The Golden Wave

Michele Ruth Gamburd

Description

Catastrophe, recovery, and the politics of international aid

In December 2004 the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated coastal regions of Sri Lanka. Six months later, Michele Ruth Gamburd returned to the village where she had been conducting research for many years and began collecting residents' stories of the disaster and its aftermath: the chaos and loss of the flood itself; the sense of community and leveling of social distinctions as people worked together to recover and regroup; and the local and national politics of foreign aid as the country began to rebuild. In The Golden Wave, Gamburd describes how the catastrophe changed social identities, economic dynamics, and political structures.

Introduction: Political Ethnography of Disaster

Wijitha's Story

1. That day: Chaos and Solidarity

Dr. Priyanka's Story

2. Deaths: Fate and Vulnerability

Pradeep and Manoj's Story

3. Short-term Camps: Chaos and the Crafting of Order

Sumendra's Story

4. Housing: Temporary Shelters, Permanent Homes, and the Buffer Zone

Lalitha's Story

5. Dangerous Liaisons: The Power, Peril, and Politics of Mediating between Donors and Recipients

Jagath's Story

6. Business Recovery: Tourism and Construction

Dayawansa's Story

7. Reconstructing Class: Discourse on Theft, Loot, Cheating, and Gifts

Fazmina's Story

8. The Politics of Corruption: Accusations and Rebuttals

Tharindu's Story

9. Citizenship and Ethnicity: The Tsunami and the Civil War

Conclusion

Sujets

• Human Geography
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• South Asia
• Regional geography
• General officer
• South
• History of Asia
• Anthropology
• General
• Asia
• India

