Thiruchandran, Selvy. Caste and its Multiple Manifestations: A Study of the Caste System in Northern Sri Lanka. Colombo: Bay Owl Press, 2021, pp. 231 + xii Reviewed by Kalinga Tudor Silva Caste in Sri Lanka is something of an enigma to social critics and social researchers alike. People do not justify, refer to or even …
The Changing Role of Caste in Northern Sri Lanka Read More »
Review of “Garments without Guilt? Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels” Kanchana Ruwanpura Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2022 Garments without Guilt? Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels by Kanchana Ruwanpura uses an analytical framing informed by labour and feminist perspectives to explore how workers are central to …
Locating Labour in Sri Lanka’s Ethical Sourcing – Shyamain Wickramasinghe Read More »
Sarath Wijesinghe Charithapadanaya saha 71 Tharuna Pibidhime Yatapathkala Ithihasaya (The Biography of Sarath Wijesinghe and the Suppressed History of Youth Awakening in 1971) By Susila Hemamali Wijesinghe Author Publication, Colombo, p. 380, 2022 The title of this book review is borrowed from Svetlana Alexievich’s masterpiece, The Unwomanly Face of War (2017), where through interviews with …
The Unwomanly Face of the 1971 Revolt – Samal Vimukthi Hemachandra Read More »
Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka by Asha L. Abeyasekera (Rutgers University Press, 2021) Asha Abeyasekera’s Making the Right Choice: Narratives of Marriage in Sri Lanka (Rutgers University Press, 2021) documents change in marriage practices among the Sinhala-Buddhist urban middle class located in Colombo, Sri Lanka and sets out to “make …
Marriage, Morality, and Modernity — Tharindi Udalagama Read More »
Sumathy Sivamohan’s latest feature film “The Single Tumbler”, woven around stories of a single family, is a heart-wrenching tale of life, war, loss, trauma, and the search for answers. The film centres on the loss or disappearance of Jude, a brother and son, during the war in Sri Lanka, foregrounding the eviction of Muslims from …
This play has been long in the making. A string of unfortunate circumstances induced by the pandemic resulted in the postponement of Rajitha Dissanayake’s new play, at least twice. So, we got to watch this play titled ‘A Day in July 2019’, in January 2022. And yet, the play is not out of step with …
Redding’s book lays out the manner in which regardless of the horrendous anti- Muslim violence permitted and often perpetrated by the Indian secular State court system, the secular State courts in turn need the ‘Islamic non-State’ in both material and ideological ways. The Islamic non-State that Redding refers to is the Dar- Ul Quaza network …
The director of the film Paangshu, Visakesa Chandrasekaram describes how his encounter with human rights violations in Sri Lanka made a deep impact on him, and remembers the image of a mother looking at the remains of her dead son: “She really changed my perception of the kind of professional life I wanted to have” …
Like Water to Soil: ‘Paangshu’ Between Politics and Rights – Prabha Manuratne Read More »
As anthropology continues to grapple with the colonial, racialised, and exploitative undercurrents of the ethnographic endeavour, decolonial and feminist approaches have emerged with a renewed force, charting paths for alternative enactments of knowledge production and new understandings of its aims and effects. In this context, Mythri Jegathesan’s Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in …