Arturo Escobar, 1988 in Power and Visibility: Development and the Intervention of and Management of the Third World.

Post-Tsunami relief in eastern Sri Lanka. Photo: R. L. Stirrat

The dominant development practice, the discourse that legitimizes and rationalizes it, the knowledge, models and agents for development mostly emanate from the global north. This is a formulation that Sri Lankan politicians, civil servants, unimaginative academics, many vocal civil society activists and members of the public have also gullibly gulped down over the past century or so. The issue here is not the fact that many countries in South Asia, including Sri Lanka, need development aid and sometimes some good advice. The problem is that, in many situations, decision-makers do not make any serious, deliberated choice with regard to what kind of development is needed in a particular country. Instead, the process is mostly one of meekly awaiting and eventually welcoming the imposition of development approaches and paradigms from elsewhere. This is certainly the case in Sri Lanka. To be sure, Sri Lankans hear all the right buzzwords – participatory decision-making and bottom-up approach aid architecture and so on. But behind this attractive façade, the ‘beneficiaries’ of such ‘enlightened’ development projects are in real terms perceived as without a sense of agency.  In Sri Lanka, and in many other parts of South Asia, people are entrapped in the hegemonic development discourse and dominant development paradigms without even realizing it. At the same time, the diktats of this discourse are often uncritically accepted as what ‘the people’ truly want. In any event, a serious critique of development will not come from the main development agencies or the contemporary development specialists. It is in this context, and to address this absence that the monograph series was developed in 2007.

The series editors are: Sasanka Perera (University of Colombo and Colombo Institute, I.V. Edirisinghe (University of Colombo) and Tudor Silva (University of Peradeniya).  The following issues have been published so far:     

Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Representations of Development Personnel by R.L. Stirrat (ISBN 955-1493-07-9)

Parochial Cosmopolitanism and the Power of Nostalgia: Some Manifestations of Development Practice by R.L. Stirrat and D. Rajak (ISBN 955-1493-08-7)

Alternate Space: Trivial Writings of an Academi by Sasanka Perera

Alternate Space: Trivial Writings of an Academic

consists of 48 essays on different aspects of Sri Lankan society, culture and politics originally written to the Sri Lankan national daily The Island under the regular column Alternate Space by Sasanka Perera between January 2002 and January 2003, and less regularly between January and May 2004.  The book version was published in 2005.

 

Reviews of Alternate Space

‘Contradictory Situations Created by Erroneous Actions’

“— Reflecting on a vast array of events and traversing on the attitudes of our people, the author has vividly and with crystal clarity sometimes with regret, at other times with a tinge of humor together with darts of biting sarcasm exposes how Sri Lankan leaders and people have perceived and tackled some of the very sensitive and explosive problems facing the country —“

“— Trivial Writings of Sasanka Perera leads us to a world of reality and prods us to voice our need for a more vibrant and dignified phase of history  to make a comfortable and balanced transition from pre-modernity to modernity.  The erudite as well as the general reader, the elite and the commoner, and especially the politicians and their followers should read this book and reflect on the message this book gives us —“

Peter Perera

Daily Mirror, 7^th July 2005, Colombo

The Witchery of Trifles

“— Those like myself who have enjoyed his essays in The Island  will readily agree that while drawing the readers to idiosyncrasies of Lankan behavior, his often pungent-caustic observations have serious theoretical and ethnographic underpinnings. But he treads lightly without seeking to overwhelm the general reader with the weight of scholarship or the airs of the exalted academic —“

“— Sasanka Perera covers the trivial as well as the troubling aspects of our national socio-cultural and political landscape.  His essays provide lighthearted humor as well as stuff for serious reflection — Hopefully, Trivial Writings will jolt its readers awake to see through the piteous pretensions of those in positions of power and the ‘witchery of trifles which obscures great things.’”

Nalin Swaris

The Island, 18^th June 2005, Colombo

The Work of a Public Intellectual

“— in the island of Sri Lanka, there is hardly any contemporary academician or scholar who works in English who dares to function as a public intellectual.  It is against this regressive background that I place the collection of essays by Sasanka Perera who has taken up the role of a public intellectual.  Perera, while being an academic and a scholar, has broken out of the cool comfort zone of scholarly discussions and investigations, and has entered the hazardous public domain with a series of writings that directly intervene with the current political moment. His writings are not passive; he takes positions and makes gestures of judgment. His writings are not just to be read, but to be acted upon — Perera’s essays pierce the chimera of the urban elite society as the works of a public intellectual ideally should.”

Jagath Weerasinghe, blurb to Alternate Space: Trivial Writing of an Academic

Frozen Tears: Political Violence, Women, Children and Problems of Trauma in Southern Sri Lanka by Indika Bulankulame

 Reviews of the books:

“One of Bulankulame’s central contentions is that in the eagerness to ‘move on’, rebuild and forget, the deeply debilitating effects of the trauma experienced by this group is suppressed, over-ridden and lost. She addresses this issue squarely and offers an important service in the bigger project of bringing to light what it means in social and cultural terms to have survived violence of this order. Through the simple medium of relating and analysing stories told by those who were left behind when the unrest subsided, she describes the struggle to reconcile personal grief and suffering with the ongoing difficulties of practical social existence.”

“This monograph marks a small but important attempt to understand the longer term and deeply personal consequences of political violence in Sri Lanka and maybe, somewhere in the future, it will help to unfreeze the tears which remain unable to flow and highlight the ‘institutional amnesia’ which currently perpetuates this state of affairs.”

Dr. Robert Simpson, The Sunday Times, June 12^th 2005, Colombo