The Consolations of the Economic: On Newton and Barack

Greetings.

One of the reasons why I wanted to blog was as an outlet for me to interpret events that had a bearing on my professional/academic life. My day job, so to speak. As a place where I could interpret and analyze interesting or relevant articles, texts, speeches or forums that impact on not just my work but what I do. It’s therefore a little depressing to realize that I have not really done this, with the exception perhaps of the Wesley Muttiah commemoration event.

Why? Well, I haven’t been to any relevant or interesting forums in the last half year. That’s why. And I haven’t really haven’t done any justice to interesting work that I’ve been meaning to read up on, and then place into the orbit of my research. This is somewhat disconcerting as I gear up to activate my exit strategy which of course involves sitting down in one place, concentrating and then churning out empirical material on some subject that I am interested in for about four or five years. Gah!

So let’s talk about politics.

The last interesting talk I went to was the Newton Gunasinghe Memorial Lecture in the summer last year. Before I began the blog. It was on the Consolations of the Economic, and was by Jonathan Spencer of the University of Edinburgh. There. Academic information. Spencer, to those who do not operate in the same murky academic waters as I, is a British social anthropologist who cut his teeth in Sri Lanka with a highly regarded study on the inter-relationship between political, economic and religious life in a village community in Sri Lanka during an election year – A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble. Though he has not subsequently committed himself to the study of Sri Lanka, Spencer has remained connected over the years, with interpretations of violence subsequent to the upheaval in the 1980s.

From what I remember, his main thrust of argument came as a counter to a notion that has taken on added popularity over the years that the economic liberalization of Sri Lanka in 1977 was a fundamental factor behind the 1983 riots. Newton Gunasinghe, the celebrated University of Colombo sociologist, had penned a series of articles on the riots for the Lanka Guardian, collectively entitled “The Open Economy and its Impact on Ethnic Relations in Sri Lanka” where he noted that economic liberalization played off existing socio-political formations, impacting along caste, class and ethnic differentiations. Though it was regarded at the time as just another piece of fine scholarship by the author, it has been subsequently re-modeled as a seminal article unpacking the link between the liberalization of the economy and the rise in ethnic tensions. Indeed, the article formed the basis of a conference and subsequent collection of articles (Woost and Winslow: Economy, Culture and Civil War in Sri Lanka, 2000) analyzing the link between ‘economy, culture, and war’, in which the original article was re-printed (page 99-114). As quoted in Woost and Winslow (19):

Gunasinghe noted that in the controlled economy years before 1977, Tamil and Muslim businessmen were relatively disadvantaged by not having political access to political patronage from the Sinhalese-dominated government, the major player in the economy. After 1977, when the role of the government decreased, the Sinhalese lost that advantage; furthermore, because Tamils and Muslims were already well established in the private sector, they now had the advantage of being ready to work in the new open conditions. Not surprisingly, Sinhalese businessmen resented the fact that they were losing economic ground in relation to Tamils and Muslims… At the same time, many of the urban poor were hit hard by the combination of decreased welfare support and soaring inflation that characterized the early years of the new economy. The poor could see around them, for the first time in decades, highly desirable consumer goods available for sale, and their increased sense of relative deprivation also led to resentment against Tamil businessmen. These resentments were fanned by the government-controlled media and some government ministers into the flames of 1983.

Spencer argued that Newton himself would have been surprised by the emphasis placed on the article, noting that even in his own mind, the article was a set of reflections and thoughts on the riots, and not meant to act as a definitive truth. Indeed, note that it was a fairly short article and not a fully fledged scholarly analysis of the subject. As such, the adulation of the article, Spencer argues, is misguided and Newton himself would have cautioned against it. Apart from any theoretical arguments that can be made against the hypothesis put forward, Newton himself would not have over-played the impact of economic liberalization on the 1983 riots. Instead, he would have ascribed it a status as a factor among others. Spencer’s bottom line, and one given his own background as a scholar who has studied notions of collective violence, is that taking solace in ‘the consolations of the economic’, in a ‘it was the economy that dunnit (my words, not his!)’ manner masks the other, perhaps less comfortable factors behind the outbreak of mass communal violence such as that seen in 1983. He also offers specific criticisms of Newton’s hypothesis, one of which was that both Muslim and Tamil traders were also badly affected by economic liberalization and it was inaccurate to suggest that only Sinhalese traders bore the brunt of the impact.

Of course, the study of riots is an interesting phenomenon, and another interesting one-off forum I attended in early 2007 was a talk given by Professor Paul Brass of the University of Washington. A political scientist by training, Brass has over the years studied major riots in depth, and has developed a framework related to the movement from civil unrest to riot to pogrom, as well as an ‘organized working system’ of a riot, which he likens to the production and enactment of a dramatic play. A fellow blogger who was at the talk has given a developed synopsis of the talk here. While the talk itself was limited by time and forced into being more general than I would have liked, the concepts put forward are refreshing, even if influenced by the rigidity of political science methodology.

Finally, a word about the US presidential nominations. An article by Andrew Sullivan in the UK Sunday Times caught my interest, where he has highlighted the potential for Barack Obama to be a truly national candidate, bridging the divide between Republicans and Democrats, and going beyond the 51% aimed at by leaders like George W. Bush, towards the massive sweep of the 1984 elections by Ronald Reagan. His logic is sound: Obama appeals to right-wing but not utterly conservative Republicans, to the minorities, and to the young (at the Iowa caucus, where the vote between over-65s and under-30s was roughly equal, he defeated Clinton 57% to 11%). He offers a voice that is reminiscent of Bobby Kennedy, one that is not governed by the rules of the establishment, but by hope, thereby offering a route out of the petty partisanship of recent years. He does not possess the polarizing and stiff personality of Hillary and he calmly responds to criticism, refusing to take to vituperative attacks. About the only major criticism that I can make is that he is trying to play to too many audiences, and in trying to satisfy everyone, he may come across as promising much but failing to adequately explain how he will deliver, especially on foreign policy issues. On foreign policy, he struggles. But US elections are not won on foreign policy. So perhaps that doesn’t even matter.

Of interest to Sri Lankans, Obama has followed in Clinton’s footsteps by using Sri Lanka as an example, when he spoke of the problem of ‘the Other’ as the fundamental dilemma of our times.