Politics and class in Spring Valley, Sri Lanka: An ‘anti‐structuralist’ interpretation

Abstract

The article is concerned with socioeconomic differentiation among Sinhalese villagers in a tea‐growing area of the Uva Highlands. Theoretically, and on the basis of a reassessment of ‘the alternative heuristics of structure and process’, it takes an ‘anti‐structuralist’ approach at odds with recent mode of production analyses, but no less materialist inform and content. The analysis concentrates on the identification and explanation of a fundamental process of polarisation between households in a given village in terms which are both historically specific and more general to the logic of capitalist penetration into the countryside. This provides the materialist basis for a class analysis of the political history of the village over the last 50 years. The conclusion drawn is that only twice have circumstances been such that villagers could begin realistically to put together a political identity as ‘poor peasants’ and ‘rural workers’. Otherwise, there has been no genuine representation of their interests in the political system at large.

Notes

Research Fellow in AFRAS, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, Sussex, BN1 9QN. This article is based on the results of fieldwork funded by the SSRC and carried out between 1977 and 1979.