environmental politics, development, labour, management, political economy and anthropology.
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka is edited by Kanchana N. Ruwanpura and Amjad Mohamed Saleem
Professor Kanchana Ruwanpura teaches development geography at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Dr. Amjad Mohamed Saleem works at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, Switzerland.
Their volume is dedicated to, among others, the Sri Lankan anthropologist Malathi de Alwis, the Sri Lankan feminist activist and academic Kumari Jayawardena, and the Sri Lankan cultural studies specialist Qadri Ismail.
These and other intellectuals represent a vanguard, in addition to other social activists
who refuse to remain silent in the face of oppression and injustice despite the personal social costs that their activism brings.
This book is also dedicated to the
ordinary Sri Lankan, who is nameless and powerless, and has borne the brunt of the political, religious, ethnic, environmental, and economic challenges facing the country […] and the victims and survivors of all the violence and repression that goes through in the country.
The study begins with a poem by peace researcher Sarah Kabir, If I was President:
If I was President, your freedom of speech I would not infringe,
For there is much I could learn from what rages within. […]
I wouldn’t press my foot,
Down on your throat,
Suppressing your breath,
Instead, I’d bend the knee.
Because it is you that I serve, […]
The editors explain that diagnosing political instability in Sri Lanka is complicated over the past four decades by worsening economic inequality, community divisions, and advancing authoritarianism facing a distorted global economic order.
Systemic change and structural transformation are needed to produce an equitable, just, and ecologically sensitive nation in future, which will require political justice and the fair distribution of resources, goods, opportunity in a society.
They advise that unity and perseverance will be required for Sri Lanka to redistribute its resources among the population in the interest of equity.
Earlier this year, Professor Ruwanpura published a research article, Tenacity Besides Depletion: Pandemics, Protests, and Workers from the Sri Lankan Apparel Sector.
The article’s abstract:
Sri Lankan apparel has conventionally crafted itself as a niche and ethical supplier. Staying with this record, shifting to PPE (personal protective equipment) production, a tripartite agreement on minimum wages and a furlough scheme were key successes during the pandemic. However, the recurrent absence of living wages resulted in varied worker experiences. I use written testimonies from women garment workers to raise pivotal questions on how the lives of workers started to deplete during the pandemic and yet it did not prevent women workers from claiming differently-underlining slivers of hope, where depletion and tenacity are constant bedfellows. The pandemic was when Sri Lankan apparel’s dis/articulation within global production processes came about. Contributing to feminist political economy readings of global production processes, I illustrate how depletion and tenacity are no binaries; acknowledging these spaces of hope offers the potential for agentive action.
Last year she published another article, Frayed social safety: Social networks, stigma, and COVID-19 – The case of Sri Lankan garment workers.
Its abstract:
Sri Lankan garment workers have navigated a terrain where their initial status as stigmatized labour were re-casted as empowered workers through various industry-led initiatives in the recent past. Rearticulation from disposable to empowered workers, however, did not rest upon living wages or a hike in wage packets; instead, various management interpellations were attempted onsite and offsite factories. Without a material basis for these initiatives in the pre-COVID-19 period, the vacuity of these tropes became particularly evident during the pandemic. Workers had to come to terms with shabby social support and stigma that worsened their economic lives, with tattered social safety systems compelling labour rights organizations and kin to step up. Using worker testimonies, I speak to the politics of empowerment to underline how the recasting of workers as stigmatized resulted in the cost of social reproduction to borne by kin networks and labour activists too. These frayed social safety nets and public support continue to echo against the country’s worst economic crisis.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)