Colombo Institute » English Publications

South Asia Journal Volume 2

ci — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:51:40 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 2, is now available. While it is only available in Colombo at the moment, we hope to make it available at a limited number of outlets in selected South Asian cities over the next few months. Due to the delay of SAJC Vol 2, the third issue of the South Asia Journal, now in preparation, will be available by the end of this year as well.

Volume two carries essays from a range of interests that include Siraiki identity dynamics to readings of wayside shrines and women’s art in Sri Lanka. The contents of South Asia Journal, Volume 2:

Essays

The Journey towards ‘Siraiki’

Nukhbah T. Langah

What the Tree Said: An Ethnography of a Wayside Shrine in Sri Lanka

Sunil Goonasekera

Women Artists in Sri Lanka: Are they the Carriers of the Women’s Burden?

Anoli Perera

Reviews and Opinions

Cultural exchange and civil society in Asia: A perspective from India

Rustom Bharucha

Review of Meenakshi Thapan (Ed.,) ‘Transnational Migration and the Politics of dentity.’

Michael Collyer

Photo essay

A journey through intimate space

Jagath Dheerasekara

CALL FOR PAPERS!

ci — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:45:44 +0000

South Asia Journal for Culture Volume 4, 2010

Call for Papers, Reviews, Photo-essays and Opinion Essays

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the South Asia Journal for Culture, the Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture would like to invite all interested individuals to submit papers, reviews, photo-essays and opinion essays for consideration for publication in the fourth issue of the South Asia Journal for Culture. While no page limit is set for submissions, standard academic practices in the social sciences and humanities with regard to stylistic conventions such as references and footnotes are important considerations. More specifically, all references should be inserted in the main text within parentheses (eg. Last name of author, date of publication: page number/s) and the complete reference details of all texts should be presented at the end of the paper within a bibliography. All essays should opt for endnotes where necessary and refrain from the use of footnotes. For additional details on general stylistic matters, potential writers can write to the Colombo Institute or refer the Chicago Manual of Style (15th Revised Edition, 2003).

More about the journal….

Our effort is to produce a specialized publication which combines crucial features of a journal and a magazine that is open to serious scholarship and exchange of ideas across the region and beyond, on issues that are of central importance to the region with regard to the broad areas covered by the key terms ‘society’ and ‘culture.’ The idea is to enhance access of South Asian writers to a journal that is regionally published, regionally edited and managed and is responsive to intellectual needs, interests and concerns in the areas covered by its thematic focus. The journal is conceived as a regional forum for disseminating and debating ideas across the geographic and national boundaries of South Asia, and beyond. However, it is not meant to be restricted to and parochialized on the basis of this regional or geographic identity.

In terms of conventional disciplinary parameters, the journal would accommodate contributions from the fields of sociology, social anthropology, history, archeology, art history, cultural studies and other related fields of study. More precisely, within and beyond these areas, its interest would be in culture and its extensions that would focus on cultural theory, art history and different domains of the ‘arts’ such as theatre, visual arts, architecture, film, music, dance, and the politics of these domains.

It is a refereed journal and is published annually. Any individual can write to the journal as long as their contributions are in tune with the interests of the journal, relevant to the region and meet with the journal’s specific publishing criteria. The idea for the journal is supported by the Theertha International Artists Collective in Colombo that also publishes its own journal called ArtLab in both Sinhala and Tamil. Khoj International in Delhi further supports the idea. The institutional responsibility for the journal is vested in the Colombo Institute. The journal is produced in Colombo, while Khoj and Colombo Institute facilitate its distribution in the region and beyond.

Deadline for submissions: September 12, 2010

Editorial Board of the Journal

§ Sasanka Perera, Senior Lecturer (Editor), Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Colombo.

§ Salima Hashmi, Professor and Dean, School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

§ Jagath Weerasinghe, Professor, Post Graduate Institute of Archeology, Colombo.

§ T. Shanaathanan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna, Jaffna.

§ Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists Association and Curator, Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi.

§ Roma Chatterji, Reader, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, Delhi.

§ Tariq Jazeel, Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield.

