A Dream of Return

The promise of return which has been embraced by Muslim refugees from Northern Sri Lanka may be ephemeral. Nonetheless, dreams of returning are vital in attempts to repair the past and the wounds of the Eviction. The author shows that through dreaming the prospect of a peaceful multi-ethnic northern Sri Lanka remains imaginable, thus allowing for at least one ray of optimism concerning the future of a deeply troubled society

The effect of exercise on vastus medialis oblique muscle architecture: An ultrasound investigation.

The vastus medialis oblique (VMO) is thought to be implicated in patellofemoral pain (PFP), and weakness in this portion of the vastus medialis muscle may lead to PFP. Management includes physiotherapy to strengthen the VMO. Although this intervention has been shown to be effective, the effects on the architecture of the muscle have not been investigated. This study aims to determine the changes in VMO architecture following a program of strengthening exercises. Twenty-one male participants underwent an initial ultrasound scan to measure the fiber angle and the insertion level of the VMO on the patella. Each subject then undertook a 6-week quadriceps femoris strengthening program; the scan and measurements were then repeated. A significant increase in VMO fiber angle and insertion length was observed. Average fiber angle increased by 5.24°; average insertion length increased by 2.7 mm. There was found to be a significant negative correlation between the initial values and the degree of change. Pearson's coefficient of correlation for measurements of patella length taken before and after exercise was 0.921, indicating a high degree of reliability. There was a significant positive correlation between fiber angle change and declared level of compliance (R2 = 0.796). The results reported here indicate that physiotherapy leads to a significant change in VMO morphology. Given the inverse correlation noted between initial architectural parameters and the degree of change, we suggest that patients who would benefit most from physiotherapy can be identified in clinic using a simple ultrasound technique

Drawing-writing culture: the truth-fiction spectrum of an ethno-graphic novel on the Sri Lankan civil war and migration

With our focus on an “ethno‐graphic novel” on the Sri Lankan civil war and the forcible displacement and migration of Tamil survivors, we make two main propositions while reflecting on the “graphic narrative turn” that has emerged in anthropology in recent years. First, we inscribe drawing into the “writing of cultures” where words have held a superior status in ethnographic representations. Rather than seeing drawings as perceptive tools for recording scenes in fieldwork alone, we extend them to a representational practice where they can have a deep, intricate, and equivalent entanglement with words to create synchronous affective intensities among a larger audience. Our second proposal follows Jean Rouch on cinéma vérité to interrogate assumptions about truth and fiction as portrayed by film representations. We propose a theory and practice for graphic novel production that we have termed vérités graphiques (literally, graphic realities). This describes the collaborative and interactive engagement with people's contributions and views, and their distillation and fictionalization through the ethno‐graphic form. We diverge from cinéma vérité, however, by highlighting a truth‐fiction spectrum that further challenges the presumed objectivity of what is seen, experienced, co‐created, and revealed

On sacred ground:the political performance of religious responsibility

Parts of this paper were presented at the 2013 Annual Conference of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS); at a ‘Post-War Sri Lanka’ workshop at the London School of Economics; and at a workshop on Muslims in Sri Lanka held at the University of Edinburgh.April 2012: In Dambulla, a bustling market town built around a crossroads on the northern cusp of Sri Lanka's central province, a mosque was attacked by a procession of protestors led by the chief priest of the nearby Buddhist temple. Ostensibly the protest was against the presence of the mosque on the grounds that it had been built in an exclusively Buddhist ‘sacred area’. Beginning with an empirical account of the attack on the Dambulla mosque, this paper argues that the preservation of what is deemed to be ‘sacred’ in Sri Lanka provides an effective idiom through which certain religious figures can intelligibly articulate political claims whilst maintaining critical distance from the dirty world of ‘Politics’. Corollary to this, and drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Dambulla, the paper explores the various different meanings of politics locally: highlighting the interplay of everyday politicking and high-profile political performance.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Stories of Home: Generation, Memory, and Displacement among Jaffna Tamils and Jaffna Muslims

The Sri Lankan civil war has been ongoing for over twenty years. Fought out in the civilian areas of the North and East of Sri Lanka, between the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) it has completely transformed the lives of ordinary people living in the primary battlefields of the North and East.. The last twenty years has seen massive internal and external displacement from the North and East as well as the complete reordering of physical and social landscapes of the past, the present, and thus the future. This thesis is centred roughly on stories of one place, Jaffna and the concept of ur/home that Daniel (1984) argues is central to ideas of Tamil personhood. I examine what home means when disproportionate movement occurs and what happens to displaced families and individuals. The thesis examines both Tamils and Muslims from the North, and takes at the heart of its inquiry, the nature of belonging, and who is allowed to belong and who is not. Through a few individual biographies I trace themes of displacements and memory. I look at what people's ideas of home are, and, what happens to these ideas of home in displacement. In particular I examine how people come to find that by inhabiting different places/homes, they may become different kinds of persons. This becomes folded into generational structures. Thus I look at the work of inheritance of property, memory, kinship that different generations attempt to transmit and pass on in an attempt to be related to each other. The intimate and the familial are linked to the ongoing political situation where the interior becomes the repository of stories disallowed in the exterior. I use the metaphor of houses and rooms in my thesis to point to the conditions of internal terror that framed my research. Tamils, living with internal terror, could only tell stories in the spaces of the interior. In contrast working with Muslims, outdoor ethnography was possible. I discuss the freedom to belong, denied to Muslims, and the freedom to speak, denied to Tamils. Thus, I reflect upon the different imaginations of speaking and silence, residence and belonging for different political and social locations within the same history and place. In the end this is a thesis about how individuals reflect upon their lives. While it is not based in Jaffna, it is on Jaffna past, Jaffna present, Jaffna imagined and Jaffna lost. It looks at the specificities of how people deal with the larger human dramas of love, loss, home and the relationship of the self to kin

Transforming Oneself, Transforming Society?: Tamils, Tigers, and Militancy in Sri Lanka

Dr. Sharika Thiranagama (Sakurako and William Fisher Family Faculty Scholar in the School of Humanities and Sciences and assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University) discusses how Tamil and Muslim identities are shaped and re-shaped through conflict and its aftermath. Thiranagama addresses what the shaping of identity reveals about how people engage with fundamental questions of who they are while simultaneously reconciling themselves with notions of who they\u27ve been. This lecture is the 15th annual anthropology lecture at Linfield College. The annual anthropology lecture showcases diverse perspectives from all four subfields of anthropology