Public Authority Under Sovereign Encroachment: Leadership in two villages during Sri Lanka's war

Abstract

In this article, we compare two kinds of public authority under conditions of civil war. We study two villages in eastern Sri Lanka, both of which came under LTTE rule during the 1990s and 2000s. The first case study describes a rural development society, which was co-opted by the LTTE to rule the village. The second describes the leaders of a Hindu temple, who defied LTTE attempts to settle temple-related conflicts. Conceptually, we draw on the notion of the public sphere as a space of encounter between the rulers and the ruled. This perspective helps us come to grips with the convoluted political landscape of war. Our two case studies suggest that public authority and sovereignty are mutually constituted. We argue that both forms of power are reworked in the encounter with the public sphere. A sovereign aspirant like the LTTE does not simply impose itself on society, it encroaches on it. This involves contingent efforts of reigning in other forms of public authority, some of which are more defiant than others. Conversely, public authority not only derives validity from sovereign endorsement, but from contestations around sovereignty as well.

“Homeless” Deities and Refugee Devotees: Hindu Temples, Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora, and Politics in the United Kingdom

“…Whitaker (1997) explains how the Hindu temples’ “politics of honor,” based on caste identity, as a “non‐modern politics,” managed to keep away colonial, postcolonial, and Tamil nationalistic politics in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has three main types of temples: family‐owned small temples, village temples belonging to a particular caste, and “thesam” (national) temples, which operate on “politics of honor,” meaning caste identity and politics (Whitaker 1997; Klem and Maunaguru 2018). Many of the Sri Lankan temples are not managed by elected board members, unlike some of the diaspora temples 3…”

Introduction: Ethnographic perspectives on the state in Bangladesh

“…In recent decades, studies situated in South Asia have figured prominently in the renewed interest in and debate on the anthropology of the state. The vast majority of these studies have focused on India, 7 with some significant works on Sri Lanka (e.g., Klem and Maunaguru 2018; Spencer 1990; Tambiah 1996), Nepal (e.g., Hachhethu 2002), and Pakistan (e.g., Gayer 2014; Hull 2012; Martin 2016), while Bangladesh appears to be underrepresented. Although a few early works (Bertocci 1970; Jahangir 1979) and some recent publications (e.g., Berger 2017; Hackenbroch 2013; Ruud 2011; Shehabuddin 2008) have focused more explicitly on the state in intriguing ways, they rarely engage with more conceptual debates or comparative perspectives and are thus largely absent in the transregional literature.…”

Mediating the margins: the role of brokers and the Eastern Provincial Council in Sri Lanka’s post-war transition

“…On the one hand the war in the northeast created a process of de facto decentralisation, with the opening of the frontier regions, as new forms of insurgent governance limited the reach and authority of the central state. 24 At the same time, in response to the conflict the state became more militarized and more centralised, with greater power flowing to the executive due to the state of emergency.…”