Contact details of the Journal

Mailing Address: 4/7, Jeswell Place, Mirihana, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

Email: sasankap@sltnet.lk, colomboinst@gmail.com

The funders for volume 3 and 4 are Arts Collaboratory, a Hivos and DOEN Foundation program for visual artists’ initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America and for exchange with visual arts organizations in The Netherlands in cooperation with Mondriaan Foundation.

CALL FOR PAPERS!

ci — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:31:23 +0000

South Asia Journal for Culture Volume 3

Call for Papers, Reviews, Photo-essays and Opinion Essays

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the South Asia Journal for Culture, the Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture would like to invite all interested individuals to submit papers, reviews, photo-essays and opinion essays for consideration for publication in the third issue of the South Asia Journal for Culture. While no page limit is set for submissions, standard academic practices in the social sciences and humanities with regard to stylistic conventions such as references and footnotes are important considerations. More specifically, all references should be inserted in the main text within parentheses (eg. Last name of author, date of publication: page number/s) and the complete reference details of all texts should be presented at the end of the paper within a bibliography. All essays should opt for endnotes where necessary and refrain from the use of footnotes. For additional details on general stylistic matters, potential writers can write to the Colombo Institute or refer the Chicago Manual of Style (15th Revised Edition, 2003).

More about the journal….

It is a refereed journal and is published annually. Any individual can write to the journal as long as their contributions are in tune with the interests of the journal, relevant to the region and meet with the journal’s specific publishing criteria. The idea for the journal is supported by the Theertha International Artists Collective in Colombo that also publishes its own journal called ArtLab in both Sinhala and Tamil. Khoj International in Delhi further supports the idea. The institutional responsibility for the journal is vested in the Colombo Institute. The journal is produced in Colombo, while Khoj and Colombo Institute facilitate its distribution in the region and beyond. The initial funds for the publication have come from the Colombo Institute, Theertha International and Hivos to ensure that the first and second issues (2007 and 2008) are published smoothly.

Deadline for submissions: June 30 2009

Editorial Board of the Journal

· Sasanka Perera, Senior Lecturer (Editor), Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Colombo.

· Salima Hashmi, Professor and Dean, School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

· Muraleedharan Tharayil, Reader & Head, PG Dept. of English Literature, St. Aloysius College, affiliated to the University of Calicut, Elthuruth, Trichur, Kerala.

· Jagath Weerasinghe, Professor, Post Graduate Institute of Archeology, Colombo.

· Sharon Bell, Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Canberra, Canberra.

· T. Shanaathanan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna, Jaffna.

· Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists Association and Curator, Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi.

· Roma Chatterji, Reader, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, Delhi.

Contact details of the Journal

Mailing Address: 4/7, Jeswell Place, Mirihana, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

Email: sasankap@sltnet.lk, colomboinst@gmail.com

South Asia Journal for Culture: Pakistan Launch

ci — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:38:17 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture held its Pakistan launch on October 26 2008 at the Goethe Institut, Karachchi, organized by the Goethe Institut and Nukta Art. It was organized as part of the South Asia art critics seminar titled ‘The Anxious Century: Discourses Waiting to be Born.’

Sasanka Perera addressed the audience. Following is an excerpt of his address:

“…when the South Asia Journal for Culture is being launched in Karachi, let me also talk a little bit about the politics of marginality because in many ways this journal is an idea that came into existence from within the politics and experiences of marginality as well as the frustrations contextualized earlier. For us, that is Colombo Institute and Theertha International Artists Collective, as two organizations that have worked very closely for the last three years, marginality is a fact of life even though it is not something we have ever considered a domain within which we would be forever imprisoned. In fact, in retrospect, it is clear that it has been the most fundamental force that has invigorated us to do most of what we have done in recent times. What I mean by marginality for us worked at two levels: due to the political changes that took place in Sri Lanka since the 1960s and the resultant brain drain to the former colonial centers, much of the work in the social sciences and humanities produced in Sri Lanka, particularly in the local languages, tended to be pedestrian at best. Most local journals of quality folded up or their work was severely restricted and downgraded. This was one marginality within which we had to work: in other words, we had to work within a relative lack of stimulation in the local intellectual environment. The second marginality was far more encompassing. We found it difficult to access regional and global journals and publishers due to the restrictive work of intellectual gate-keepers who seem to take pride in thinking, experiencing and feeling on our behalf. In this same context, it was not unusual to have conferences in the region itself that were supposedly South Asian in focus but politically marginal entities such as Sri Lanka were often represented by postcolonials who had fled from the periphery to the centers long ago, or were not represented at all. Again, there was a problem of representation of both our experiences and our thinking. But these marginalities did not necessarily translate into mediocrity for those few who were perhaps mad enough to create alternate structures and process.

