Temporality of disasters: the politics of women's livelihoods 'after' the tsunami in Sri Lanka
Temporality of disasters: the politics of women's livelihoods 'after' the tsunami in Sri Lanka
The devastation caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka is represented as a ‘natural disaster’. Yet, the tsunami did not occur in a sociopolitical and historical vacuum. How people responded to the tsunami, the challenges of and attitudes to relocation and post-tsunami livelihoods, were/are shaped by uneven development, social exclusion and ethnonationalist war. All these responses are embedded in structures of gender, caste, class, and ethnicity. The tsunami, thus, brought to the forefront preexisting inequalities, showing up complexities in the temporality of disasters. Drawn from fieldwork in two coastal areas in the Southern and Eastern provinces, this paper shows how gendered structures within the local political economy influenced the ways that institutional actors as well as the displaced communities and women initially devised livelihood strategies. These reactions show how place matters as much as preexisting gendered political economy conditions and reveal the complex ways in which women continue to mediate and negotiate everyday responses in the aftermath of a ‘natural’ disaster.
ethnic dynamics, conflict, livelihoods, tsunami, women, sri lanka
325-340
Ruwanpura, Kanchana N.
6ac0c791-abeb-484a-b747-1ecc99d3b800
November 2008
Ruwanpura, Kanchana N.
6ac0c791-abeb-484a-b747-1ecc99d3b800
Ruwanpura, Kanchana N.
(2008)
Temporality of disasters: the politics of women's livelihoods 'after' the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 29 (3), .
(doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2008.00327.x).
Abstract
The devastation caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka is represented as a ‘natural disaster’. Yet, the tsunami did not occur in a sociopolitical and historical vacuum. How people responded to the tsunami, the challenges of and attitudes to relocation and post-tsunami livelihoods, were/are shaped by uneven development, social exclusion and ethnonationalist war. All these responses are embedded in structures of gender, caste, class, and ethnicity. The tsunami, thus, brought to the forefront preexisting inequalities, showing up complexities in the temporality of disasters. Drawn from fieldwork in two coastal areas in the Southern and Eastern provinces, this paper shows how gendered structures within the local political economy influenced the ways that institutional actors as well as the displaced communities and women initially devised livelihood strategies. These reactions show how place matters as much as preexisting gendered political economy conditions and reveal the complex ways in which women continue to mediate and negotiate everyday responses in the aftermath of a ‘natural’ disaster.
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Published date: November 2008
Keywords:
ethnic dynamics, conflict, livelihoods, tsunami, women, sri lanka
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Local EPrints ID: 55378
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/55378
ISSN: 0129-7619
PURE UUID: 9b08c22b-d509-4129-9d66-74ed2bbf2bdb
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Date deposited: 06 Aug 2008
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 10:54
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Author:
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
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