Militarizing Sri Lanka : popular culture, memory and narrative in the armed conflict

Militarizing Sri Lanka is a study of the militarization that has buttressed the war between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE for over two decades. It highlights militarization as a process through which the ideology of militarism is shaped and shared in a manner that makes militant solutions to conflict a part of institutional structures and ways of thought. It foregrounds militarization as activity and agency, capable of adaptation and transforming society in significant ways; and as a deeply gendered, contingent and shifting process. It also analyzes both the construction and resistance to militarization and militarism, but in a manner that draws attention to their relationality rather than as self-evidently oppositional categories. Through case studies of military advertising, disabled soldiers, children in the conflict zones, the LTTE female suicide bomber, censorship, the archive and feminist work, Militarizing Sri Lanka also foregrounds the crucial role of popular culture, memory and narrative in how attitudes to militarism, the war, and peace are mediated. This book is a valuable resource for social and political scientists and activists, and all those wanting an insight into militarization in the Sri Lankan context from the late 1980s to 2006.