To Be or Not to Be a Hero

Recognition and Citizenship among Disabled Veterans of the Sri Lankan Army

in Conflict and Society
Author:
Matti Weisdorf University of Copenhagen matti.weisdorf@anthro.ku.dk

Search for other papers by Matti Weisdorf in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
and
Birgitte Refslund Sørensen University of Copenhagen brs@anthro.ku.dk

Search for other papers by Birgitte Refslund Sørensen in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/arcs.2019.050107
Keywords:
Sri Lanka; veteran; disability; recognition; citizenship; social becoming
Restricted access

All currencies in US Dollar

PayPal Logo

Abstract

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in and around a so-called War Hero Village (Ranavirugama) in northwestern Sri Lanka, this article traces the social (un)becomings of Sri Lankan Army veterans injured during the civil war with the Tamil liberation front. It argues that such veterans have long been able to draw on a materially rewarding narrative of sacrifice and carnal capital—epitomized in the honorific ranaviru (war hero)—in order to produce a particular kind of veteran citizenship, let alone subjectivity, and thus to pursue socially meaningful post-injury existences. In the eyes of the veterans themselves, however, this celebratory narrative is eroding and a “collective narrative” characterized by a kind of social forgetting of the injured veteran is emerging. Material benefits notwithstanding, this narrative contestation entails a “struggle for recognition” that threatens to leave them not only disabled but also with no one to be, or become.

Contributor Notes

MATTI WEISDORF is enrolled as a PhD fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, where he looks into religiously inflected experiences of love for or infatuation with nature among self-declared secular Danes and the ethical and political implications hereof. In 2013, he conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in northwestern Sri Lanka among war-disabled veterans of the Sinhalese government army, focusing on the veteran as a public figure and the lived experience of the uneven and sometimes contradictory social and religious becomings such figures engender. Email: matti.weisdorf@anthro.ku.dk

BIRGITTE REFSLUND SØRENSEN holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. She has conducted research on the everyday impacts of armed conflict and on post-conflict social reconstruction issues mainly in Sri Lanka but also in Eritrea and Mozambique, and she has worked for the United Nations and the Danish Refugee Council on related issues. In recent years, her focus has been on Danish war veterans’ homecomings and post-deployment lives, emergent public images of the war veteran, and civil-military relations and entanglements in public and private spaces. Email: brs@anthro.ku.dk

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Conflict and Society

Advances in Research

Cover Conflict and Society
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
19
Keywords:
Sri Lanka; veteran; disability; recognition; citizenship; social becoming
Print Publication Date:
01 Jun 2019
Online Publication Date:
01 Jun 2019
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2019

  • Abeyasinghe, N. L., P. de Zoysa, K. M. K. C. Bandara, N. A. Bartholameuz, and J. M. U. J. Bandara. 2012. “The Prevalence of Symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Among Soldiers with Amputation of a Limb or Spinal Injury: A Report From a Rehabilitation Centre in Sri Lanka.” Psychology, Health & Medicine 17 (3): 376–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2011.608805.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Açıksöz, Salih Can. 2012. “Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty: Disabled Veterans, Masculinity, and Nationalist Politics in Turkey.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26 (1): 4–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1387.2011.01194.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Badiou, Alain. 2005. Metapolitics. New York: Verso.

  • Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London: Routledge.

  • Brown, Wendy. 1993. “Wounded Attachments.” Political Theory 21 (3): 390–410. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591793021003003.

  • Campbell, Fiona Kumari. 2011. “Geodisability Knowledge Production and International Norms: A Sri Lankan Case Study.” Third World Quarterly 32 (8): 1455–1474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.604518.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Connerton, Paul. 2008. “Seven Types of Forgetting.” Memory Studies 1 (1): 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698007083889.

  • Cowen, Deborah. 2005. “Welfare Warriors: Towards a Genealogy of the Soldier Citizen in Canada.” Antipode 37 (4): 654–678. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00520.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • De Mel, Neloufer. 2007. Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in Armed Conflict. New Delhi: Sage.

