Embodied shame and gendered demeanours in young women in Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha L. Abeyasekera ◽  
Jeanne Marecek
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Social Control ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Sri Lankan

In South Asia, shame is valued as a virtue and a means of social control, particularly for women. For Sri Lankan women, shame ( læjja-baya) denotes modesty, purity, innocence, and self-effacement. For unmarried girls, sexual improprieties—rumoured or real—threaten loss of respectability and jeopardise a girl’s marriageability and her family’s honour. We investigated the dynamics of shame and norms of propriety in adolescent girls’ lives by re-analysing a subset of interviews of daughters and mothers (N = 24 pairs) collected in a prior study of nonfatal suicidal acts. Many such acts took place after girls were accused of violating norms of propriety. Other such acts served to ‘blame and shame’ wrongdoers. Girls and their mothers reported further that public knowledge of a suicide-like act sullied a girl’s reputation because onlookers ascribed sexualised meanings to it. We point out the incommensurability between parents’ goals and aspirations for their daughters’ educational and occupation attainments and the rigid demands for respectable comportment to which they must conform.

The Role of Music and Allied Arts in Public Writings on Cultural Diversity: “People of Sri Lanka”

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Gisa Jähnichen
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
The World ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
The Way

The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work “People of Sri Lanka” in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people’s groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.

scholarly journals Not your mother’s culture : second generation Tamil women negotiating trauma and identity through art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Satkunam
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Tamil Diaspora ◽  
Tamil Women

This research paper focuses on the Tamil diaspora community in Canada that developed in the aftermath of the Civil War in Sri Lanka. This paper explores the impact of trauma on children of survivors, and how daughters in particular navigate these traumas. Furthermore, this paper analyzes how young women bear the trauma differently from their male counterparts, as women tend to be seen as carriers of culture. These ideas of women as carriers of culture do not afford Tamil women agency—instead they are left without choice in certain situations. Ultimately, this paper explores if art can be used as a mechanism to release the burden women feel. It uses the interview of eight Tamil women to understand their complex narratives, and to see if they use art as a means to reclaim agency. Key words: Diaspora, Sri Lankan, Art, Second-Generation Tamil Women, Identity, Cultural Purity

Nuptiality, education, infant mortality and fertility in Sri Lanka

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dallas F. S. Fernando
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Reproductive Age ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Women Of Reproductive Age ◽  
Fertility Variation ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Practical Measure

SummaryThe determinants of fertility variation among districts of Sri Lanka are explored by multiple regression analysis. The proportion of young women who are married (age 20–24), and the proportion of women of reproductive age who have received at least 5 years of education, account respectively for 46% and 24% of district variation in total fertility. Infant mortality variation accounts for only 8%. From the results it is argued that encouragement of education of women and postponement of marriage is one practical measure which will help to reduce Sri Lankan fertility.

Sri Lanka: testimony to state terror

Race & Class ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The South ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
State Terror ◽  
Authoritarian State

There are two nations in Sri Lanka, both ruled by the Sri Lankan government - one, the Sinhala/Buddhist South, under civilian rule, and the other, the Tamil North (and increasingly the East), under a military dictatorship. Ironically enough, the cause of this separate dispensation is alleged by the Sri Lankan government to be the figirt for a separate state by the Northern (and Eastern) Tamils. That story however, has been told at length in the special issue of Race & Class ('Sri Lanka: racism and the authoritarian state') which appeared in Ju ly 1984 on the anniversary of the '83 pogroms. Here we wish to record a few of the 200 affidavits (sworn before justices of the peace) from witnesses testifying to the atrocities of the security forces in Jaffna in the period March November 1984. (A fuller dossier, from which these documents have been excerpted, is published by the South Asia Bureau. *)

scholarly journals TAXONOMY AND DISTRIBUTION OF Liopeltis calamaria (GÜNTHER, 1858) (REPTILIA : COLUBRIDAE), INCLUDING REDESCRIPTION OF THE SYNTYPES

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
A.A. Thasun Amarasinghe ◽  
◽  
Suranjan Karunarathna ◽  
Patrick D. Campbell ◽  
S.R. Ganesh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South India ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Gangetic Plains

Liopeltis calamaria, a rare non-venomous colubrid snake of South Asia, is redescribed. Its syntypes and all the available type specimens of its recognized synonyms are examined, including information about the respective populations found across India and Sri Lanka. Our literature compilation and mapping analyses reveal three distinct populations – (I) Sri Lankan (probably also present in some parts of South India as well), (II) Peninsular Indian, and (III) Himalayan / Nepalese, separated by the Palk Strait and the Indo-Gangetic plains respectively.

scholarly journals Not your mother’s culture : second generation Tamil women negotiating trauma and identity through art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Satkunam
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Tamil Diaspora ◽  
Tamil Women

This research paper focuses on the Tamil diaspora community in Canada that developed in the aftermath of the Civil War in Sri Lanka. This paper explores the impact of trauma on children of survivors, and how daughters in particular navigate these traumas. Furthermore, this paper analyzes how young women bear the trauma differently from their male counterparts, as women tend to be seen as carriers of culture. These ideas of women as carriers of culture do not afford Tamil women agency—instead they are left without choice in certain situations. Ultimately, this paper explores if art can be used as a mechanism to release the burden women feel. It uses the interview of eight Tamil women to understand their complex narratives, and to see if they use art as a means to reclaim agency. Key words: Diaspora, Sri Lankan, Art, Second-Generation Tamil Women, Identity, Cultural Purity

scholarly journals Divine Kingship in Medieval Sri Lanka: Dynamics in Traditions of Power and Virtue in South Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Berkwitz
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
Cultural Borrowing ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Divine Kingship

