Caste in the Same Mold Again: Artisans and the Indignities of Inheritance in Sri Lanka
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CASTE IN THE SAME MOLD AGAIN: ARTISANS AND THE INDIGNITIES OF INHERITANCE IN SRI LANKA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Aimée Catherine Douglas December 2017 ©2017 Aimée Catherine Douglas CASTE IN THE SAME MOLD AGAIN: ARTISANS AND THE INDIGNITIES OF INHERITANCE IN SRI LANKA Aimée Catherine Douglas, Ph.D. Cornell University 2017 In a context of transforming expectations regarding the who, how, and what of heritage stewardship around the world, this dissertation examines caste’s revitalization through boundary work carried out by a variety of actors and across a range of practical and discursive moments. Through a wide selection of ethnographic vignettes, it analyzes such boundary work around caste from multiple vantage points to illustrate how this category of identification is reproduced in tension with and in the service of neoliberal processes that have shaped Sri Lanka’s “traditional craft industries” since the 1977 implementation of an “open economy policy.” Grounded in two years of ethnographic fieldwork in the country’s central province, the dissertation offers anthropological insight into what happens at the level of everyday experience when the logics of neoliberal economics and democratic egalitarianism become entangled with nationalist investments in heritage on the one hand, and the apparent specters of pre-modern preoccupations with hierarchy and honor on the other. In this majority Buddhist island country, caste among the Sinhalese has long been popularly rejected as an anachronistic and lamentable artifact of pre- colonial society, its public discussion generally avoided to an extreme (Silva and Hettihewage 2001:63). Focusing on two industries regarded as exemplary of Sri Lanka’s traditional handicrafts, Dumbara rata weaving and the hana industry, I document the complex ways in which some of the country’s most historically marginalized peoples, individuals at the lowest rungs of what is often figured as a Sinhala caste hierarchy, face the consequences of caste’s quiet but indisputable reproduction in their daily lives. Challenging a persistent sense in scholarship on the country that caste is somehow destined to disappear, the dissertation’s primary aim is to demonstrate not just that caste as a category of identification is alive and well, but also how this is so. As significantly, it is to illustrate beyond any doubt that its reproduction is the shared responsibility of actors across the strata of class, gender, age and caste. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Aimée Douglas grew up in Potomac, Maryland. She graduated from Bowdoin College with a B.A. in psychology. After completing her M.A. in Social Science at the University of Chicago, she matriculated at Cornell University in 2010. She conducted ethnographic research in Sri Lanka between 2010 and 2015, with a core eighteen-month period beginning in September 2013. She defended her dissertation in September 2017, exactly four years to the day after leaving for the field. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Funding from Fulbright, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies supported the fieldwork upon which this dissertation is based. Among those I owe a debt of gratitude are the members of my doctoral dissertation committee, each of whom has contributed to the intellectual journey that culminated in this work. Through her thoughtful criticism and intellectual energy, Viranjini Munasinghe has repeatedly challenged and inspired me to stretch as a scholar. I am thankful to have benefited so directly from her infectious enthusiasm for anthropological rigor. Anne Blackburn, a scholar who, in both her writing and her teaching, embodies that spirit of intellectual generosity that graduate students treasure in an advisor, has provided invaluable guidance over the years. In his kind and incisive comments on this dissertation and its chapters’ earlier versions, Adam Smith reminded me to bring the material into the fold. In his welcome check-in emails during my fieldwork and in the time since, Magnus Fiskesjö has drawn my attention to revelatory comparative examples and offered much appreciated feedback pertaining to heritage politics. At Cornell more generally, I must thank Bandara Herath, under whom I began studying Sinhala more than a decade ago as a student in the Intercollegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) program. I owe much of the success of my fieldwork to his patience and facility as an instructor. In Marina Welker’s Research Design course, she and several graduate student peers from across the university asked difficult questions and provided thoughtful feedback on drafts of grant proposals. Their support