  • De Mel, Neloufer. 2016. “Playing Disability, Performing Gender: Militarised Masculinity and Disability Theatre in the Sri Lankan War and Its Aftermath.” In Disability in the Global South: International Perspectives on Social Policy, Administration, and Practice, ed. Shaun Grech and Karen Soldatic, 99–116. Geneva: Springer.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • De Silva, Jani. 2009. “Researching Masculinity and Violence in Sri Lankan Politics: Subject Construction as Methodology.” IDS Bulletin 40 (3): 86–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2009.00043.x.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • De Silva, K. M. 1999. Reaping The Whirlwind: Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Penguin.

  • De Zoysa, Piyanjali, and Thulitha Wickrama. 2011. “Mental Health and Cultural religious Coping of Disabled Veterans in Sri Lanka.” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 19 (3): 4–12.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Dos Santos-Zingale, Myriam, and Mary Ann McColl. 2006. “Disability and Participation in Post-conflict Situations: The Case of Sierra Leone.” Disability & Society 21 (3): 243–257. https://10.1080/09687590600617428.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Economist. 2009. “Asia: Too Many Heroes: The Human Cost of Sri Lanka's War.” 391 (8634): 42.

  • Frerks, Georg. 2014. “Between Agency and Subjugation: Female LTTE Combatants in the Sri Lanka Conflict and Postwar Situation.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices, ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde König, 93–114. Farnham: Ashgate.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gamburd, Michele. 2004. “The Economics of Enlisting: A Village View of Military Service.” In Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka, ed. Deborah Winslow and Michael Woost, 151–167. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Geertz, Clifford. 2000. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gerber, David. 1994. “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Integration of Disabled Veterans in Our Best Years of Our Lives.” American Quarterly 46 (4): 515–574.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gerber, David. 2003. “Disabled Veterans, the State, and the Experience of Disability in Western Societies, 1914–1950.” Journal of Social History 36 (4): 899–1126. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2003.0095.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gerber, David. 2012. “Preface to the Enlarged and Revised Edition: The Continuing Relevance of the Study of Disabled Veterans.” In Corporealities: Discourses of Disability: Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David A. Gerber, ix–xxiii. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gunawardena, Niluka. 2010. “Subverted Heroes: Narrative Experiences of Disabled Veterans in Post-War Sri Lanka.” MA thesis, University of Leeds.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Gunawardena, Nalika, Rohini De A. Senevirathne, and Thamara Athauda. 2007. “Mental Health Outcome of Unilateral Lower Limb Amputee Soldiers in Two Districts of Sri Lanka.” International Journal of Social Psychiatry 53 (2): 135–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764006075029.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hartley, Julie. 2013. “War-Wounds: Disability, Memory and Narratives of War in a Lebanese Disability Rehabilitation Hospital.” In War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience, ed. Kevin McSorley, 181–183 London: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hautzinger, Sarah, and Jean Scandlyn. 2014. Beyond Post-traumatic Stress: Homefront Struggles with the War on Terror. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Honneth, Axel. 1995. Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Honneth, Axel. 2007. “Recognition as Ideology.” In Recognition and Power, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen, 323–347. Southampton: University of Southampton.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Jackson, Michael. 2002. The Politics of Storytelling, Violence, Transgression, and Intersubjectivity. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.

  • Kabeer, Naila. 2005. Inclusive Citizenship, Meanings and Expressions. London: Zed.

