Bastin, Rohan (2005) Hindu temples in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict: capture and excess. Social Analysis, 49 (1). pp. 45-66.

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Abstract

Developing Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of territorialization and the apparatus of capture, this article explores the role that Sri Lankan Hindu temples have played in the formation of ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Analyzing three contemporary events, the article introduces ways in which many different Sri Lankans (Sinhalese and Tamil) interpret their country's predicament and seek to resolve or prolong it. The events also reveal how scholarship becomes entangled in ethnic nationalism. I then examine in greater detail a village in which temple construction was a critical feature of identity formation during the creation of Sri Lanka as a colonialist and capitalist bureaucratic space. Through this account, I argue that the formation of polarized ethnicity in Sri Lanka is the product of multiple refractive forces, of which temples are one, and not the end result of a singular colonialist bureaucratic agency.

Item ID:	14083
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1558-5727
Keywords:	ethnic conflict; Hindu temples; Sri Lanka
Date Deposited:	30 Nov 2010 06:33
FoR Codes:	16 STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY > 1601 Anthropology > 160104 Social and Cultural Anthropology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	94 LAW, POLITICS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES > 9403 International Relations > 940399 International Relations not elsewhere classified @ 40% 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9504 Religion and Ethics > 950404 Religion and Society @ 30% 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9504 Religion and Ethics > 950405 Religious Structures and Ritual @ 30%
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