The present article focuses on Sri Lankan views of divine kingship to illustrate how the figure of the king was developed in ways that borrowed and were shaped by the transfer of Hindu notions of kings and gods around the period of intensive Hindu interventions into the island from the tenth to thirteenth centuries CE. After discussing the paradigmatic figure of King Aśoka, the virtuous king (*dhammarāja*) held to be the model for all subsequent monarchs in the tradition, we will examine inscriptional and poetic writings that conflated Sri Lankan kings with Hindu gods. The dynamics of comparing kings with gods has ancient roots in India, and these notions were adopted by Sri Lankan Buddhists during the long “medieval” period of roughly the tenth to the sixteenth centuries CE. The dynamic introduction of new strands of Buddhist kingship expanded upon the figure of the king. I argue that this development was primarily metaphorical in nature, and it was further enhanced by eulogizing kings as bodhisattvas, or future Buddhas. By incorporating much of the language and notions of divine kingship from the Hindu tradition, Sri Lankan Buddhism made kingship into the dynamic site for cultural borrowing. Yet it stabilized and reinforced its local traditions by comparing kings with gods and bodhisattvas, presenting them as being *like* extraordinary beings in the context of praise for their power and virtue.

The New ‘Other’: Islamic Radicalisation and De-radicalisation in Sri Lanka

2021 ◽  
pp. 097492842110477
Author(s):  
N. Manoharan ◽  
Drorima Chatterjee ◽  
Dhruv Ashok
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Small State ◽  
The Core ◽  
Incipient Stage ◽  
Island State ◽  
Key Terms

One of the key terms to understand the nature of violence and conflicts world over is ‘radicalisation’. Sri Lankan case is instructive in understanding various dimensions of Islamic radicalisation and de-radicalisation, especially in South Asia. Though a small state, Sri Lanka has witnessed three radical movements, the latest being Islamic that got manifested in deadly Easter attacks of April 2019. Eco-space for Islamic radicalisation existed in the island for decades, but the rise of ultra-Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism post the end of Eelam War IV acted as a breaking point. The underlying context is perceived insecurity feeling projected by hardline Sinhala-Buddhist elements. In due course, the primary ‘other’ shifted from Tamils to Sri Lankan Muslims. Apart from inter-communal dissonance, international jihadist network also fostered radicalisation process in the island’s Muslim community. Political instability due to co-habitation issues between the then president and the prime minister was a perfect distraction from the core security and development issues. In response to the violent manifestation of radicalisation, de-radicalisation measures by the successive Sri Lankan governments were mostly military in nature. Socio-economic and political components of Islamic de-radicalisation are at the incipient stage, if not totally missing. The article suggests wide-ranging measures to address the issue of radicalisation in the island state.

The Female Tigers of Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
pp. 208-223
Author(s):  
Georg Frerks
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Arranged Marriages ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
The Government ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

This chapter discusses the motives and legitimation of female cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) joining the fight against the Sri Lankan government. Tamil young women were, among others, motivated by grievances against the treatment of the Tamil minority by the government, their experience of sexual and gender-based violence by Sinhalese soldiers and Indian peacekeepers, and a wish to avenge the death of relatives. They also wanted to escape a suppressive and conservative Tamil culture that forced them into arranged marriages. The heroism and sacrificial martyrdom cultivated by the LTTE legitimized these women’s combat role among the Tamils in Northern and North-eastern Sri Lanka who admired their courage. Different societal and theoretical discourses exist concerning the supposedly victimizing, liberating, or empowering effects of female participation in armed struggle, but the situation in reality appears to be ambivalent, including both victimhood and emancipation.

‘I drank it to put an end to me’: Narrating girls’ suicide and self-harm in Sri Lanka

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Marecek ◽  
Chandanie Senadheera
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Young People ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Hospital Admissions ◽  
Deliberate Self Harm ◽  
Advanced Education ◽  
Acute Distress ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Depth Interviews

Sri Lanka experienced a spiral of suicides in the 1980s and 1990s, with deaths rising to nearly 48 per 100,000 in 1995. Although reported rates of suicide have declined since then, the incidence of suicide and deliberate self-harm remains high, especially among young people. Data on hospital admissions showed that the number of adolescent girls admitted for deliberate self-harm more than doubled between 2001 and 2007. We conducted in-depth interviews with girls in the south of Sri Lanka who were hospitalised for deliberate self-harm. The interviews revealed several common themes in the girls’ accounts of the circumstances that prompted self-harm episodes, their motives and emotions, and others’ responses. Most episodes involved accusations and disputes regarding the girls’ sexual comportment and heterosexual relations. They often involved harsh scolding and beatings by parents. Themes in the girls’ accounts included anger, disappointment, shame, and acute distress; descriptions of their self-harm as an expressive act directed toward others; and disavowal of responsibility for their actions. We suggest that the rise in girls’ self-harm results from the clash between emergent expectations that young women hold regarding advanced education, heterosexual relations, and out-of-home employment and traditional ideals of appropriate feminine comportment and sexual respectability held by their parents.

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