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 23 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253011503
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE GOLDEN WAVE
THE GOLDEN WAVE
Culture and Politics after Sri Lanka s Tsunami Disaster
Michele Ruth Gamburd
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
www.iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone]
Fax [phone]
2014 by Michele Ruth Gamburd
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01138-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01139-8 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-01150-3 (e-book)
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
In memory of those who perished in the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26, 2004, and in honor of all who have aided the survivors
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations, Names, and Sinhala Terms
Introduction: Political Ethnography of Disaster
Wijitha s Story
1 That Day: Chaos and Solidarity
Dr. Priyanka s Story
2 Deaths: Fate and Vulnerability
Pradeep and Manoj s Story
3 Short-Term Camps: Chaos and the Crafting of Order
Sumendra s Story
4 Housing: Temporary Shelters, Permanent Homes, and the Buffer Zone
Lalitha s Story
5 Dangerous Liaisons: The Power, Peril, and Politics of Mediating between Donors and Recipients
Jagath s Story
6 Business Recovery: Tourism and Construction
Dayawansa s Story
7 Reconstructing Class: Discourse on Theft, Loot, Cheating, and Gifts
Fazmina s Story
8 The Politics of Corruption: Accusations and Rebuttals
Tharindu s Story
9 Citizenship and Ethnicity: The Tsunami and the Civil War
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
M INUTES AFTER the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck, family, friends, and strangers began to help the tsunami survivors. In the United States, the scholars who do research in Sri Lanka activated our personal and professional networks to send money and other aid overseas. Sincere thanks are due to all who supported the humanitarian efforts that followed this disaster.
Many people, particularly scholars whose field sites were directly affected by the tsunami, also felt an urgent need to know what had happened during the catastrophe and what was taking place in its aftermath. Dennis McGilvray, professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, took the lead in crafting a successful proposal for funding from the National Science Foundation (SES 05625260) to send to Sri Lanka a multidisciplinary research team with prior experience in the country and region. The NSF team performed a comparative study of relief and recovery operations in ethnically and regionally diverse locations along Sri Lanka s coast. The team initially consisted of Dennis, me, and Patricia Lawrence (all of us sociocultural anthropologists), Randall Kuhn (a demographer), and Alan Keenan (a political scientist). Timmo Gaasbeek and Georg Frerks (disaster studies specialists) joined us later. An edited volume entitled Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions contains the fruits of this collaborative venture (McGilvray and Gamburd 2010). Some elements of the argument that I make in this book appeared previously in my contribution to the earlier volume (M. Gamburd 2010). I am grateful to the research team, especially to Dennis, for encouragement and inspiration.
Researching the tsunami, I spent two and a half months in the Aluthgama-Ambalangoda area during the summer of 2005. I set out to chronicle and analyze the social repercussions of the disaster on the southwest coast. Initially, the research parameters of the collaborative NSF project guided my inquiry. The anthropological aspects of that project examined the role of social organizations such as family and caste structures, religious institutions, and political parties in relief and recovery efforts. I began by asking informants about these issues. Themes of power and politics emerged repeatedly in my initial conversations, and I systematically pursued those topics in further interviews. In April 2006, I returned to Sri Lanka for another four and a half months of research supported by a fellowship from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies.
In Sri Lanka, thanks are due to my research associate R. B. H. Siri de Zoysa, his wife D. Telsie Karunaratne, and Nilam Hamead. In 2005, Siri and I conducted sixty interviews and informal focus groups with a total of seventy-nine people in the Aluthgama-Ambalangoda area. In addition, we performed site visits and follow-up interviews with thirty-five people in 2006 and 2009. To find out about camps set up for tsunami-affected people, we spoke with the chief monks at three local Buddhist temples and the pastor of a church that hosted crowds of people fleeing the shoreline. Our interlocutors included four poverty alleviation program workers, two village-level government administrators, and a representative from the Balapitiya Divisional Secretariat; all of these officials administered government aid, and two of them helped run camps in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. On multiple occasions, Siri and I visited three areas with temporary shelters (two tsunami-affected villages where owners were rebuilding on their own land and one camp for people who had lived within the one-hundred-meter beachside exclusion zone and awaited new houses elsewhere) and two donor-built housing schemes. We also interviewed five local intermediaries who distributed money, goods, and (later) houses from international donors. In addition, we spoke with stakeholders about damage to local tourist hotels, garment factories, and the fishing industry and learned about the tsunami s effects on other economic sectors, such as construction. I owe a large debt to the many individuals who took time from their busy schedules to speak with me about their experiences during and after the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
I extend my thanks to my editorial team at Indiana University Press and to three anonymous reviewers, all of whom provided helpful suggestions and support. In Oregon, I thank my colleagues at Portland State University for covering my departmental obligations over the leave during which I did my research and the sabbatical during which I wrote this manuscript. And on the home front, Trish Walsh and Tonie Gatlin made it possible to balance work and family responsibilities. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my mother, Geraldine Gamburd, for her patience, understanding, and encouragement during the long hours I spent at the computer working on this manuscript. She was also a faithful sounding board and provided provocative insights as we discussed this project at the kitchen table.
Abbreviations, Names, and Sinhala Terms
bowser: water tanker.
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga: president of Sri Lanka, 1994-2005.
daana : almsgiving ceremony offered in commemoration of the dead. Relatives offer a daana after seven days, three months, and one year, and thereafter yearly on each death anniversary.
DS: Divisional secretariat, administrative unit smaller than a province or district but larger than a village. Also divisional secretary, administrator of a divisional secretariat.
GN: grama niladhari , village administrator, government functionary who serves clusters of about 250 families.
GoSL: Government of Sri Lanka.
ISGA: Interim Self Governing Authority, administrative arrangement suggested in 2003 by the LTTE.
JHU: Jathika Hela Urumaya (National Heritage Party), a political party with a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist philosophy.
JVP: Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People s Liberation Front), a political party with Sinhala Buddhist nationalist philosophy.
karma: concept in several South Asian religions regarding the aftereffects of actions. Merit, which affects life situations in the future, accrues or decreases depending on virtuous or nonvirtuous thoughts and actions.
kasippu : illicit liquor
kuDu : drugs; literally powder.
LTTE: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Tamil militant group (also known as the Tigers) that fought for a separate state in the North and East.
Mahinda Rajapaksa: prime minister of Sri Lanka, 2004-5; president of Sri Lanka, 2005-present.
Muhuda goDa galanawaa : The sea is flowing into the land. The Sinhala explanation for what happened during the tsunami event.
NGO: nongovernmental organization.
OIC: (police) officer in charge.
P-TOMS: Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure, a joint mechanism by which donor aid could be distributed both in the government-controlled South and in the LTTE-controlled North and East of Sri Lanka.
sil : religious practice observed on full moon (Poya) days.
SLFP: Sri Lanka Freedom Party, political party of Rajapaksa and Kumaratunga, one of the two major political parties in Sri Lanka. Often seen as central or left-leaning, with a progressivist economic policy. Associated in recent years with hawkish Sinhala Buddhist nationalist parties.
SLMM: Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, Scandina