Conferences
Conferences
South Asian Dialogue on “Democracy and Development” -9th -10th May 2024
This Dialogue marks the inaugural event of SSA’s collaboration with the Open Society University Network Forum on “Democracy and Development” (OSUN Forum). SSA is one of the regional institutional partners of the OSUN Forum on “Democracy and Development”, a 3-year project which aims to move away from outdated views of democracy developed in- and for- a Euro-American context and create a cross-regional dialogue on democracy in its political, social, and economic dimensions.
1998: Women in Conflict Zones
In 1998-89 the Women in Conflict Zones Network (WICZNET) and the SSA organized a comparative project between Sri Lanka and former Yugoslavia. In December 1998 the first conference was held in Hendala, Sri Lanka and the second in Budapest, Hungary in October 1999. The Sri Lanka Conference had 40 international participants and 70 local participants. The funding was from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ford Foundation and others. The papers presented at the Sri Lanka Conference entitled “Feminists Under Fire – Exchanges across War Zones”, was edited by Wenona Giles, Malathi de Alwis, Edith Klein and Neluka Silva and was published in 2003 by Between the Lines, Toronto, Canada. The book was translated by the SSA into Sinhala and Tamil.
1995: Subaltern Studies
The Fifth Subaltern Studies Conference was held in Colombo in June 1995, organized by the SSA and ICES on the topic of “Community, Gender and Violence” A book consisting of the papers presented were published with the title edited by Partha Chattajee and Pradeep Jeganathan published by Permanent Black, Delhi (2000). The articles in the book were by Aamir Mufti, Pradeep Jeganathan, Nivedita Menon, Flavia Agnes, Tejaswini Niranjana, Satish Deshpande, Qadri Ismail, David Scott and Gayatri Spivak.
1992: Women – The State, Fundamentalism and Cultural Identity in South Asia
In March 1992 a conference was held in Sri Lanka organized by the SSA with participation of delegates from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The papers presented were published in 1996 by Kali for Women in a book entitled “Embodied Violence: Communalising Women’s Sexuality in South Asia” edited by Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis. The contributors were Ritu Menon, Kamla Bhasin, Kalpana Kannabiran, Shahnaz Rouse, Sonia Nishat Amin, Malathi de Alwis, Jasodhara Bagchi, Paola Bacchetta, Neloufer de Mel, Uma Chakravarti, Kumkum Sanghari and Sudesh Vaid.
1987: Facets of Ethnicity
Following the success of “Ethnicity and Social Change” (1984), the SSA in 1987 published another book Facets of Ethnicity edited by … on the themes of nationalism, ethnicity. The contributors were Serena Tennekoon, Newton Gunasinghe, Radhika Coomaraswamy, V. Nithyanandan, Sunil Bastian, K. Sivathamby, Kumari Jayawardena and Gamani Samaranayake.
1979: SSA Projects
The SSA held a seminar on Nationalism, and History in December 1979, where historians and social scientists presented papers. These were published in three languages in 1984 under the title “Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka”. The writers were Senake Bandaranayake, Leslie Gunawardana, W.I. Suraweera, Susantha Goonetilake, Neil Kuruppu, K. Kailasapathy, Kumari Jayawardena, K. Sivathamby, P. Devaraj, Charles Abeysekera, Sunil Bastian and Susil Siriwardena.
The Swedish economist Dr E.H. Jacoby sponsored a Project concerned with “The Effects of the Operations of Transnational Corporations on Third World Agriculture and Rural Societies in Underdeveloped Countries” The SSA participated in this study from 1980 to 1982. Funding was from SAREC (Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation) to the SSA for this Project. At the Seminar in Colombo April 1983, Dr George Beckford and others from the West Indies attended, along with SAREC representatives. The book based on this research, published in 1985, was “Capital and Peasant Production. Studies in the Continuity and Discontinuity of Agrarian Structures in Sri Lanka” edited by C. Abeysekera. Contributors were S.B.D de Silva, N. Shanmugaratnam, Sunil Bastian, P. Wickramasekera, Charles Abeysekera and Newton Gunasinghe. The areas of study were the Mahaweli Development Scheme, the Free Trade Zone, The Plantation Sector and the Tobacco Industry.