War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka

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Geoforum 37 (2006) 391–403

War and the commons: Assessing the changing politicsof violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka

Benedikt Korf a,*, Hartmut Funfgeld b

a Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, Roxby Building, Liverpool L69 3BX, UKb South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Received 6 October 2004; received in revised form 19 August 2005

Abstract

There are two antagonistic, but equally influential traditions in the study of the nexus between resource use and violent conflict. Oneworks through a Malthusian frame linking resource scarcity with violence, the other school of thought establishes a nexus betweenresource abundance and the incentives to use violence for rent monopolisation in a political economy of war or markets of violence.The tacit essentialism inherent in both schools of thought has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by geographers and anthropol-ogists. To escape such essentialism requires a more detailed study of the dynamism of the political economy of (civil) war and its spatialdynamics, the political geographies of violence. In this paper, we study endowments and entitlements of people depending on common-pool or open-access resources in war-affected areas of Sri Lanka. Rural spaces in the war-affected areas became both a strategic retreatfor fighters and an important common-pool resource on which a large part of the rural populace depended for their survival. Ourresearch illustrates how the political geographies of war affect access regimes and entitlements to common-pool resources and therebyconfine the livelihood opportunities of resource users. These dynamics of the political economy of war cross different scales and gobeyond simple place-based struggles, for they are rooted in broader spatial dynamics of warfare creating place–space tensions in the sensethat spatial dynamics of military control impinge changing access regimes upon specific places.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sri Lanka; Political geography; Civil war; Access regimes; Commons

1. Introduction

In the burgeoning literature on the nexus of resourcesand violent conflict, two broad lines of thinking can bedistinguished. Both have in common that they essentialisea kind of resource curse. The first one works in a neo-Malthusian conception that links population growth withincreasing resource scarcity and related environmentalproblems, which translate into triggers for violent conflict.In this paradigm, violent conflict is largely caused byresource scarcity and the struggles over gaining access toa diminishing resource base under conditions of rising

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doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.08.002

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Korf).

resource competition and environmental degradation (e.g.Baechler et al., 1996; Carius and Lietzmann, 1999; Haugeand Ellingsen, 1998; Homer-Dixon, 1999). The secondschool of thought links violent conflict with resource abun-

dance rather than scarcity. This argument stresses theopportunities to monopolise resource rents through vio-lence in ‘‘greed’’-driven warfare (Collier, 2000). Severalquantitative, cross-country econometric analyses havefound that resource abundance, not scarcity is a strong pre-dictor of violent conflict (Azam and Hoeffler, 2002; Collierand Hoeffler, 2002, 2004; De Soysa, 2002). Particularlyinfluential has been the work of Paul Collier who arguedthat rebel (groups) were not motivated to achieve the com-mon good, but followed personal (material) gain—whatCollier called the ‘‘greed’’ hypothesis (Collier, 2000; Collierand Hoeffler, 2004; Collier et al., 2004). The intuition of

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392 B. Korf, H. Funfgeld / Geoforum 37 (2006) 391–403

Collier’s argument was that while we may find grievancesover political injustice or increasing pressure for resourceaccess in many places of the world, these conflicts turnout violent only when there is the opportunity to monopo-lise resource rents through violence.

The tacit essentialism inherent in both schools ofthought has increasingly come under critical scrutiny bygeographers and anthropologists (Auty, 2004; Korf,2005a, forthcoming; Richards, 2004; Watts, 2004). Auty(2004) warns of constructing a simplistic deterministicresource curse leading to violence. Indeed, while resourceabundance may provide opportunities for monopolisingresource rents, it is the specific institutional mechanismsof resource governance and resource wealth distributionthat merit careful attention (Addison and Murshed,2003). Several case studies from African (and CentralAsian) civil wars have shown the complex political eco-nomy of resource exploitation, armed struggle and oligo-polistic regimes of resource exploitation, especially whenhigh-value resources such as oil or diamonds are available(Ballentine and Sherman, 2003; De Boeck, 2001; Le Billon,2001; Fairhead, 2001; Keen, 1997, 1998; Peluso and Watts,2001; Watts, 2003, 2004). De Boeck (2001), for example,describes how the diamond trade across Angolan and Con-golese borders has created wealth islands in the ‘‘bush’’.Some resources, such as alluvial diamonds, are easily loo-table and provide opportunities for non-separatist rebelsto extract them. In the case of other mineral resources,where extraction requires more sophisticated technologyand investment, often coincide with separatist, ethnicisedconflicts, in particular when benefit streams from exploita-tion are appropriated by an elite outside of the area,whereas the negative effects are internalized by the localpopulation (Le Billon, 2001; Ross, 2003).

