Visions of philanthronationalism: the (in)equities of corporate good governance in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Philanthronationalism – the pursuance of corporate ‘good governance’ and equality initiatives for ethno-religious political ends – shapes at a fundamental level business practice in Sri Lanka. In this article, Sri Lankan firms’ approaches to the management of ‘diversity and inclusion’ in human resourcing, brand development, and market expansion and outsourcing are explored. While many in the private sector appear to wish to promote the creation of a more harmonious and peaceful society through ethical governance processes, a continued concern to play to the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist constituency often makes this difficult.

Keywords:

• corporate governance
• CSR
• diversity policy
• philanthronationalism
• post-war

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sarah Kabir for her valuable assistance in the field, and project principal investigators, Jock Stirrat and Filippo Osella, for their comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

ORCiD

Tom Widger http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4573-1814

Notes

1 In the most basic sense, ethnic and linguistic nationalisms formed between the Sinhala and mostly Buddhist majority and the Tamil and mostly Hindu minority gave rise to the civil war. With the roots of conflict usually cited in terms of Northern Tamil grievances at a range of exclusionary educational, economic, and political policies emanating from the Sinhala-dominated government in Colombo, a series of hostilities broke into full-scale conflict following ‘state-sponsored’ anti-Tamil riots in Colombo in 1983 (Gunasinghe 2004). Following decades of violence and some serious attempts at a negotiated settlement, the war was ended militarily in May 2009.

2 The training team consisted of Jock Stirrat, Sarah Kabir, and staff of Third Wave, a Sri Lankan consultancy firm.

3 Doctoral fieldwork supported by grants from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 7259), the London School of Economics, the University of London, and the University of Essex.

4 The Vienna school of political and economic philosophy, the most famous associates of which include Karl Popper and Fredrich Hayek, championed the idea that European totalitarianism of the 1920s–1940s emerged from socialist and fascist movements as a reflection of their claims to ultimate truth, realised through the suppression of dissenting voices. Such voices, they reasoned, could only be best expressed in societies built upon free trade in the material world, which would produce free trade in the ideational world.

5 Mahinda Rajapaksa was Sri Lankan president from 2005 to 2015, after he was unseated from office following a surprise defeat by Maithripala Sirisena.

6 For a longer cultural history of militarisation in Sri Lanka, see de Mel (2007).

7 Philanthronationalism is not a phenomenon unique to Sri Lanka, even if there we can find some of its clearest articulations. Philanthronationalism is also an important business-political practice in Myanmar (Widger 2015), while Silber’s (2012) discussion of the ‘angry gift’ among Israeli mega-donors would suggest similar configurations arising in the context of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

8 For more detailed analysis, see Lorbiecki and Jack (2000); for a specific anthropological engagement, see Jindra (2014).

9 The LLRC was a commission of inquiry appointed by the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May 2010 after the 26-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka. The LLRC was to investigate, among other things, the failure of past peace accords, allegations of war crimes committed by government forces, and how to promote reconstruction and reconciliation efforts.

Additional information

Funding

An ESRC-DfID Poverty Alleviation Research Award, [grant number ES/I033890/1] funded fieldwork supporting this article.