To Be or Not to Be a Hero: Recognition and Citizenship among Disabled Veterans of the Sri Lankan Army

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in and around a so-called War Hero Village (Ranavirugama) in northwestern Sri Lanka, this article traces the social (un)becomings of Sri Lankan Army veterans injured during the civil war with the Tamil liberation front. It argues that such veterans have long been able to draw on a materially rewarding narrative of sacrifi ce and carnal capital—epitomized in the honorific ranaviru (war hero)—in order to produce a particular kind of veteran citizenship, let alone subjectivity, and thus to pursue socially meaningful post-injury existences. In the eyes of the veterans themselves, however, this celebratory narrative is eroding and a “collective narrative” characterized by a kind of social forgetting of the injured veteran is emerging. Material benefi ts notwithstanding, this narrative contestation entails a “struggle for recognition” that threatens to leave them not only disabled but also with no one to be, or become.
Original languageEnglish
JournalConflict and Society: Advances in Research
Volume5
Pages (from-to)96–114
ISSN2164-4543
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

ID: 236614521