Oxford University South Asian Studies S.
1 total work
How can anthropology, with its emphasis on local knowledge and local meaning, contribute to the understanding of policies in complex, modern societies? This book employs ethnographic data from one village in an effort to understand broader problems in the troubled policies of Sri Lanka. In particular, it investigates two related phenomena which lie behind the growing crises of Sri Lanka's democratic institutions: the high degree of political participation in rural areas and the tenacious hold of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. An account of village politics in the early 1980s is complemented by a description of village Buddhism and the attempted re-creation of a local sense of community through the rituals and symbols of Buddhist nationalism. These events are interpreted in the context of the broad processes of material and cultural change in the colonial and post-colonial era.