Tsunami Recovery in Sri Lanka: Ethnic and Regional Dimensions

The Indian Ocean Tsunami, which devastated 70% of Sri Lanka’s coastline and killed an estimated 31,000 people was remarkable both in the magnitude of the disaster and in the scale of the relief and recovery operations mounted by national and international agencies. The disastrous ocean wave caused by an undersea subduction earthquake off the western coast of Sumatra struck the coast lines of at least eight nations, including Sri Lanka. This book explores the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, where coastal communities that are significantly different in terms of social structure, economy, language, religion, kinship, and cultural identity were affected. In addition, a separatist guerrilla movement has been fighting the central government of Sri Lanka for decades, so Sri Lanka’s tsunami relief and recovery operations took place in a situation of regional ethnic conflict.
The book is framed within this larger political and social context and it explores to what extent “culture matters” in grassroots responses to a natural disaster. From a multidisciplinary perspective, chapters by experts in the field analyse regional and ethnic patterns of post-tsunami reconstruction according to different sectors of Sri Lankan society. The book is a timely and useful contribution to the literature by demonstrating the key importance of comprehending the local cultural contexts of disaster recovery processes.

Dennis B. McGilvray is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder. His research focuses on Tamil-speaking Hindus and Muslims of eastern Sri Lanka, including caste identities, matrilineal family patterns, popular religious traditions, and ethnic conflict. He is the author of Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Duke 2008)

Michele R. Gamburd is Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University. She has performed ethnographic research in Sri Lanka since 1992 and her theoretical interests focus on globalization, gender relations, violence, and social change. Her most recent book is Breaking the Ashes: The Culture of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka (Cornell 2008)