South Asia / Asie du Sud

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    Learning to live together : using distance education for community peacebuilding
    (Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, BC, CA, 2009) Baksh, Rawwida; Munro, Tanyss
    The book brings together a range of community peacebuilding experiences that apply open and distance learning. The emphasis on community requires distance educators to change focus. The book addresses how to help a community articulate its own purposes for learning and then support it in achieving them. The role of radio, video and audio recordings to carry stories to larger audiences is explored. By raising expectations and challenging assumptions, use of these media can be catalysts that accelerate other processes of change.
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    Safer Sri Lanka? : technology, security and preparedness in post-tsunami Sri Lanka
    (Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, US, 2008) Choi, Vivian
    A ‘preparedness’ rationale has increasingly shifted disaster management towards disaster risk management. The paper illustrates how the push to acquire more information and knowledge about disasters constitute new technological, governmental, and humanitarian practices. However, information does not always lend more knowledge; humanitarian action occurs in an untidy, thoroughly implicating, ‘second best world’. The structure of Global Information Systems (GIS) can be viewed as an instrument and artefact of disaster risk management, and also a network of relations. By way of ethnographic example, the paper shows how institutional and “rational” preparedness unfold in practice, in a devastated area of the eastern coast of Sri Lanka.
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    Finding Gampöng : space, place, and resilience in post-tsunami Aceh
    (Aceh Institute, Banda Aceh, ID, 2008) Mahdi, Saiful
    Two communities in peri-urban Banda Aceh were observed during post-tsunami displacement, and upon return to their original villages. Social cohesiveness prior to disaster, leadership during the emergency period and afterwards, as well as interaction with outside intervention over programs and projects, were among the main factors shaping a new community in a “new” settlement. This paper shows how Acehnese use their social networks to cope with calamities in relation to the concept of gampöng: a spatial and cultural concept of community. Sense of community and interconnectedness among its members is the soul that makes a space a “place” to dwell in.
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    From research to policy : the case of tsunami rehabilitation in Sri Lanka
    (LK, 2008) Bastian, Sunil
    The paper looks at policy implications of a comparative study on tsunami rehabilitation carried out in Sri Lanka and Aceh (Indonesia). It begins with a critique of the notion of what constitutes ‘emergency.’ For policies and projects to be successful, implementers use the existing knowledge base, and must employ people who are competent to work in specific societies. Institutional structures of the agencies must also be flexible within social and political complexities unique to each country. Tragic consequences have resulted when social organization and land tenure patterns are ignored by aid organizations, while the repetition of the mantra of community participation may not ensure equity.
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    Geopolitics of pre-tsunami and post-tsunami aid to Sri Lanka
    (Dept. of Geography, University of Simon Fraser, Burnaby, BC, CA, 2008) Hyndman, Jennifer
    The paper presents evidence from research conducted before and after the tsunami to argue that crisis creates exceptionalism. CIDA dramatically changed its neoliberal application of ‘aid effectiveness’ policy in Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, and this situation illustrates the historicized and geopolitical antecedents that shape aid practices on the ground. Aid is a highly geopolitical project that varies among bilateral donors and among international non-governmental organizations. Since the adoption of aid effectiveness principles in the early 2000s, CIDA planned to wrap up its bilateral aid programming and exit Sri Lanka. The tsunami changed that thinking, and this case study traces why and how.
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    Double wounding? : aid & activism in post-tsunami Sri Lanka
    (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, LK, 2008) de Alwis, Malathi
    Those who argue for participation in development, “tend to believe that through this notion they have found a way of dealing with social contradictions generated by capitalism.” However, experts and animators, as mere ‘facilitators’ in this process also enable the development industry to shift responsibility (and thus accountability) for the consequences of their projects, to the participating folk. This paper questions intertwined notions of charity and wounding in war-torn, post-tsunami Sri Lanka where aid, in all its myriad forms from charity to cash-for-work to psycho-social therapy, appears at least at first pass, as a salve for those wounded by war and/or the tsunami.
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    Post-tsunami reconstruction in contexts of war : a grassroots study of the geo-politics of humanitarian aid in Northern & Eastern Sri Lanka & Aceh, Indonesia; final technical report, August 2006 - January 2009
    (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, LK, 2009) de Alwis, Malathi
    This 2-year, multi-sited, grassroots-based research project sought to study and compare the geopolitics of humanitarian aid in post-tsunami Sri Lanka and Aceh Province, Indonesia. Particular attention was paid to understanding the subsequent political outcomes in each region through the different articulations of humanitarian aid delivery with local communities as well as state and non-state actors. The report outlines research ouputs and outcomes, including publications, policy briefs, conferences and related activities.
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    Evaluation of Peace, Conflict and Development (PCD) research support in countries and regions affected by violent conflict : S Asia case study
    (Channel Research, Lasne, BE, 2009) Hoffman, Mark
    The study reviews projects carried out in Aceh (Indonesia) and Sri Lanka where hostilities continued in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster. The evaluation identifies factors that facilitate or hinder the research process for Peace, Conflict and Development Program (PCD)-supported projects in regions affected by violent conflict, and the advantages and disadvantages of PCD programming modalities in achieving objectives in conflict settings. Although conflict situations may be difficult, it is not impossible to work in such environments; as long as external research funding is sensitive to the conflict context, it is beneficial to develop and sustain indigenous research capacity.
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    Gender and reparations in Timor-Leste
    (International Center for Transitional Justice, New York, NY, US, 2006) Wandita, Galuh; Campbell-Nelson, Karen; Leong Pereira, Manuela
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    Confronting Afghanistan's security dilemma : reforming the security sector
    (Bonn International Centre for Conversion, Bonn, DE, 2003) Sedra, Mark