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Abstract
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the modus operandi in the development arena at this juncture. Many, including feminists, place much faith in these actors for creating a progressive space for social, political, and economic activities to be undertaken. This article employs fieldwork evidence from eastern Sri Lanka, carried out in 1998–1999 and early 2004, to challenge this simplistic reading. The primary social group that was studied during the fieldwork period was female-headed households. This article argues that there are different types of NGO working in multiple ways in the region, and it is important to distinguish between these differences. NGOs that primarily execute development-oriented projects without considering the ethno-nationalist and gender politics are culpable of the violence of development. It is only when NGOs are in local communities for the long haul that they are able to develop a commitment to reassess and evaluate the social transformative potential of their activities. Using a feminist political economy perspective this article argues that it is important and necessary that NGOs confront social, political, and economic structures, including ethnic identity politics, if their activities are to lead to transformative feminist politics. In other words, NGOs would have to do more than pay lip service to gender mainstreaming, as is more often the case. These actors need to recognize and understand the potency of ethno-nationalist politics, social structures, social exclusion, and social injustice in order to create social spaces that are enabling of women's agency in the local communities within which they work and operate.
Los organismos no-gubernamentales (ONGs) son el modus operandi en el ruedo de desarrollo en esta coyuntura. Muchos, incluyendo feministas, tienen mucha fe en estos actores para crear un espacio progresivo para que se realicen actividades sociales, políticas, y económicas. Este artículo, haciendo uso de evidencia de una investigación del campo en el oriente de Sri Lanka realizado entre 1998–1999, y los principios de 2004, cuestiona esta interpretación simplista. El grupo principal que se estudió durante la investigación fue el hogar encabezado por la mujer. Este artículo argumenta que hay distintas clases de ONGs trabajando en maneras múltiples en la región, y que es importante distinguir entre las diferencias. Los ONGs que ejecutan proyectos de desarrollo sin tomar en cuenta la política de género y de étnico-nacionalismo son culpables de la violencia de desarrollo. Solo cuando los ONGs quedan en las comunidades a largo plazo podrán desarrollar una obligación a reasesorar y evaluar la posibilidad de sus actividades para la transformación social. Utilizando una perspectiva feminista de la economía política, este artículo argumenta que si las actividades de los ONGs van a engendrar una política feminista transformativa, es importante y necesario que los ONGs se enfrentan a las estructuras sociales, políticas, y económicas, incluyendo la política de la identidad étnica. De otra manera, los ONGs tendrían que hacer más que fingir estar de acuerdo con el ‘mainstreaming’ de género, como en la mayoría de los casos. Estos actores necesitan reconocer y entender el poder de la política étnico-nacionalista, estructuras sociales, exclusión social, y la injusticia social para crear espacios sociales que hagan posible la agencia de mujeres en sus vidas diarias en las comunidades locales.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the three anonymous reviewers and the editor for offering incisive comments on restructuring and strengthening the article. Additionally, I also wish to note the insightful comments provided by Chris Gunn and Dia Mohan (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) and Malathi de Alwis (International Centre for Ethnic Studies) on an earlier version of this article. All their comments have been invaluable in sharpening the focus of this article, while its limitations remain my own.
Notes
1. On 6 December 1992 the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh witnessed vandalism when Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Mosque, which unleashed communal conflict and riots in many parts of India (Srivastava, Citation2002, p. 263).
2. Local and international NGOs are the institutions that are under scrutiny in this article, and most local NGOs depend to some extent or other on donor funding including in certain instances from international NGOs.
3. This distinction is maintained at this point for heuristic reasons. Consciousness-raising work need not necessarily be done exclusive of development activities. Similarly, the former group too are implicated in the forms of inequality and violence in the region, which is the general backdrop for their works. The contradictions and the ways in which both types of organizations negotiate and navigate this terrain will be brought up in the later sections of this article. However, during my fieldwork periods I did not come across NGOs with a ‘developmental’ base that had an explicit mantle on social awareness-raising.
4. My research differs from the extensive and important feminist analysis of accountability and humanitarianism by Hyndman and de Alwis (2000, 2003, 2004) because I focus on another important aspect of NGO activity: development projects that aim at creating social change.
5. When doing fieldwork in Batticaloa, a district of eastern Sri Lanka, I was informed that the Liberation Tamil Tigers for Eelam (LTTE) knew of my presence in the area, but did not find my presence and/or work threatening to their nationalist project. For these reasons, I reserve the prerogative not to divulge information on specific villages, households, and most NGOs because of ethical considerations.
6. SURIYA and AWF are two native NGOs located in Batticaloa and Ampara districts in urban and semi-urban areas, respectively. They are run by displaced women that organize activities responding to community needs, and do so with a strong feminist basis and offering important guidance on gender issues in the area.
7. Karuna, considered the second most senior military leader within the LTTE, split from the group in March 2004 claiming that the northern leadership of the LTTE (known as the Vanni faction) was ignoring the interests and welfare of eastern Tamils. Thus, he claimed that most young adult cadre and child soldiers from the east were sent into the forefront of battle, while most plum posts and promotions within the organization went to northern Tamils Anbarasan at (BBC News, July 2004). The political implications of this separation within the LTTE is that ethno-nationalist proclamations of Tamil homogeneity were brought into question, revealing the existence of regional, class, caste, and religious differences. At the level of ground reality, what this has meant is a backward step in the stalled peace process with a) sporadic skirmishes, killings, and tensions in eastern Sri Lanka, and b) the Vanni faction further hardening their stance as the sole representatives and voice of the Tamil-speaking people.
8. My limited ways of analyzing cultural plays and theatre—and the implications this has for social transformation and change—has been sharply influenced by Dia Mohan's (Citation2004a, Citation2004b) incisive and fascinating analysis of Jana Sanskriti's political theatre in Bengal, India. She points out the ways in which representations in cultural plays can be both an engine of social transformation and challenge prevailing notions of what counts as popular, what counts as culture, and what counts as political because of the ways in which people make a commitment to their off-stage lives through their on-stage experiences of constructing alternative futures. (Unfortunately, however, my fieldwork did not engage in detailed ways with the plays put together by the cultural theatre activist—and so it remains an important research lacuna that needs to be fulfilled for the Sri Lankan context.)