  • Kelly, Tobias, and Shakira Thiranagama. 2010. “Introduction: Specters of Treason.” In Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building, ed. Tobias Kelly and Shakira Thiranagama, 1–23. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kymlicka, Will, and Wayne Norman. 1994. “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory.” Ethics 104 (2): 352–381. https://doi.org/10.1086/293605.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • LankaeNews. 2009. “New Era in Foreign Relations to Safeguard Motherland—President.” 3 May. http://ahfesl.free.fr/Politics_SRI_LANKA_and_WORLD_for_Against_Terrorism.htm.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • MacLeish, Kenneth. 2013 Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

  • Marshall, Thomas. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Mattingly, Cheryl. 2010. The Paradox of Hope: Journeys through a Clinical Borderland. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Mattingly, Cheryl. 2013. “Moral Selves and Moral Scenes: Narrative Experiments in Everyday Life.” Ethnos 78 (3): 301–327. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.691523.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.

  • McCartney, Helen. 2011, “Hero, victim or villain? The public image of the British soldier and its implications for Defense policy.” Defense and Security Analysis 27(1): 43–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751798.2011.557213.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • McNay, Lois. 2008. Against Recognition. Cambridge: Polity.

  • Mosse, George. 1990. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Ong, Aihwa. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making.” Current Anthropology 37 (5): 737–762. https://doi.org/10.1086/204560.

  • Orjuela, Camilla. 2008. The Identity Politics of Peacebuilding: Civil Society in War-torn Sri Lanka. Lund: Sage.

  • Perera, Amantha. 2015. “Sri Lankans Disabled by War, Forgotten in Peace.” IRIN report. New Humanitarian, 16 September.

  • Plummer, Ken. 2001. “The Call of Life Stories in Ethnographic Research.” In Handbook of Ethnography, ed. Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffrey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn Lofland, 395–406. London: Sage.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • RSA (Ranaviru Seva Authority). 2011. Annual Report. Colombo: RSA.

  • Rancière, Jacques. 2016. “Critical Questions on the Theory of Recognition.” In Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity, ed. Katia Genel and Jean-Phllipe Deranty, 83–95. New York: Columbia University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rastegar, Kamran. 2010. “The Glass Agency: Iranian War Veterans as Heroes or Traitors?” In Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building, ed. Tobias Kelly and Shakira Thiranagama, 188–199. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Ricoeur, Paul. 1988 Time and Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Roberts, Michael. 2005. “Tamil Tiger ‘Martyrs’: Regenerating Divine Potency?” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28 (6): 493–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576100590950129.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Roberts, Michael. 2008. “Tamil Tigers: Sacrificial symbolism and ‘Dead Body Politics.’” Anthropology Today 24 (3): 22–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/j14678322200800587.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • SLBC (Sri Lanka Broadcast Corporation). 2010. “Sri Lanka to Provide Promotions, Increments to Disabled Soldiers.” 9 January.

  • Sørensen, Birgitte. 2008. “Humanitarian NGOs and Mediations of Political Order in Sri Lanka.” Critical Asian Studies 40 (1): 89–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672710801959166.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sørensen, Birgitte. 2012. “Education and Violent Conflict.” In Elgar Handbook of Civil War and Fragile States, ed. Graham Brown and Arnim Langer, 201–213. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sørensen, Birgitte. 2015. “Veterans’ Homecomings: Secrecy and Post-deployment Social Becoming.” Current Anthropology 56 (12): 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1086/683298.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Sørensen, Birgitte. 2017. “Post-conflict Reconstruction.” In Gender: War, ed. Andrea Peto, 247–267. London: Macmillan.

  • Spencer, Jonathan. 1990. Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict. London: Routledge.

  • Taylor, Charles. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Charles Taylor, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Trundle, Cahtrine. 2013. “Memorialising the Veteran Body: New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans and the Search for Military Citizenship.” In War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience, ed. Kevin McSorley. 194–209. London: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Wacquant, Loïc. 1995. “Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour among Professional Boxers.” Body & Society 1 (1): 65–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X95001001005.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Weisdorf, Matti. 2015. “Hope of Deliverance: An Ethnography of Disability, Social Recognition and the Work of Hope Among War-Impaired Veterans in Sri Lanka.” MA, University of Copenhagen.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 796 347 30
Full Text Views 72 2 0
PDF Downloads 69 5 0