University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Summer 2011 Flood of Memories:Narratives of Flood and Loss in Tamil South India Aaron Patrick Mulvany University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Folklore Commons, History Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Mulvany, Aaron Patrick, "Flood of Memories:Narratives of Flood and Loss in Tamil South India" (2011). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 383. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/383 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/383 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Flood of Memories:Narratives of Flood and Loss in Tamil South India Abstract Legendary deluges such as those said to have over-swept the Tamil lands or the flood waters that appear in popular religious and folk tales have long been a part of Tamil folk experience, and they serve as the backdrop against which contemporary flood is experienced. In this light, this dissertation explores the development and of disaster management policies in the Union Territory of Pondicherry from their origins in colonial-era policies to the significant e-orientationr that followed the 2004 Asian tsunami. Conclusions are based on 14 months of ethnographic research in coastal fisher communities and government relief agencies in the Union Territory. Historical data collected from archives and interviews with territorial officials and NGO workers complement insights gleaned from extensive participant-observation and field collection among deep-sea fisher populations in the former rF ench territories of the Coromandel Coast.