War, migration and modernity: The micro-politics of the Hijab in Northeastern Sri Lanka

Since 2009, Sri Lanka's formative post-war years have increasingly been coloured by the intensification of militant Sinhala-Buddhist movements. In particular, the popularisation of costumes such as the abaya and variants of the hijab were often instrumentalised as a discursive battlefield, in agitating against what was framed as constituting a rising tide in Middle Eastern Islamic radicalism. This paper reveals how majoritarian ethno-nationalist discourses have served to erase or flatten nuances with respect to ongoing "veiling" practices. In particular, it explores how diverse women articulate motivations governing their more recent adoption of the abaya in the context of radicalised social othering. With its focus on the conflict-affected northeast that is home to a significant number of Sri Lanka's "east coast Muslims", the study draws upon diverse costuming practices as a lens to interrogate the gendered politics of ethno-religious difference and post-war nationhood. It reveals how socio-economic and political transformations during wartime, coupled with experiences of transnational labour migration and the democratisation of women's formal education, lent the abaya a multiplicity of symbolic meanings and quotidian practices, which at times were seen to transcend faith-based sensibilities. It is argued that while meanings around spiritual piety and socio-moral propriety are often presented as a false dichotomy in expressing motivations around veiling, their conceptual distinctions remain compellingly real and are often tactically invoked by diverse women in negotiating the intensely militarised, class and gender-stratified spaces of the northeast. The paper draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the District of Trincomalee, Sri Lanka during the first quarter of 2013

Tidal Cities: Pedagogical (Mis)adventures in Game-based Visualizations of Adaptation Planning and Urban Justice

Tidal Cities was an interdisciplinary, transnational experiment that brought together an environmental anthropologist, an urban geographer, and two landscape architects/artists. We aimed at co-creating a visualization-based pedagogical tool for contemplating and teaching manifold relations between the city and the sea, drawing on ethnographic material from Metro Manila and Jakarta. The project was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its digital format integrated an immersive role play component to spark further debate among tertiary students. Players were encouraged to critically reflect on and engage with trajectories and contestations around coastal planning and urban placemaking, particularly in spaces of informality beset by recurrent flooding, tenurial insecurity, and dispossession. While engaging with the poetics and politics of 2D visual representation, we reflect on the thinking behind the game´s pedagogical co-design and a number of paradoxes that arose from two test-runs with departmental students, researchers, and teaching faculty in Bremen, Germany.&nbsp

The ‘Wickedness’ of Governing Land Subsidence: Policy Perspectives From Urban Southeast Asia

Drawing on Jakarta, Metro Manila and Singapore as case studies, we explore the paradox of slow political action in addressing subsiding land, particularly along high-density urban coastlines with empirical insights from coastal geography, geodesy analysis, geology, and urban planning. In framing land subsidence as a classic ‘wicked’ policy problem, and also as a hybrid geological and anthropogenic phenomenon that is unevenly experienced across urban contexts, the paper uses a three-step analysis. First, satellite-derived InSAR maps are integrated with Sentinel-1A data in order to reveal the socio-temporal variability of subsidence rates which in turn pose challenges in uniformly applying regulatory action. Second, a multi-sectoral mapping of diverse policies and practices spanning urban water supply, groundwater extraction, land use zoning, building codes, tenurial security, and land reclamation reveal the extent to which the broader coastal governance landscape remains fragmented and incongruous, particularly in arresting a multi-dimensional phenomenon such as subsidence. Finally, in reference to distinct coastal identities of each city–the ‘Sinking Capital’ (Jakarta), ‘Fortress Singapore’, and the ‘Disaster Capital’ (Manila) the paper illustrates how land subsidence is portrayed across the three metropolises in markedly similar ways: as a reversible, quasi-natural, and/or a highly individualized problem

An Optimization Model for Technology Adoption of Marginalized Smallholders: Theoretical Support for Matching Technological and Institutional Innovations

The rural poor are often marginalized and restricted from access to markets, public services and information, mainly due to poor connections to transport and communication infrastructure. Despite these unfavorable conditions, agricultural technology investments are believed to unleash unused human and natural capital potentials and alleviate poverty by productivity growth in agriculture. Based on the concept of marginality we develop a theoretical model which shows that these expectations for productivity growth are conditional on human and natural capital stocks and transaction costs. Our model categorizes the rural farm households below the poverty line into four segments according to labor and land endowments. Policy recommendations for segment and location specific investments are provided. Theoretical findings indicate that adjusting rural infrastructure and institutions to reduce transaction costs is a more preferable investment strategy than adjusting agricultural technologies to marginalized production conditions