Collier’s emphasis on warlordism in civil wars and therole of incentives and opportunities to loot resources hasovershadowed more refined research on the exact mecha-nisms of local resource access in times of warfare or post-war transition processes and the nuances of warfare wherethe political geographies of survival economies of civiliansand war economies of combatants are causally linked(Collinson, 2003; Keen, 1998; Korf, 2004a). These nuancedpolitical economies of warfare are manifested in the institu-tional mechanisms of resource access and the role of polit-ical networks and violence in these. Watts (2003, 2004), forexample, describes the politics of violence in Nigeria andthe economies of violence around oil and ethnicity. Heasserts that the political economies of ‘‘black gold’’ haveproduced powerful centrifugal forces that are fragmentingthe state, creating multiple unstable, ungovernable spacesculminating in a form of civic vigilantism. David Keen’sstudies on the Sudanese and Sierra Leonean civil warsshow the links of top down initiated violence and violenceemerging from bottom–up (Keen, 1998, 2000). Richards(1996) shows how youth violence in the Sierra Leoneancivil war is closely linked to persisting youth grievancesover lack of life opportunities. All these latter studies sug-

gest that the political economy of war is much more com-plex than a simplistic reading of Collier’s greedy rebelliontheory may suggest.

This paper further develops the theoretical conceptionsand empirical understanding of the political economy ofresource access under conditions of ongoing civil wars.More specifically, we want to illustrate how local strugglesfor resource access are influenced by and interwoven withthe political and military dynamics of armed conflict. Casestudies from the Sri Lankan civil war are employed todescribe and explain the political dynamics and institu-tional mechanisms of access to common-pool resources.The Sri Lankan civil war is a specific case in turn, sincethere are no easily lootable resources, such as diamonds,available for exploitation and thus the ‘‘greed’’ dimensionof warfare may be less apparent and based on differentsocial and political mechanisms.

In the Sri Lankan context, the micro-politics of gainingaccess to resources is based on agricultural resources, suchas lagoon resources (our first case study) and landresources (our second case study). In this paper, we studyendowments and entitlements of people depending on com-mon-pool or open-access resources in war-affected areas ofSri Lanka. Civil and guerrilla warfare in Sri Lanka tookplace in remoter rural spaces, which were a strategic retreatfor fighters and such areas were at the same time significantopen-access or common-pool resources on which a largepart of the population—especially the poor—dependedfor their survival. Our point here is to show how the polit-ical economy of war affects access regimes and entitlementsto common-pool resources and thereby confines the liveli-hood opportunities of resource users. These dynamics ofthe political economy of war cross different scales and gobeyond simple place-based struggles, for they are rootedin broader spatial dynamics of warfare creating place–space tensions in the sense that spatial dynamics of militarycontrol impinge changing access regimes upon specificplaces.

2. War and the disposition over common-pool resources:

entitlements, fields and capital

Access to resources has often been studied through thelens of entitlement analysis. Amartya Sen (1981) initiallyused the concept of entitlements for famine analysis toargue that famines may be rather a problem of access tofood (entitlements) than one of availability. Watts (2002,p. 10) asserts that Sen offers ‘‘a proximate sort of causalanalysis predicating what immediate or conjunctural forcesmight shift such forms of access and control, enabling asocial mapping of such shifts to understand who dies orstarves. . . and why’’. Leach et al. (1999) have furtherbroadened entitlement analysis for the study of environ-mental access regimes. They define institutions as ‘regular-ised patterns of behaviour between individuals and society’(Mearns, 1995, p. 103) and consider these as central agentsof mediation between the social and the environmental

1 While it is not the purpose of this paper to analyse the various notionsof social capital that have appeared within the social sciences over the pastyears, it is noteworthy to mention that Bourdieu was not only the one tocome up with the concept, but, according to Portes (1998, p. 3) alsoprovided ‘the most theoretically refined’ analysis of the term (see also Fine,2001; Harriss, 2002).

B. Korf, H. Funfgeld / Geoforum 37 (2006) 391–403 393

sphere. They point out that social factors determine com-mon property resources, and they focus on dynamic insti-tutions of intra-community relations that are based onthe heterogeneity of communities, their local history andpower politics.

The entitlement approach can only partly explain thevolatile social and political processes triggered by institu-tional failure in times of war. Sen’s and other rights-basedtheories do not take sufficient account of structural andrelational mechanisms of gaining access to resources, i.e.they tend to neglect the politics of resource governance(Gore, 1993; Ribot and Peluso, 2003). The reference ofenvironmental entitlements theory to having ‘legitimateeffective command’ (Leach et al., 1999, p. 233) over envi-ronmental goods and services is difficult to apply to civilwars, as the evidence on who legitimately commands overresources is often highly and violently contested. In timesof open conflict, established institutions tend to be highlyvolatile and subject to continuing changes. They often turninoperative, and ‘regularised patterns of behaviour’ can bealtered substantially within a short period of time. Like-wise, environmental entitlements are subject to social andpolitical upheaval. Ribot and Peluso’s concept of the poli-tics of access is much closer to the literature on politicalecology and the latter’s interest in explaining the link ofpower struggles over local resources (Bryant and Bailey,1997; Robbins, 2001) and notions of everyday resistance(Watts and Peluso, 2001; Scott, 1987). As Alex de Waal’sstudies have underlined, entitlements to resources becomeviolently contested in civil war (De Waal, 1998).