was instrumental to my securing the funding needed to carry out my research. Charis Boke, Inga Gruß, Emily Levitt, and Mariana Saavedra Espinosa have provided friendship, invigorating conversation, and insightful comments over the years. I must also extend my thanks to Donna Duncan, Graduate Coordinator in the Department or Anthropology at vi Cornell, whose administrative support enabled me to focus on my studies and research. My sister, Patricia Rosen (Cornell BA ’96), provided editorial assistance in the final stages of writing. Among the many who aided this research in Sri Lanka, first and foremost are the men and women in the villages I call Redigama and Atwaedagama. Without their willingness to welcome me into their lives, this dissertation would simply not exist. At the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies in Colombo, support from Deepthi Guneratne, M. de S. Weerasuriya, and the late Ira Unamboowe always allowed me to hit the ground running upon my arrival in the country. Friends and fellow researchers in Sri Lanka, including Dominic Esler, Justin Henry, Hunter King, Abigail Rothberg, and Karmini Sampath provided stimulating conversation and cherished camaraderie during breaks from fieldwork. Chandima Arambepola, Shanika Kariyawasam, Mrs. J.M Buddika Kumari Jayasekera, Fathima Shifna Mohamed Rameez, Chamila Somirathna, Kumoda Warapitiya, and M. de S. Weerasuriya contributed invaluable translation and research assistance. Finally, I must thank Kevin Caffrey, who inspired and encouraged me to pursue the doctorate in the first place. His love, support, and tireless appetite for intellectual conversation have sustained me through the years. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………..……………………………………………………………………...………i-ii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………........1-39 Chapter 1: Fieldsites: Atwaedagama and Redigama……......…………..…………..……..…40-89 Chapter 2: Crafting Tradition…………………………………………………………….....90-123 Chapter 3: Heritage or Hana Bundle? The Indignities of Inheritance in a Sinhalese “Craft Village”…………...…………………………………….......124-179 Chapter 4: Knowing One’s Place……………………………………………………...…..180-223 Chapter 5: Reminders from “Within”………………………………………………..……224-259 Chapter 6: Broken Threads, Nefarious Designs: Tradition, Caste, and Conflict Among Dumbara Rata Weavers……..……………………………...260-311 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..…...…...312-315 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...…..316-332 viii Introduction “Wading in,” a saying anthropologists-in-training often hear in reference to the initial phases of ethnographic research, conjures an image of one moving confidently if cautiously into the generally steady calm of “the field.” Like that of most anthropologists, however, my experience carrying out the research upon which this dissertation is based was more akin to taking a tumble in rough surf and, to push the metaphor just a bit further, trying to regain my footing as another wave barreled toward me. Anthropologist Janelle Taylor laments that the rise of “regimes of accountability” that have come to shape expectations around graduate student fieldwork has made a “casualty” of the element of surprise valued in mid-20th century anthropological training (Taylor 2014:523;530). She notes the degree to which funding applications nowadays almost necessitate that at least a portion of the proposed work already be completed. In this context, as she argues, “surprises now have the status of rare anomalies rather than expected and valued learning experiences” (531). In my case, and despite the surety with which I crafted my own applications for field funding to support research in Sri Lanka, it was not so much a refusal to admit the inevitability of surprise as the impossibility of anticipating its exact nature that would frustrate my own attempts to gracefully “wade in.” To explain, the following chapters focus on two spheres of productive activity: The hana industry in a village I call Atwaedagama, and Dumbara rata weaving in a village I call Redigama. Like almost all small-scale enterprises of artistic production regarded as Sri Lanka’s “national” and “traditional crafts,” Dumbara rata weaving and the hana industry have long been recognized as caste-based occupations. They are occupations performed by individuals at the lowest rungs of what is today commonly referred to as a Sinhala caste hierarchy 1 (Coomaraswamy 1907; Gunasinghe 2007; Knox 1981; Ryan 1953; Silva 2013; Tennent 1860). And yet, setting out to conduct my dissertation research, I had not anticipated caste, or, more precisely, I had not anticipated caste’s salience as a category of identification for the Sinhalese men and women engaged in these industries. That such salience would prove a surprise to me was due in part to a reigning silence around