This multi-sited island ethnography illustrates how the embattled politics of (im) mobility, belonging, and patronage among coastal fishing communities in Sri Lankäs militarised northeast have intersected in the wake of civil war. It explores an undertheorized puzzle by asking how the conceptual dualisms between co-operation and contestation simplify the complex lifeworlds of small-scale fishing communities that are often imagined by scholars through allegories of rivalry and resource competition.

Drawing on ordinary interpretations and lived practices implicated in the vernacular term sambandam (bearing multiple meanings of intimacy and entanglement), the book traces how intergroup co-operation is both affectively routinised and tactically instrumentalised across coastlines, and at sea. Given its distinct focus on translocal and ethno-religiously plural collectives, the study maps recent historic formations of diverse practices and their contentions, from networked'piracy' and dynamite fishing, to collective rescue missions and coalitional lobbying.

Moreover this work serves as an open invitation to academics, policymakers and activists for re-imagining multiple modes of ethical being and doing, and of everyday sociality among so-called 'deeply divided' societies.

A rich ethnography that pays meticulous attention to a complex social fabric made up of locals, settlers and migrants, with multiple linguistic and religious affiliations, sometimes contending fishing practices, and migration and livelihoods patterns as they have been affected by tsunami, war and the aftermaths of both. It draws from and speaks to a range of disciplines - from political science and sociology, to critical geography and cultural studies, and contributes to diverse fields of inquiry, includingconflict and its relationship to a "cold" peace; coastal/maritime livelihoods; identity, cooperation, and collective action."

Aparna Sundar, Assistant Professor of Politics, Ryerson University

By unveiling the vast heterogeneity of fisher migrants and settlers, the book demonstrates in an excellent way how research should not merely focus on the articulations of identity, but more so the inherent properties and qualities of the diverse interdependencies they come to sustain.

Conrad Schetter, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Bonn

Autorentext
Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa is an environmental anthropologist with the Development and Knowledge Sociology working group at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Germany. Much of her ongoing research adopts a post-area studies perspective, given her interest in contemporary coastal transformations, alongside marine lifeworlds across multiple island and archipelagic contexts spanning Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean Sea.

Inhalt

Prologue: The Market Day that Never Was.-
PART I: COASTAL INTERDEPENDENCIES IN EVERYDAY LIFE.-
Chapter 1: Introduction.-
1.1 Ambiguous Presence: Whither Cooperation in Contemporary Sri Lanka?.-
1.2 Social Diversity along the Northeastern Coastline.-
1.3 Wartime Transitions and the Militarisation of Everyday Life.-
1.4 Outline of the Book.-
Chapter 2: Locating Cooperation in Conflict Settings.-
2.1 The Normative Hinges of Cooperation.-
2.2 Conflict and Cooperation: Traversing the Dichotomy.-
2.3 Towards Interdependence: Integrating the Relational with Everyday Ethics.-
2.4 People, Places and Narratives of Return.-
Chapter 3: Fishing Lifeworlds and Coastal Interdependencies.-
3.1 Reclaiming the Sea: Beyond Violence and Dwelling.-
3.2 Fishing Lifeworlds and the Salience of Cooperation.-
3.3 The Grammar of Sambandam.-
3.4 Cooperation Institutionalised: Fisher Cooperatives in Perspective.-
PART II ;SAMBANDAM: THE LATERAL, ASOCIATIVE AND THE HIERARCHICAL.-
Chapter 4: Change and Continuity after Wartime.-
4.1 Situating Ethics in Everyday Fishing Livelihoods.-
4.2 Mythologies of Postwar Liberalization.-
4.3 Contested Narratives of Entropy and Catch Depletion.-
4.4 Kappam and the Ethnicization of Resource Exploitation.-
Chapter 5: Transversal Ties across the Local-Migrant-Settler Complex.-
5.1 Bilingual Seafarer Vadis and the Boundaries of Otherness.-
5.2 Beach-seine Padu Sites as Borderscapes.-
5.3 Reverse Migration and its Discontents.-
5.4 Sinhala Settlers and the Ambiguities of Belonging.-
Chapter 6: Vertical Alliances during Popular Protest.-
6.1 Fictions and Factions: Moral Discourses in Purse-seining.-
6.2 Speaking for the Other: Local-Settler Mobilization.-
6.3 Political Patronage and the Dynamics of Grievance Trading.