The limitations of the entitlement approach are also evi-dent in work carried out on war-related entitlement map-pings in the Sri Lankan context. O’Sullivan (1997) studieswar-related entitlements and concludes that due to the SriLankan welfare state, in large parts of the war-affectedareas, basic entitlements to livelihood resources have beenmaintained through public entitlements, such as goods dis-tributed as part of relief operations. O’Sullivan’s studiesand comparable ones such as Peiris (2001) suffer from anarrow understanding of the disputed nature of entitlementprovision and the political role relief provision can play asa conscious strategy of war, for example, by creatingdependency of a large number of citizens on state welfare,making them more vulnerable. Entitlement studies, in par-ticular, when they are not adequately placed in the politicaleconomy of war, may therefore be misleading. They cannottell us much about substantial entitlements to livelihoodresources and the politics of access to these in an environ-ment of political conflict.

In order to understand these distorted politics of accessin the light of warfare, we resort to Bourdieu’s notions of‘field’, ‘capital’, and ‘strategy’ (Bourdieu, 1985, 2000).According to Bourdieu, people’s social practices, that ischoices and actions, are embedded in an objectively struc-tured social space he calls ‘fields’ (Bourdieu, 1985). There-fore, individuals belonging to a certain field are actingwithin the boundaries of certain rules they unconsciously

adhere to (Bourdieu, 2000). The Sri Lankan conflict canin that sense be called a sub-field of a larger political field(Bourdieu, 2000). In our example, if people cannot escapethe sub-field of conflict and war by taking refuge outsidethe conflict environment, they are under compulsion tostick to the rules that dominate the field—the institutionalpeculiarities of the conflict that dominate social life at themicro-level, within villages and households. Otherwise theyrun the risk of being excluded from the field, which wouldmean imprisonment, abduction or, in the worst case, death.Here, the spatial reference of Bourdieu’s fields is revealed.He often used the term ‘space’ as substitute for fields(e.g. in Bourdieu, 1993). In order to sustain themselvesand their families, most individuals would therefore auto-matically stick to the rules of social practice specific to theirfield. Within that, however, the social practice of individu-als is determined by the disposition over resources, whichin Bourdieu’s terminology are called ‘capital’ (Bourdieu,1985).

In Bourdieu’s concept, the notion of capital is deeplyrooted in the structure of the field. In each field, a specifickind of capital—such as economic, social, political or sym-bolic capital—is best suited to gain or maintain power(Bourdieu, 1985). As our observations suggest, social andpolitical capital are of prime significance in the sub-fieldof conflict. Social capital1 is defined by Bourdieu asresources that are linked to a durable network of ‘moreor less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquain-tance or recognition’ (Bourdieu, 1985, cited in Portes1998, p. 3). Social capital, therefore, looks at the social dis-positions of an individual at the horizontal level, which isbased on affiliation to a certain group. While Bourdieudid not expand on the definition of political capital, it isoften perceived as links between an individual or a groupto power structures (Baumann, 2000, p. 20), particularlyto the administrative, political and—in the context of vio-lent conflict—military power holders. Political capitaltherefore can be understood as vertical links to politicalpower, although the latter may be accessed through hori-zontal networks of patronage and clientelism.

In Bourdieu’s model, the distribution of capital betweendifferent actors may induce a change of the field’s structuralparameters. In other words, a field’s structure directlyreflects the distribution of capital among individual actorsor institutions, i.e. the relations of power (Bourdieu, 1993).Therefore, fields in general are also battlefields of power,and power structures are constantly altered using differentstrategies. This agonistic perspective makes Bourdieu’smodel particularly applicable to the analysis of dynamicand convoluted conflicts.

2 In spring 2004, internal lines of dissent became apparent in the LTTE,when the organisation’s military commander in the Eastern Province,Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan (with nom-de-guerre Karuna) openlydemonstrated his illoyality to the LTTE leadership originating mostlyfrom the north of the island. Despite the rapid defeat of the Karuna-movement, the uprising caused considerable political turmoil in the eastand nation wide. It added another intra-ethnic component to theincreasingly complex conflict that makes a continuation of the stalledpeace talks less likely.

