Project

rural livelihoods; re-settlement; political geography; Sri Lanka; case study research; territorialization

Lead
Im Mai 2009 kam der blutige Bürgerkrieg mit der totalen Vernichtung der Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) zu einem Ende. In diesem Konflikt ging es, wie in vielen Bürgerkriegen, um einen Kampf über die Kontrolle und Herrschaft von Land und den damit verbundenen Ressourcen. Dieser Konflikt hatte sich vor allem an Siedlungsprogrammen entzündet, die singhalesische Siedler in den mehrheitlich von Tamilen und Muslimen bewohnten Nordosten der Insel ansiedelte. D
Lay summary
In diesem Forschungsvorhaben werden die „Geographien der Gewalt“ untersucht, die politischen und oft gewaltsamen Auseinandersetzungen um Landressourcen in Sri Lanka eingeschrieben sind. Das Projekt zeichnet erstens die historische „Genealogie“ (Entstehungsgeschichte) von Siedlungsprogrammen im Nordosten Sri Lankas nach, insbesondere wie diese zum Gegenstand sozialer und politischer Konflikte wurden. Zweitens untersucht das Projekt die soziale und politische Situation in diesen Siedlungsprogrammen, wie sie sich nach dem Ende des Bürgerkrieges zeigt. Dazu werden die Alltagspraktiken des Überlebens in diesen Siedlungen sowohl aus singhalesischer, als auch aus tamilischer und muslimischer Perspektive nachverfolgt. Drittens werden diese Alltagspraktiken im Kontext der Politischen Ökonomie des Nordostens nach dem Ende des Krieges eingeordnet. Fokus bleibt dabei die Auseinandersetzung um Zugang zu und Nutzung von Landressourcen. Empirische Feldforschung wird insbesondere in und um ein besonders umstrittenes und militarisiertes Siedlungsprogramm (Weli Oya) am Übergang von Nord- zur Ostprovinz durchgeführt und dabei in singhalesischen, tamilischen und muslimischen Siedlungen Interviews, Beobachtungen und Kartierungen vornehmen.   Das Projekt erarbeitet damit eine Fallstudie zur Politischen Geographie von Bürgerkriegsgesellschaften und seiner vielschichtigen "Geographien der Gewalt".Gleichzeitig liefert das Projekt wichtige empirische Erkenntnisse zu Landkonflikten im bürgerkriegsversehrten Nordosten Sri Lankas, die in die Planung von Entwicklungsvorhaben internationaler Hilfsorganisationen einfliessen kann.

Direct link to Lay Summary

Last update: 07.10.2013

Active participation

Self-organised

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

Number	Title	Start	Funding scheme

The proposed research is an extension of research previously conducted in Nepal on the differentiated impacts of various forms of violence, coercion and control on rural livelihoods in Mid-Western Nepal during and after the People’s War. In the second phase of this research (the proposed project), we shift our attention to a second research site, Sri Lanka’s Northeast, where we seek to examine how settlement schemes have produced different forms of violence, and contested claims over space before, during and after the civil war, that started in 1983 and ended in 2009 with the total annihilation of one of the conflict parties, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). We hereby build on the insights from our previous research in Nepal that processes of territorialization - negotiations over political claims to space and natural resources - are some of the most contentious issues over which (ethnic) conflict brakes out, but also over which struggles continue even after wars have ended. The aim of this research is to gain a better understanding of the geographies of violence that underpin processes of contentious territorialization. More specifically, with a view to our Sri Lanka case study, we seek to a) understand the historical genealogy of the “colonization” schemes, including: how political contestation emerged over these sites, how different political and military actors utilized settlers as political tools in this territorialization strategy, and b) explore the current situation in these contentious settlement sites after the ending of the civil war - looking at both Sinhalese as well as Tamil and Muslim perspectives, their everyday practices, livelihood strategies, and c) to link these practices and strategies to the political space within which these re-settlements take place. Field work will be conducted in a specific colonization site, Wel Oya, which has been highly contested as it was a militarized settlement scheme, designed to bring Sinhalese farmers into the predominantly Tamil and Muslim inhabited Northeast as a kind of buffer to the predominantly Sinhalese inhabited central and southern parts of the island. In the field work, we will investigate the struggles over claims to land from both, a Sinhalese and Tamil and Muslim perspective, conducting field work in Sinhalese as well as Tamil and Muslim inhabited sites. The research makes the following contributions: On an empirical level, it will provide an in-depth case study of the violent territorialization process in Sri Lanka’s Northeast. On a generic level, through a comparison of the Sri Lanka and the Nepal case, conducted in the first phase, the research will allow a comparative assessment of territorialization dynamics in two post-war transition phases in South Asia, thereby contributing to a typology of post-war territorialization processes. On a policy level, this research will provide important knowledge to review present land use and resettlement policies and programmes in the Northeast of Sri Lanka.