Latest issue of Polity Vol. 4 No. 5

SRI LANKA'S CONFLICT AT THE CROSSROADS
Jayadeva Uyangoda
What does Sri Lanka’s continuing conflict suggest concerning the island nation’s capacity to deal with a problem that has defined its existence for about three decades now? Has Sri Lanka lost its capacity to get out of the conflict, or is the country getting more and more entrapped in the conflict whatever way, political or military, through which it has attempted to find a way out? Or else, are the Sri Lankan people beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of a long tunnel? These are some key questions that arise in relation to Sri Lanka’s current phase of the seemingly unending search for an end to its ethno-political civil war.

POLLING FOR PEACE POLICIES: THE SRI LANKAN CASE STUDY
Pradeep Peiris
A fundamental principle of democratic governance is that policy making should be a function of the opinion of the demos (Wleizen and Soroka: 2006)2 But practice is never perfect and the realities of democracies are far from what is theoretically sound and ideal. The influence of public opinion on government raises normative as well as empirical questions about democracy. Theories on representative democracy assume that people have only enough wisdom to elect the correct leader; policy decisions thereafter rest solely in the hands of the ‘chosen one.’ Some theoreticians take this argument a step further by pointing out that the public is largely ignorant of political issues and thereby unable to deliberate and form discerning opinions on the same. Vincent L Hutchings3  takes these differing streams and brings them together via the contention that while the public are not routinely vigilant, they become alert and informed when their interests come under threat.
ANTHROPOLOGIZING HISTORY AND HISTORIZING ANTHROPOLOGY
Premakumara de Silva
Within anthropology the turn to history appears to have received legitimacy and gathered momentum in recent years. Between the 1920s and 1970s, the discipline was largely dominated by two overarching ‘ahistorical’ theoretical discourses, Functionalism and Structuralism. The emphasis on the central methodology of participant observation in ‘the field’ may also have contributed to the neglect of history in anthropology. Under this methodological approach, anthropologists had been encouraged to concentrate on what Roger Sanjek calls “the ethnographic present” (1991) so the appearance of history in the conventional ethnography was limited. However, in his 1961 lecture “Anthropology and History”, Evans-Pritchard appealed for an integration of functionalist and historical interpretation in anthropology. His stress on the need for greater historical understanding in anthropology echoed Levi-Strauss, albeit from a different perspective. For Levi-Strauss had earlier argued, ‘a little history - since such, unfortunately, is the lot of the anthropologists - is better than no history at all’ (1968: 12; cf. Nissan 1985: 345).
IN MEMORIAM: TRIBUTE TO MY FATHER
Rohini Hensman
My father, C.R. (‘Dick’) Hensman, died peacefully in London on 9 July 2008. Among the many people sending in tributes to him, several refer to the enormous influence he had on them, and I suppose I belong to that category too. He introduced me to revolutionary politics as well as liberation theology at an early age, and his vision of global justice has inspired me all my life.