3 The tsunami disaster of December 2004 and the following influx of aidorganisations and funds for reconstruction have increased political tensionnot only in the tsunami-affected regions but also on the national level. Inmid-year 2005, the prospects for a lasting peace seemed very dim, withunresolved and rather increasing political conflict on both the side of theSinhalese-dominated government in Colombo and the Tamil factions inthe Northeast. Our case studies cover the period prior to the tsunami.


We are aware that the horizontal vs vertical distinctionof social vs political capital is only a simple approximationof the place–space tensions involved in the political econ-omy of war. The political and social relations betweenscales, macro–micro, are not fixed, but are constantly rene-gotiated and socially constructed (Brenner, 2001; Cox,1998; Marston, 2000; Swyngedouw, 1992). According toSwyngedouw (1992, p. 61), scale is socially producedthrough struggles ‘‘in and over space’’ and these strugglesare themselves mediated through scale. Swyngedouw notesthat ‘‘the continuous reshuffling and reorganisation of spa-tial scales are integral to social strategies and an arena forstruggles for control and empowerment’’ (Swyngedouw,2003, p. 133). Taylor’s notion of place–space tensionsmay be useful in this context, though in slightly differentways than employed by him (Taylor, 1999). In our analysisof the political economy of war, these space–place tensionsarise from the co-existence and interwovenness of differentlifeworlds, those of the military combatants with theirshifting spatial powers and territorial controls, which keepplaces of local livelihoods in dynamic and shifting arenas ofpower and ambiguous social rules of resource access. Thespaces of military contest influence and define the vulnera-bility of the place-based livelihoods of farmers and fisher-men in their daily economic activities.

3. Political geographies of war in Sri Lanka’s Northeast

3.1. Dynamics of the Sri Lankan conflict

Sri Lanka has suffered from a long-lasting political con-flict, which has turned violent and was largely fought alongethnic lines. Throughout the civil war which started in1983, the Northeast of Sri Lanka has been affected by civilwarfare and political violence with differing intensities andgeographical scales. The core conflict line, which triggeredthe fighting, can be drawn between the country’s ethnicmajority, the Sinhalese, and a significant ethnic minority,the Tamils. This simple dichotomy is manifested in the vio-lent fighting between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE), who are struggling for an independent Tamilhomeland in the Northeast of the island, and the Sinha-lese-dominated central government and its armed forces.In the eastern part of the island, the fighting between thesetwo groups became most intense in the 1990s, with devas-tating effects on the local economy and the livelihoods ofthe population, particularly in the rural hinterland. In2002, the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE signed aceasefire agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU), aiming at providing a basis for negotiations ongreater autonomy for the Northeast under a self-governingauthority. Despite frequent violations, the ceasefire stillholds due to a delicate system of external political pressuresand local frustrations with more than two decades of civilwar.

The ceasefire agreement did not bring an end to politicalviolence, even though open fighting and military combat

between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan armed forces wassuspended. Peace negotiations ended in a political stale-mate between the LTTE and the Sinhalese-dominated gov-ernment that was followed by major political crises withinthe Sinhalese political constituency. While the Sinhaleseparties were split between moderate and more radical viewstowards the LTTE, different political and military groupson the Tamil side also struggled for more control. In early2004, the solitary right for representing the Tamils waschallenged by an internal regional separatist movement inthe Eastern Province led by a former LTTE commandercalled Karuna.2 Since then frequent political killings andfactional fighting between the LTTE and Tamil sub-groupshave occurred in Batticaloa, while violence between Sinha-lese and Tamils has increased once again in Trincomalee,destabilizing the entire region.3 The political geographiesof war have differed significantly between the north andthe east. While in the north, we find more clearly definedfortified frontlines with clearly delineated areas under gov-ernment and under LTTE control, the situation in the eastresembles more a guerrilla war, where the rebels largelycontrol the remote rural areas and the government forceshave control over urban and peri-urban settlements andthe major roads (Goodhand et al., 2000).

This brief account of conflict history illustrates how vio-lence in its constructed dichotomies has overshadowed thenuances of social and ethnic conflicts, which are muchmore complex in nature (Mayer et al., 2003; Spencer,1990). To take account of the complexity of the so-called‘ethnic’ conflict in Sri Lanka’s Northeast, it is more appro-priate to talk about a ‘conflict cocktail’ rather than suggest-ing a one-dimensional, clear-cut political divide at the coreof the violent clashes. Social and political cleavages occurat various levels, and many contestations over territoriesand resources go well beyond simple dichotomies of thetype ‘Sinhalese–Tamil’. This is particularly the case in themulti-ethnic east, where we have conducted our researchand where Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese are living. Nota-bly, Muslims in the Sri Lankan context, though being areligious group, perceive themselves as a distinct own com-munal group besides Tamils and Sinhalese. The identityforming factors are communally shared histories and


ancestral lines, dating back to the Arabic tradesmen whotravelled the Indian Ocean during the early days of thespices trade. The common religion today still is a markerof identity group that comes close to a distinct ethnic iden-tity. In Sri Lanka’s east, most Muslims will speak Tamil asa language, but they still identify themselves as fundamen-tally different from the Hindu Tamils and thus also do not

perceive of the LTTE as ‘‘their boys’’, as many HinduTamils do.

