Open Society University Network Forum (OSUN) “Democracy and Development”

The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA), Colombo, Sri Lanka is one of the regional institutional partners of the Open Society University Network Forum “Democracy and Development” (OSUN Forum) of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. The OSUN Forum, a 3-year project aims to move away from outdated views of democracy developed in- and for- a Euro- American context and create a cross-regional dialogue on democracy in its political, social, and economic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. Through its regional hubs, the Forum has established a unique platform for creative and critical collaboration between scholars from the Global South and the Global North, in order to confront a series of conceptual and policy-relevant challenges that are associated with reviving and reclaiming democracy and understanding the synergies between democracy and development.

OSUN Forum “Democracy and Development” aims to move away from outdated views of democracy developed in- and for- a Euro-American context and invites us to rethink democracy in its political, social, and economic dimensions by establishing a unique platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and a cross-regional exchange of ideas among scholars from the Global South and Global North. The project mobilizes the existing capacities and resources of the OSUN network in research and education to produce an innovative cross-regional and interdisciplinary platform that combines groundbreaking research incubation with innovative educational and training initiatives, using the project to further broaden the existing OSUN
network by linking new institutional partners from the Global South via joint research and education activities focusing on democracy & development.

This is a 3-year project which combines multidisciplinary and cross-regional research production on democracy and development, with a set of educational, training, and outreach activities and outputs that will build on the original research produced during the project.

As one of the 4 core institutional partners, the Social Scientists’ Association over a period of 3 years, will serve as a research incubator through an 8-month fellowship programme running simultaneously hosted at institutional partners based in Bogotá, Budapest, and Cape Town. The Forum will also produce cutting-edge research outputs that help rethink democracy in its political, social, and economic dimensions; mobilize the knowledge created from research via innovative teaching and training curricular elements available to the entire OSUN network; Enlarge the existing OSUN network by creating four international inter-institutional networks centered on the four regional hubs, attaching new partners to the project such as universities, research centers, and think tanks within the key regions of the project (Central and South America, Sub-Saharan & North Africa, Eurasia, South Asia); Engage with other OSUN network members and associates in public exchanges on practical and/or policy challenges.

“Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies Expanding the Ontologies of Democracy: Patronage Politics in Sri Lanka

SSA currently coordinates a research project with the Department of Political Geography, University of Zurich to study politics of patronage and discourses of patronage as part of a larger
international academic collaboration titled ‘Reversing the Gaze: Decolonizing Political Theory. In addition to the facilitation of the research study, SSA will also coordinate a number of seminars on the outcome of the project. As the second phase of this project, SSA and the Department of Geography, University of Zurich is planning to conduct an international workshop on Sri Lankan Studies in the year 2025.

Reversing the gaze is a key strategy by which the project decenters the global north as the historically assumed epicenter of democracy and good/ democratic governance, to center the global south and what we may learn from how democracy is imagined and practiced in societies of the global south for a revitalized theory of democracy in general.

Sri Lanka provides a key site of analysis given its long and complex relationship to democracy. This proposal is for two case studies, situated in Sri Lanka, which focus on how patronage politics sits together with, rather than in opposition to, democratic ideals in Sri Lankan society. In doing so, they offer a critique of dominant theoretical narratives on liberal democracy, and offer evidence on how Western liberal democracy embraced, rather than rejected, social and cultural practices already on the ground. They thereby complicate the assumed teleology of pre-modern to modern for an understanding of the hybridity, exchange and co-constitution that took place between the local and democracy when it was first introduced to the country. The case studies aim, therefore, at going beyond the binary which situates patronage as oppositional to
democracy for an understanding of how they work together, performatively relying upon, and reinforcing each other.

Impact of climate change on food security, indebtedness, and health in the dry zone of Sri Lanka

Monash university in collaboration with the SSA is conducting a quantitative assessment on how climate change affects the debt level and health status and health outcomes of agrarian communities, what health services are currently available and the community’s access to these health services and the type of health programs and strategies that would help minimize existing health risks arising from the nexus of debt, climate change and health.