| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Until the 1980s, the secluded Tamil-speaking region of eastern Sri Lanka was of anthropological interest primarily because of its interspersed Hindu and Muslim communities and a unique matrilineal kinship and household system. Since then, however, the region has become a zone of conflict and ethnic terror between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels, and more recently it has suffered tragically from the December 2004 tsunami. This essay traces the effects of these changing fieldwork circumstances on the work of one ethnographer who has studied the region for three decades. Like much recent anthropology in Sri Lanka, this long-term ethnographic project seeks useful ways to address "public" issues of civil war and natural catastrophe while still pursuing the academic goals of basic anthropological research.
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