3.2. Case study research in fragile conditions

The case studies presented in this paper reflect theempirical evidence gathered by the authors in two differenttime slots. The first case (Mavilangathurai fishing village)illustrates the local level situation after more than twoyears of ceasefire. Empirical research was carried out fromNovember 2003 to September 2004. While we were able tostudy institutions of resource governance in the periodbriefly before the ceasefire agreement and immediatelyafter, data about more distant periods of the civil warneeded to rely on retrospective information, which is oftendistorted by present experiences and the subjective inter-pretation of the informants. Research for the second casestudy (Allai Extension Scheme) was carried out in twophases. The first research phase took place from July toOctober 2001, and the second phase after the signing ofthe ceasefire agreement, in July and August 2002 as wellas May and June 2003.

Researching under the conditions of violent conflict orfragile post-war transition processes requires a sensibleapproach noting the diverse ethical and logistical chal-lenges in the field. In particular, any information aboutthe politico-military dynamics of warfare on a local orregional level is politically contentious and respondentsmay be reluctant to come out with information about theirown situations of oppression, intimidation and violenteveryday encounters. Therefore, case study research in vio-lence-prone locations needs to work with a qualitativeapproach, based on participant observation, rapid apprai-sal techniques and a long research process to build up trust.This trust building can be accelerated with the involvementof local researchers and research partners, but these may,again, be viewed from respondents as biased within thebroader political field of warfare. Thus, ‘entering the field’was a difficult and slow process in both case studies.

For the Mavilangathurai case study the research teamconsisted of up to three local researchers that worked incollaboration with a German researcher, with Tamil asmother tongue. The field work focussed on qualitative datacollection methods, such as key informant interviews withgovernment officials, NGO staff, village elders, politicians,focus group discussion with fishermen, women and youthin the communities. All interviews were conducted by theTamil team members in Tamil, with on-the-spot transla-tions to the author. It would have been ethically inappro-priate to tape interviews in a still tense security situation.

Therefore, only notes were taken and transcribed after-wards into a interview ‘mind protocol’. For less sensitivetopics, several data collection techniques of the rapid ruralappraisal (RRA) toolbox were used (e.g. social resourcemaps, mobility maps, Venn diagrams, environmental histo-ries). A small household survey with a sample of 20 fisher-men households was administered that covered a range ofissues of livelihood security and provided important base-line information at the beginning of the study. The house-holds were selected according to predefined livelihooddynamics they had undergone since the beginning of thepeace talks, e.g. if the households had managed to improvetheir overall livelihood situation or if it had worsened orremained the same at a relatively high or low level. Theassessment and the selection of the households were basedon RRA techniques cross-checked with key informantinterviews.

The second case study in the Allai Extension Scheme inMuthur worked in two phases. From July to October 2001,a broad livelihood study had been conducted in variouslocations in and surrounding Allai Extension Scheme,which provided important background information aboutpeasant livelihood strategies and the dynamics of the polit-ical economy of war. In this research, a large research teamconsisting of five German and five Sri Lankan researchersworked using mainly qualitative research techniques basedon RRA and carried out research in five locations conduct-ing household interviews, focused group discussions andkey informant interviews. One of the case studies was inthe Allai Extension Scheme and consisted of two Germanand a Tamil and a Sinhalese researcher. The results of theselivelihood studies and the methods used are documentedelsewhere (Korf, 2004a, 2005a). In July and August 2002,after the ceasefire had been signed, a smaller team consist-ing of one German and a Tamil and a Muslim researcherconducted a more careful analysis of resource conflicts inthe Allai Extension Scheme and on the political dimensionof land conflicts in the Northeast. At the time of this study,Tamil–Muslim communal tensions were about to emerge inthe area and the researchers adopted a very carefulapproach conducting informal interviews, using participantobservation techniques and relying on key informant inter-views. The research team could also rely on the long-termexperience and involvement of one of its members as a fieldworker for a development agency in the area, which easedthe contact into the field.

