Sacred Modernity : Nature, Environment and the Postcolonial Geographies of Sri Lankan Nationhood. PDF
Preview Sacred Modernity : Nature, Environment and the Postcolonial Geographies of Sri Lankan Nationhood.
SACRED MODERNITY NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND THE POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHIES OF SRI LANKAN NATIONHOOD Sacred Modernity argues how everyday non-secular experiences of the natural world in Sri Lanka perpetuate ethno-religious identitarian narratives. It demonstrates the relationships between spaces of nature S and environment and an ongoing aesthetic and spatial constitution A of power and the political in which Theravada Buddhism is centrally POSTCOLONIALISM ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES implicated. To do this, the book works consecutively through two in- C depth case studies, both of which are prominent sites through which Sri R SACRED MODERNITY Lankan nature and environment are commodified: first, the country’s E most famous national park, Ruhuna (Yala), and second, its post-1950s D modernist environmental architecture, ‘tropical modernism’. By engaging these sites, the book reveals how commonplace historical understandings NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND as well as commonplace material negotiations of the seductions of Sri M THE POSTCOLONIAL GEOGRAPHIES Lankan nature are never far from the continued production of a post- independent national identity marked ethnically as Sinhalese and O OF SRI LANKAN NATIONHOOD religiously as Buddhist. In the Sri Lankan context this minoritizes Tamil, D Muslim, and Christian non-Sinhala difference in the nation-state’s natural, environmental and historical order of things. E To make this argument, the book goes against the grain of Eurocentric R social scientific understandings of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘religion’. N TARIQ JAZEEL It argues that these concepts and their implicit binary mobilizations of nature/culture and the sacred/secular, respectively, struggle to make I visible the pervasive ways that Buddhism – thought instead as a ‘structure T of feeling’ or aesthetics – simultaneously naturalizes and ethnicizes the Y fabric of the national in contemporary Sri Lanka. Sacred Modernity shows the care and postcolonial methodological sensitivity required to understand how ‘nature’ and ‘religion’ might be thought through non-EuroAmerican field contexts, especially those in South Asia. T ‘Expansive and intelligent [...] an entertaining and intellectually A stimulating book.’ R Dr Pablo Mukherjee, University of Warwick I Q J Tariq Jazeel is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the A University of Sheffield. Z E E L www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk Cover image: Paradise by T. Shanaathanan (2004/Lunuganga). Reproduced with the kind permission of the artist. LUP, Jazeel casewrap.indd 1 04/07/2013 07:58:17 Sacred Modernity Postcolonialism across the Disciplines 12 Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 1 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Postcolonialism across the Disciplines SeriesEditors GrahamHuggan,UniversityofLeeds AndrewThompson,UniversityofExeter Postcolonialism across the Disciplines showcases alternative directions for postcolonial studies. It is in part an attempt to counteract the dominance in colonialandpostcolonialstudiesofoneparticulardiscipline–Englishliterary/ cultural studies – and to make the case for a combination of disciplinary knowledges as the basis for contemporary postcolonial critique. Edited by leading scholars, the series aims to be a seminal contribution to the field, spanning the traditional range of disciplines represented in postcolonial studies but also those less acknowledged. It will also embrace new critical paradigms and examine the relationship between the transnational/cultural, theglobalandthepostcolonial. Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 2 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Sacred Modernity Nature, Environment, and the Postcolonial Geographies of Sri Lankan Nationhood Tariq Jazeel Liverpool University Press Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 3 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Firstpublished2013by LiverpoolUniversityPress 4CambridgeStreet LiverpoolL697ZU Copyright©2013TariqJazeel TherightofTariqJazeeltobeidentifiedastheauthorofthisbookhasbeenasserted byhiminaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignandPatentsAct1988.Allrights reserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinaretrievalsystem,or transmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical,photocopying, recording,orotherwise,withoutthepriorwrittenpermissionofthepublisher. BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-Publicationdata ABritishLibraryCIPrecordisavailable ISBN978-1-84631-886-3cased SacredModernity Web PDF eISBN 978-1-84631-997-6 (ebk) TypesetinAmerigobyCarnegieBookProductrion,Lancaster PrintedandboundbyCPIGroup(UK)Ltd,CroydonCR04YY Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 4 24/06/2013 08:38:59 For Maite Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 5 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 6 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Contents Contents ListofMapandFigures ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 1 SacredModernity:Nature,Religion,andthePoliticsofAesthetics 9 PartI Ruhuna(Yala)NationalPark 2 Landscape,Nature,Nationhood:AHistoricalGeographyofRuhuna (Yala)NationalPark 27 3 InscriptionandExperience:ThePoliticsandAestheticsofNature Tourism 47 4 PoliticalGeographies:Promoting,Contesting,andPurifyingNature 72 PartII TropicalModernArchitecture 5 BuiltSpace,Environment,Modernism:(Re)reading‘Tropical Modern’Architecture 95 6 ArchitectingOne-ness:FluidSpaces/SacredModernity 121 7 Over-determinations:Architecture,Text,Politics 145 Conclusion:SriLankanNatureasProblemSpace 166 Bibliography 171 Index 185 vii Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 7 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 8 24/06/2013 08:38:59 Map and Figures MapandFigures Map1 Ruhuna(Yala)NationalPark,drawnbyPaulColes,University ofSheffieldCartographicServices,afterH.W.Jayawardene (ed.),YalaNationalPark(Colombo:FaunaInternationalTrust, 1993),p.8. 5 Fig.2.1 Wildlife-spottinginRuhunaNationalPark(author’s photograph). 28 Fig.3.1 MagulMahaVihara(author’sphotograph). 62 Fig.3.2 ‘MyOwnNativeLand’.DailyNews(SriLankannewspaper),3 March1990,AssociatedNewspapersofCeylonLtdarchive, LakeHouse,Colombo,SriLanka,fromclippingsfileon‘Yala’.67 Fig.5.1 LandscapesatLunuganga,byGeoffreyBawa;terraced ornamentalpaddyfieldsandLakeDeduwa(author’s photograph). 97 Fig.5.2 LivingroompavilionatCinnamonHillbungalow,Lunuganga, byGeoffreryBawa(author’sphotograph). 97 Fig.5.3 RearporchextensiontomainhouseatLunuganga,by GeoffreyBawa(author’sphotograph). 98 Fig.5.4 ViewoftempleatLunuganga,byGeoffreyBawa(takenfrom themiddledistance,author’sphotograph). 111 Fig.6.1 WeatheredinteriorwallsintheofficeofMICD(MuradIsmail andChannaDaswatte)architect’soffice,Colombo,byMurad IsmailandChannaDaswatte(author’sphotograph). 128 Fig.6.2 TheKandalamaHotel,byGeoffreyBawa,1991(Source:Riza Jazeel). 129 ix Jazeel,SacredModernity.indd 9 24/06/2013 08:38:59
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