A mid-term review workshop for the project on “Globalization, national identity & violence: Exploring South Asian masculinities in the new millennium” was held on 9-10th August 2007 at the Galle Face Hotel, Colombo. While at a general level all paper-writers continued to be preoccupied with the return of the religious to the political sphere, it would seem that this phenomenon manifested itself in diverse ways in different regional and national contexts.
For their part, the Sri Lankan papers explore issues of Sinhala and Tamil notions of ethnicity, identity and gender, and the way in which these notions and practices were being increasingly infused by globalized icons of violence. Such icons ranged from those located in Tamil cinema to Hollywood blockbusters. Alternately, there was a focus on how globalized discourses which emanated during the Cold War conditioned local institutions and practices which mediated social order.
The workshop revolved around the presentation of papers by the key paper writers, including principal researcher Dr. Jani De Silva (Senior Researcher, ICES), Dr. Deepak Mehta (Department of Sociology, University of Delhi), Dr. Sumathy Sivamohan (Department of English, University of Peradeniya) and a reading of a paper by Dr. Radhika Chopra (Department of Sociology, University of Delhi) who was unable to attend. The discussion was facilitated by a range of special resource person including Professor Gananath Obeysekere (Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University) and Dr. Christopher Haywood (School of Education, Newcastle University).
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