3.3. Case 1: Mavilangathurai fishing village: failing

institutions in times of conflict transition

The first case study investigates the changing politics ofaccess to lagoon resources. Originally, the lagoon was gov-erned by a common property regime system through theFishermen’s Cooperative Society. These access regimeshave been shifting with the changing power constellationsin the civil war. During times of ongoing fighting, thelagoon became a regime of ‘denied’ commons for local


fishermen who largely lost access to these livelihoodresources. With the signing of the ceasefire agreement in2002, the access regime began to change again, towardsopen access types or contested access types of resourceregimes. These changing constellations are illustrated tak-ing the example of Mavilangathurai village in Batticaloadistrict. In Mavilangathurai, local institutional and politi-cal parameters that determine resource access and themodes of resource use underwent drastic alterations inthe course of the conflict.

Mavilangathurai is a Tamil Hindu fishing village with230 households situated in the government-controlled(‘cleared’) area, on the shores of Batticaloa lagoon. Thelagoon is the largest of its kind on Sri Lanka’s east coast,extending about 56 km from north to south. It providesthe basis for a diverse range of resource-based and mostlysmall-scale income earning activities. Primary forms ofresource use, such as various modes of fishing and—recently introduced—aquaculture, serve secondary small-scale industries, e.g. fish trading and lime making. Virtuallyall households in Mavilangathurai are dependent on thelagoon for their income, which they customarily derivefrom small-scale fishing using simple fishing methods (e.g.cast nets, gill nets, lines, and fish traps). The village isneighboured by a Muslim and a Christian Tamil settlement(Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Map of Batticaloa lagoon and the location of Mavilangathurai.

Prior to the outbreak of the civil war, access to thelagoon resources (i.e. fish, crabs, prawns, shells) used tobe officially governed by the Department of Fisheries andAquatic Resources (fisheries department in the following).The Fishermen’s Cooperative Society (FCS) of Mavilan-gathurai was a crucial political and social field for localfishermen to gain access to state funding and for governingresource access. Before the violent conflict escalated in thearea, virtually all fishermen were registered members of thesociety. The organisation’s monopoly in providing profes-sional services to the fishermen and its direct link to thestate administration created a considerable level of author-ity and served as a formal institutional arena for informa-tion exchange and decision-making. In reference toBourdieu’s theory, the FCS was a means of pooling the‘professional’ social capital that was built up over genera-tions of fishermen in Mavilangathurai in order to derivebenefit streams from state services. Maintaining the integ-rity of the FCS was crucial to the whole fishing community,since government funding greatly depended on the func-tioning of the society. The FCS with its direct link to thegovernment had considerable political power through itspotential to access government funds for the society. Thus,the fishermen’s political capital, broadly understood asvertical linkages to power structures, was vested to a greatextent in the FCS. Within the FCS, however, individualpower linkages had to be established and constantlyrenewed, because the hierarchical structures created apatronage system. The FCS thus served as an avenue forthe fishermen’s pooled, but differentiated social capital,which was transformed by certain powerful players (usu-ally the wealthier fishermen who were literate) into politicalcapital, using existing institutional channels provided bythe state.

With the onset of armed confrontation, the lagoon’saccess regime was repealed when it became a ‘no-go zone’,a ‘denied’ commons, where any movement was controlleddirectly by orders of the Special Task Forces (STF), a spe-cial branch of the Sri Lankan military with a reputation ofbeing particularly brutal towards civilians. Mobility wasalso restricted indirectly by threats of abduction andharassment from both military groups, the army and theLTTE. This happened after the fighting between the armedforces and the LTTE intensified in the course of the arrivalof the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in 1987, and theonset of violent clashes between Tamils and Muslims afterthe LTTE had massacred Muslims in a Mosque in Kat-tankudy, near Batticaloa in 1990. The front line betweenareas under control of the STF and those controlled bythe LTTE ran along the longitudinal axis of the lagoon.Mavilangathurai was situated right in the eye of the contin-ually evolving conflict. According to reports of the fisher-men, the STF frequently suspected them to be LTTEcollaborators, and they therefore had to undergo regularchecks, interrogations, and harassment. Up to the signingof the ceasefire in early 2002, the STF had to a large extentretaken control of the eastern shores of the lagoon, includ-


ing the Mavilangathurai surroundings. During this time,nobody was allowed to fish in the lagoon at night whenusually the largest amount of fish could be caught. Fisher-men had to obtain permission from the STF each time theyintended to go fishing, and sign in and out before and afterdeparture. Their canoes were kept in a landing site near thearmy camp, and during times of overt warfare the fisher-men could not go fishing at all. The actor arena relevantfor the livelihoods of the local fishermen became substan-tially transformed with the combatant parties gaining anincreasing influence and power.

