Sri Lanka Studies: a discursive approach to development and conflict

Abstract

The title of this article embodies in essence the main issues my good friend and colleague, the late prof. R.M. Ranaweera Banda, focused on in his work, most notably his dissertation which was posthumously published earlier this year under the title ‘Transnational Culture and Expert Knowledge: Responses from a Rural Community in Sri Lanka’ (Ranaweera Banda 2013). Around a case study of the village Denagama in Southern Sri Lanka, he deals in this book extensively with issues of knowledge production, both globally in terms of transnational culture, and in the Sri Lankan context from pre-colonial and colonial times to the post-independence era. In the contemporaneous setting he specially elaborates on the role development plays. He describes how development as a knowledge and practice is promulgated and promoted by international development experts, local elites and local bureaucrats, and interacts with the village that, however, shows its own agency in appropriating or rejecting part of the development package offered.