“Therefore this journal is the result of felt needs and anticipated political and ideological expectations and the logical culmination of a specific history. Talking of history, make no mistake — this is a Sri Lankan effort given that we were responding to locally felt marginalities and frustrations on the one hand. But it was also a South Asian initiative on the other because we were very keen and conscious that the knowledge produced within South Asian and on South Asia should also be known widely in South Asia as well as globally. This is not a mere yearning for a collective South Asian cultural and intellectual identity. More broadly, this was a matter of taking stock of what we think, what we critique, what we question and what we learn about ourselves and the world and finding means to make this knowledge part of the global academic discourse as well. “

Alternate Discourses on Development: Monograph Series

ci — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:10:28 +0000

“Development has become the grand strategy through which the transformation of the not-yet-too-rational Latin-American/Third World subjectivity is to be achieved. In this way, longstanding cultural practices and meanings – as well as the social relations in which they are embedded – are altered. The consequences of this are enormous, to the extent that the very basis of community aspirations and desires is modified. Thus the effect of the introduction of development has to be seen not only in terms of its social and economic impact, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in relation to the cultural meanings and practices they upset or modify.”

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 Academic

ci — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:43:34 +0000

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

ci — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:03:33 +0000

Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in the Kandyan highlands and through a presentation of individuals’ personal narratives, this book (second edition, 2005) by Indika Bulankulame explores how individuals deal with and address a past filled with political violence and trauma with a focus on women and children (ISBN 955-1493-06-0).

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

South Asia Journal for Culture: India Launch

ci — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:30:00 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture held its India launch on September 8^th 2008 at Ananth Art Gallery, New Delhi as part of the South Asia Exhibition ‘Six Degrees of Separation: Chaos, Congruence and Collaboration’ organized by Kohj International Artists’ Association.

Sasanka Perera addressed the gathering.

South Asia Journal for Culture: Colombo Launch

ci — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:43:13 +0000

South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 1 was released at the book launch held at the Goethe Institute on 28th August 2008 with the collaboration of Colombo Institute and Theertha. The event was chaired by Prof. Jagath Weerasinghe and the keynote speech was delivered by Dr. Qadri Ismail, professor of English, University of Minnesota.

Colombo Institute books on display

South Asia Journal for Culture

admin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:18:14 +0000

The South Asia Journal is an annual refereed journal published jointly by the Colombo Institute and the Theertha International Artists’ Collective. It is open to scholarship and exchange of ideas across the region and beyond, on issues that are of central importance to the region that fall under the key term ‘culture’.

The idea of the journal is to enhance access of South Asian writers to a journal that is regionally managed and published and is responsive to intellectual needs, interests and concerns covered by the thematic focus of ‘culture’. The term is broadly defined to encompass contributions from more conventional disciplinary parameters such as sociology, social anthropology, history, archeology, art history and cultural studies to the more specific domains of ‘art’ such as theatre, visual arts, architecture, film, music, dance and literature.

Below is the cover of Issue 1 of the South Asia Journal for Culture and its contents.

Essays

Bawa and Beyond: Reading Sri Lanka’s Tropical Modern Architecture

byTariq Jazeel

Download PDF tariq_jazeel_essay_sajc_vol_1_2007

Orality, Inscription and the Creation of a New Lore

by Roma Chatterji

Download PDF roma-chatterji-essay-sajc-vol-1-2007

Public Space and Monuments: Politics of Sanctioned and Contested Memory

by Sasanka Perera

Download PDF sasanka-perera-essay-sajc-vol-1-2007

Reviews & Opinions