In April, Sri Lanka announced that it would default on its foreign debt, having run up a debt of more than US$ 40 billion. The economy collapsed. There were acute shortages of petrol, cooking fuel, and medicines. There were food shortages, little or no public transport, and lengthy electricity outages. The devastation set off 100 days of protests throughout the island, drawing together people from diverse communities, classes, age cohorts, and religious backgrounds. In mid-July, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned from abroad. An interim president was quickly appointed by Parliament; however, progress on economic relief, fiscal reforms, and meaningful democratic change has stalled.
Join us for a conversation with three distinguished scholars with longtime expertise on Sri Lanka. What are the urgent humanitarian issues in the country today? What forms of aid would best serve peoples needs? Are there effective ways to undo the social inequalities and stratifications put in place during the colonial era? Did the massive mobilization of last spring open a door to progressive social movements or political formations? What are the most pressing concerns that have sparked peoples demands for political and economic change? Can there be meaningful political reform?
Speakers:
Sonali Deraniyagala: The Human Costs of Sri Lankas Economic Collapse
Mythri Jegathesan: The Need for Accounts: Challenging Sri Lanka's Plantation Politics
Alan Keenan: Economic revolution without political legitimacy: Can the worst be avoided?
_______________
DATE: Thursday, 16 February, 2023
TIME: 9 am Berkeley | Calculate your local time
REGISTER: Online Here
_________________
SPEAKER BIOS:
Sonali Deraniyagala is an economist who works on issues relating to the macroeconomics of poverty and inequality and on the economic effects of natural disasters. She is a member of the Economics Faculty of SOAS, University of London, and a visiting professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Mythri Jegathesan is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Santa Clara University. She researches Sri Lanka's plantation sector and tea industry, work and gender relations, and minority politics, and has done field research in the country's South Central areas since 2008. Her book Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka (University of Washington Press, 2019) details tea plantation gender and work relations in the context of ethnonationalist violence and civil war in Sri Lanka. Professor Jegathesan serves on the Executive Committee of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS) and is working on an NSF-funded project on caste, land, and livelihood relations in Sri Lanka's Northern Province.
Alan Keenan is Senior Consultant on Sri Lanka at the International Crisis Group, where he has led research and advocacy efforts on Sri Lanka since 2007. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace, and Security. Alan Keenan has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of Democracy in Question: Democratic Openness in a Time of Political Closure (Stanford Univ. Press, 2003), as well as articles on political theory and on Sri Lankan politics. Prior to joining Crisis Group in 2006, he taught at Bryn Mawr College, Harvard College, and UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.
ISAS Visiting Scholar for 2022, Jeanne Marecek is Senior Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Psychology at Swarthmore College. She is a critical feminist psychologist, with a particular interest in the culture-specific meanings and gender and generational dynamics that shape the lives of women and girls in Sri Lanka. She is co-author (with Eva Magnusson) of Gender and Culture in Psychology: Theories and Practices (2012) and Doing Interview-based Qualitative Research (2015) and co-editor (with Nancy Dess and Leslie Bell) of Gender, Sex, and Sexualities: Psychological Perspectives (2018). She is an editor of Feminism & Psychology and past-president of the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology.
_________________
Like us on FACEBOOK
Follow us on TWITTER
The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