At the same time, a complete disruption of social net-works in the village took place (mostly due to temporarymigration—people left their homes when violence esca-lated), also with regard to taking cooperative action on mat-ters of resource use. Many families in Mavilangathurai hadto flee the village and to take refuge with relatives outsidethe highly contested areas along the front line. During theirabsence, which lasted from several months up to two years,many of their houses got ransacked and demolished. Inter-ethnic relations between neighbouring Muslim and HinduTamil villages had worsened and increasingly segregatedrural life. This left an organisational vacuum behind withthe FCS only existing on paper and no other village-basedorganisation filling this gap during the ongoing civil war.The FCS in Mavilangathurai ceased to operate in 1990,because nobody was willing to take over responsibilitiesand to expose themselves as a local leader in a time of ongo-ing political killings and open warfare. While local socialnetworks of the fishermen continued to exist outside theFCS, social capital was to a large extent dissociated frompolitical capital. Political capital, on the other hand, wasno longer vested in connections to the Sri Lankan govern-ment. The previously relatively influential government insti-tutions had virtually disappeared from the village scene.

Under these conditions, an alternative form of politicalcapital, now understood as linkages either to the LTTE orto the STF, became a powerful and overriding means ofobtaining access to the lagoon. If the STF trusted an indi-vidual not to be part of the LTTE, the person would haveeasier access to the lagoon and hence be able to deriveprofit from it through fishing. Often, verifiable contactsto STF soldiers also helped individual fishermen in emer-gency situations, e.g. when they got imprisoned by theSTF on the suspicion of LTTE collaboration. At night,however, the lagoon still was an area that was largely con-trolled by the LTTE, and fishermen were also abducted andpenalised for collaborating with the STF if they lacked theappropriate political capital. Overall, the fishermen were ina difficult position: Due to their dependency on theresources of the strategically important and thereforehighly contested lagoon, they found themselves trappedbetween the STF and the LTTE, and the power strugglesof the two major opponents. Several deaths in crossfirewere reported from Mavilangathurai, like from most fish-ing villages along the lagoon. Political capital, therefore,became a highly ambivalent resource, which could yield

profit if it was used very cautiously and appropriately,depending on the ever-changing local and regional politicalset-up of the conflict.

In 2002, when the cease fire agreement was signedbetween the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, thelagoon and its resources were once again opened up for fish-ing, transport and other civil uses. Violent fighting came to ahalt, and both military parties were granted freedom ofmovement within the areas controlled by the other, providedthey were unarmed (Uyangoda and Perera, 2003). In theMavilangathurai area, the LTTE gradually intensified itsinfluence in all social and political domains, as the ceasefireallowed them to set up offices (‘camps’) in formerly govern-ment-controlled areas such as Mavilangathurai. Two yearsafter the ceasefire, the village and its surroundings couldbe called a ‘grey’, i.e. contested, border area, where the dis-tinction between ‘cleared’ and ‘uncleared’ areas is no longerclear-cut. In the grey areas the government is in full controlipso jure. De facto, however, the LTTE has taken on aconsiderable proportion of village-level administration bylargely non-formalised influence creating overlapping andambiguous spaces of authority of both regimes.

At the same time, the formal government apparatusremains weakened and largely ineffective due to chronicunderstaffing and lack of funding. In Mavilangathurai,none of the government-initiated organisations on the locallevels, such as the FCS have resumed their work. While theFCS continues to exist on paper, no action has so far beentaken to revive it, neither from the fishermen nor from thefisheries department. This also implies that governmentregulations cannot be implemented because of the lack ofenforcement capacities. In effect, all players in the regionalarena carefully observe the fragile power constellationsbetween LTTE and army, between different political par-ties, and ethnic communities. This ambiguous political fieldprovides a broad space for the LTTE to exercise andincrease its rule of power.

Over the past few years the value and expedience ofsocial and political capital once again changed dramati-cally. Informal social networks have deteriorated consider-ably within the village over the past decade of war. Whilemost families seem to entertain amicable relationships withtheir neighbours, a majority reported a lack of unity andfrequent quarrels in the village. Also, ethnic and religioussegregation in the area is extremely high, particularly withregard to the Tamil and the Muslim population. To a lesserextent, Hindu Tamil and Christian Tamil families are alsospatially separated, although this is not so much an effectof the conflict but rather the outcome of continuous con-version of Hindus to Christianity, which itself has becomea political issue in the area. Economic linkages beyondvillage boundaries hardly exist. The regained freedom ofmovement is inhibited by profound individual and commu-nal fears (Korf, 2004b). Social capital, anyhow diminished,is to a great extent contained within ethnic or religiousboundaries and within ethnically isolated communities. InMavilangathurai, most people do not entertain any social


contact with the directly neighbouring Muslim village, andonly a few have social ties with the Christian village. Thisindicates that social relations become much more refinedto the inner kinship bounds and more exclusive towardsother ethnic and social groups. The manifest spatial andsocial segregation reinforces the discourses of warfareand creates a society largely confined along ethnic, reli-gious and kinship divides (Korf, 2005b).