Methodological Review and Revision of the Global Hunger Index

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional measure of hunger that considers three dimensions: (1) inadequate dietary energy supply, (2) child undernutrition, and (3) child mortality. The initial version of the index included the following three, equally weighted, non-standardized (i.e. unscaled) indicators that are expressed in percent: the proportion of the population that is calorie deficient (FAO's prevalence of undernourishment); the prevalence of underweight in children under five; and the under-five mortality rate. Several decisions regarding the original formulation of the GHI are reconsidered in light of recent discussions in the nutrition community and suggestions by other researchers, namely the choice of the prevalence of child underweight for the child undernutrition dimension, the use of the under-five mortality rate from all causes for the child mortality dimension, and the decision not to standardize the component indicators prior to aggregation. Based on an exploration of the literature, data availability and comparability across countries, and correlation analyses with indicators of micronutrient deficiencies, the index is revised as follows: (1) The child underweight indicator is replaced with child stunting and child wasting; (2) The weight of one third for the child undernutrition dimension is shared equally between the two new indicators; and (3) The component indicators of the index are standardized prior to aggregation, using fixed thresholds set above the maximum values observed in the data set. The under-five mortality rate from all causes is retained, because estimating under-five mortality attributable to nutritional deficiencies would be very costly and make the production of the GHI dependent on statistics about cause-specific mortality rates by country and year that are published irregularly, while the expected benefits are limited

Between Hope and Hype: Traditional Knowledge(s) Held by Marginal Communities

Traditional Knowledge (TK) systems have always been integral to the survival and adaptation of human societies. Yet, they enjoy a fairly recent recognition and popularization by scientists, the media, politicians, corporates and the wider public. In this paper we present a typology of key driving forces behind the popularization of TK held by marginal communities: an equality preference motive, a value motive, a compliance motive, a scarcity motive and a strategic motive. Secondly, through the use of a simple model, we discuss the hype's impact on marginal communities. Moreover, we critically assess the outcome of a number of policy instruments that intend, in part, to protect traditional knowledge bases of such communities. Our analysis primarily draws upon secondary literature; policy documents and case studies within economics, the social sciences, conservation biology and legal studies. We argue that whilst the public and institutional hype around TK may have resulted in its prioritization within international conventions and frameworks, its institutionalization may have adversely impacted marginalized communities, and in particular contexts, unintentionally led to the creation of 'new' marginals. We purport that the traditional innovation incentive motive does not hold for protecting TK within a private property regime. Instead we identify a conservation incentive motive and a distribution motive that justify deriving policy instruments that focus on TK to protect marginal communities

Social Safety Nets for Food and Nutritional Security in India

This paper brings together existing literature on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNRGEA) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India, offering a narrative review of the evidence on impacts on food security, health and nutrition of beneficiaries. Both programs operate on a large scale and have the capacity to impact the factors leading to undernutrition. It is evident that despite the deficiencies in implementation, both the MGNREGA and the PDS are inclusive and reach the poor and the marginalized who are likely to also experience greater undernutrition and poor health. Data challenges have however prevented researchers from conducting studies that assess the ultimate impact of these two large-scale programs on health and nutrition. The evidence that exists suggests largely positive impacts indicating a clear potential to make these programs more nutrition sensitive not just by incorporating elements that would explicitly address nutritional concerns but also by directing specific attention to innovations that strengthen critical complementarities and synergies that exist between the two programs

www.zef.de War, Migration and Modernity:

Since 2009, Sri Lanka´s formative post-war years have increasingly been coloured by the intensification of militant Sinhala-Buddhist movements. In particular, the popularisation of costumes such as the abaya and variants of the hijab were often instrumentalised as a discursive battlefield, in agitating against what was framed as constituting a rising tide in Middle Eastern Islamic radicalism. This paper reveals how majoritarian ethno-nationalist discourses have served to erase or flatten nuances with respect to ongoing “veiling ” practices. In particular, it explores how diverse women articulate motivations governing their more recent adoption of the abaya in the context of radicalised social othering. With its focus on the conflict-affected northeast that is home to a significant number of Sri Lanka’s “east coast Muslims”, the study draws upon diverse costuming practices as a lens to interrogate the gendered politics of ethno-religious difference and post-war nationhood. It reveals how socio-economic and political transformations during wartime, coupled with experiences of transnational labour migration and the democratisation of women´s formal education, lent the abaya a multiplicity of symbolic meanings and quotidian practices, which at times were seen to transcend faith-based sensibilities. It is argued that while meanings around spiritua