Marginal placeholders: peasants, paddy and ethnic space in Sri Lanka’s post-war frontier

ABSTRACT

This study explores the political significance of peasant identities, rice cultivation and land struggles in the context of civil war. It comprises two agrarian settlements in Sri Lanka's former war zone: a state-sponsored Sinhala settlement colony (Weli Oya) and a village formerly ruled by the Tamil insurgency (Sampur). We conceptualise both communities as ‘marginal placeholders’ positioned in Sri Lanka's embattled Dry Zone frontier. Their contentions, and the elite support for their contentions, make little sense in terms of material gain or agrarian surplus. We therefore argue that they must be understood as territorial struggles over ethnic space, rival sovereign claims, peasant ideology and cultural purification. Marginal placeholders are fielded to secure politically strategic territory, but ironically their marginality is reproduced in the process.

KEYWORDS:

• Civil war
• frontier
• peasantry
• ethnic nationalism
• territory
• Sri Lanka

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bart Klem http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7491-3994

Bart Klem is a senior lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on the inter-connections between development and violent conflict, more specifically on territorial struggles, de facto sovereignty and public authority in (violently) contested environments and transitional contexts.

Thiruni Kelegama is PhD researcher at the Department of Geography, University of Zurich. Her research focuses on development, militarisation and nation-building in post-war Sri Lanka.

Notes

1 Thiruni Kelemaga did 11 months of PhD research in Weli Oya in 2014–2016. Bart Klem spent 5 months in and around Sampur (2010–2016), building on research engagement with eastern Sri Lanka during the prior decade. In the empirical sections, we use pseudonyms to refer to interviews.

2 While there is something undeniably masculine about the discursive renderings of frontier settler communities, the suggestion that these are exclusively composed of men is clearly false. We will thus use the term frontiers-people instead.

3 Departing labour migrant flows per capita are highest in the Eastern, North-Western and North-Central Province, all agrarian regions of the northeastern Dry Zone, with the Eastern Province rising starkly after the war. Economic and Social statistics of Sri Lanka 2016: Table 3.16 (foreign employment) and 3.5 (mid year population). http://www.cbsl.gov.lk/htm/english/10_pub/p_2.html

4 Figures of Naval Dockyard Museum in Trincomalee.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) under Grant 100017_149183.