Putting houses in place: re-building communities in post-tsunami, Sri Lanka

Ruwanpura, K.N. (2009) Putting houses in place: re-building communities in post-tsunami, Sri Lanka. Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management.

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper interrogates the geographies of resettlement and reconstruction, both temporary and permanent shelters, which is fundamental to rebuilding tsunami-affected communities. War and ethnic cleavages are an endemic feature of Sri Lanka’s social polity. Uneven development processes too are visible. There is, therefore, a need to pay attention to the spaces of inequality. This paper draws upon in-depth interviews and participant observation research done in Eastern and Southern Sri Lanka. It argues that communities’ concerns and anxieties regarding displacement and resettlement tended to be articulated against prevailing fault-lines of war and inequality. This is the backdrop against which communities negotiated the recovery process. My fieldwork shows how it is critical to understand that disaster and development relief should be ingrained within context specificities. These efforts recognize the embeddings of the social processes of "putting houses in place".

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