The Distance of a Shout

The Distance of a Shout

Perhaps it is the demands, the anxiety, and the uncertainty that leave indelible yet hidden markings on the ethnographer who undertakes fieldwork in a foreign society. These markings are rendered more complex over time as lives unfold unpredictably in two separate but inextricably intertwined places. This chapter explores these complexities and the play of distance and time with geopolitical reality. The context is my 30-year relationship with Sri Lanka, which began in 1976 with my first ‘fieldwork’ [Page 73]sojourn in a rural village south-west of Colombo. The relationship has been maintained through the close friendships formed at that time with ‘significant others’—the individuals who have enabled continuing intellectual and scholarly engagement with Sri Lanka,1 the playing out of continuing obligations to my rural hosts, and through the renewed connections and engagement generated by sporadic, and often insultingly short, return visits. But over the three decades of engagement with Sri Lanka, the ‘foreign researcher's’ interest and involvement, framed by spatial and cultural distance, has also been regularly tested.

The period since the mid-1970s have been turbulent years for Sri Lanka. Ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations experienced as ‘flashpoints’ since independence grew into a civil war that continued through the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. An insurgency movement generated what has become known as a ‘time of terror’ in the late 1980s.2 And, shortly after the signing of a ceasefire agreement in 2002, which is widely believed to have brought about a ‘state of no war’ rather than a state of genuine peace, a devastating tsunami hit the south and east coasts of Sri Lanka, killing thousands, leaving many more displaced, and destroying infrastructure. Over the past two decades, as Sri Lanka oscillated in and out of civil war, and more recently following the carnage and social upheaval of the 2004 tsunami, the import of this distance has also had another dimension. As the ‘outsider’, the ‘other’, the researcher's experience has been tempered by the knowledge that her homeground is territory that is safe—the ‘immersion’, even the heightened concern, is temporary and superficial.

In this chapter the evolving nature of my lived experience with Sri Lanka is explored through auto-ethnography—a reflection on the processes of a foreign researcher negotiating relationships and struggling to find a legitimate voice. The chapter also explores the changing defence of that voice: defences that have had to be moulded to the changing socio-political environment, and defences that have matured with time. The structure of the chapter is built around the most critical ‘signposts’ of my Sri Lankan journey: incorporation into ‘the field’ and exposure to ethnic conflict in the 1970s; the emotional and intellectual distance experienced through the decades of the civil war and ‘time of terror’ that enveloped Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s; and the equally devastating impact of the 2004 tsunami.

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