Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary of Sri Lankan terms
- Maps
- 1 Puzzles and agendas
- 2 Methods, scope and elaborations
- 3 Crown lands
- 4 Land reform
- 5 Pricing and agricultural services
- 6 Categorising space: urban–rural and core–periphery
- 7 A smallholder interest or smallholder interests?
- 8 Rural consciousness
- 9 Ethnic conflict and the politics of the periphery
- 10 The Sri Lankan polity
- 11 Concluding remarks
- Appendix 1 Results of general elections, 1947–77: percentage of parliamentary seats won
- Appendix 2 The myth of the plantation impact on the Sinhalese village: two accounts
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary of Sri Lankan terms
- Maps
- 1 Puzzles and agendas
- 2 Methods, scope and elaborations
- 3 Crown lands
- 4 Land reform
- 5 Pricing and agricultural services
- 6 Categorising space: urban–rural and core–periphery
- 7 A smallholder interest or smallholder interests?
- 8 Rural consciousness
- 9 Ethnic conflict and the politics of the periphery
- 10 The Sri Lankan polity
- 11 Concluding remarks
- Appendix 1 Results of general elections, 1947–77: percentage of parliamentary seats won
- Appendix 2 The myth of the plantation impact on the Sinhalese village: two accounts
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter we further explore the answer to our general problem by asking a question which is made very pointed by a comparison of the Sri Lanka experience with that of India and Malaysia: in what ways have collective socio-cultural identities – as opposed to the commonalities of material interest dealt with in Chapter Seven – contributed or not contributed to the evolution of a common ‘rural consciousness’ which could underpin a ruralist economic programme? The Indian and Malaysian experiences indicate that class or socio-cultural categorisations have given broad swathes of the farming population a sense of common identity over and above that generated by simply sharing a common occupation. Ruralist political programmes can be more easily communicated and realised if a large proportion of the farming population can be persuaded that they share, for example, a linguistic, ethnic or caste identity which simultaneously unites them and sets them apart from other social categories – food consumers, industrial groups, public officials, landlords, or urban people generally – who can then be presented as opponents or exploiters. The kinds of collective identity which have been exploited to mobilise Indian and Malaysian farmers – caste, ‘peasantness’, rurality in a broad sense, or intra-rural conflicts between landlord and peasant, large and small farmers, or agricultural labourers and employers – have not been available to the exploited in Sri Lanka in the same way.
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- The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka , pp. 167 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985