While the fishermen have to a great extent regained theircustomary entitlements to the commons, they experience apartial entitlement failure and increasingly competitiveresource access. Access to lagoon resources is no longerregulated, neither by the rule of law nor by the access restric-tions that were enforced by the military actors. Deterioratedand community-bound social capital cannot make up for theinstitutional failure (e.g. by forming alliances), and environ-mental degradation and increasing contests over the lagoonresources are mutually reinforcing triggers for social conflictat the intra- and, potentially, at the inter-community level.One growing concern among the lagoon fishermen is theincreasing competition for resource exploitation and theuse of unsustainable fishing methods that have begun tothreaten the lagoon ecosystem. For many families, lagoonfishing suddenly provided new economic opportunities asa major fallback option for those who had lost their assetsor the access to it during the war (paddy farmers, cattle herd-ers). By 2004, serious signs of environmental damage wereobserved by the lagoon fishermen.

Increasing resource competition nurtures potential fordisputes between new and customary users, but also alongethnic or religious lines. In Mavilangathurai, fishermenincreasingly turn to the LTTE to address the problem ofillegal fishing methods in the lagoon. The LTTE does notrepresent the entire population and is biased towards theinterests and concerns of the Tamils. Other resource users,for example Muslims, may turn to different actors, such asstate authorities and the judicial system. The politicaluncertainty and internal division also challenges the integ-rity of the lagoon fisher folk, with the LTTE sanctioningillicit fishing methods by rigid measures predominantlyon a case-to-case basis in the communities loyal to them.For the individual fishermen, political capital in the formof linkages to the LTTE can thus be used as a powerfulasset in order to impose sanctions on other perpetrators,or to escape penalties. The divided territories, the ambigu-ous political field and overlapping spaces of power betweenthe different political actors in the area make conflict reso-lution a politically highly charged issue. Furthermore, itcreates impediments for developing sustainable resourcemanagement systems of the lagoon, since each politicalactor first thinks about the own clientele group.

3.4. Case 2: Allai extension scheme: local contests over

‘ethnicised’ entitlements

The second case study looks into local conflicts overland and water resources in a large-scale irrigation scheme

located in the district of Trincomalee, north of Batticaloa.This irrigation scheme, Allai Extension Scheme, divertswater from the Mahaveli River for irrigation purposesserving Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim paddy cultivators inMuthur and Seruvila sub-districts. Access to land andwater resources became increasingly intertwined with theethnicised perceptions of inter-ethnic relations and thechanging, ambiguous and coercive political field imposedby the armed conflict. In particular, small-scale conflictsbecame reinterpreted as local mirrors of a much broaderpolitical contest over land policy and territorial control inthe east.

Allai Extension Scheme is part of a larger policy of thepost-colonial Sinhalese-dominated central governmentsthat built irrigation and settlement schemes in the dry zoneof Sri Lanka (Moore, 1989). This land colonisation policyin the dry zone, which started already during colonialtimes, but was intensified in post-colonial Sri Lanka, waspart of the government’s peasant ideology (Moore, 1989),which sought to overcome rural landlessness in the denselypopulated areas of Sri Lanka’s south by settling these Sin-halese in new irrigation schemes located in the largely unin-habited dry zone of the Northeast (Peiris, 1991, 1994).Settling Sinhalese farmers from the south into areas consid-ered as their own territory created substantial grievanceson the part of the Tamil (and Muslim) minorities (Bastian,1995; Peebles, 1990; Tambiah, 1986). Since the 1950sonwards, Tamil and Muslim politicians became concernedabout what they considered ethnically disproportionatebenefits of land colonization schemes that favoured Sinha-lese. In their view, this settlement policy changed the ethnic‘‘population ratios’’ and undermined the electoral basis ofTamil political parties, in particular in Trincomalee andAmparai districts (Balasundarampillai, 2002; Manogaran,1987; Tambiah, 1986). By this, land policy became onemajor grievance factor in the ethnicised conflict of SriLanka.

When inter-ethnic violence increased in the 1980s, thesesettlement schemes became a theatre of inter-ethnic contes-tation and violence and became interwoven with militaryand political strategies of the major conflict parties. Afterthe military contestation between the Sri Lankan armyand the LTTE aggravated, some segments in the Sinhaleseregime and the military used new ‘‘strategic’’ settlementschemes to weaken the basis of Tamil claims to a Northeasthomeland. LTTE attacks on Sinhalese settlers and armyretaliation against Tamil villagers were common practiceduring these early periods of heightened confrontation(Rosel, 1997; UTHR-J, 1993). The government respondedand gave weapons to Sinhalese settlers; they became ‘‘homeguards’’ and ‘‘frontiermen’’, which created a militarisedrural society (Thangarajah, 2003). The violent contestsover territorial control in the Northeast around controlof irrigation land and water also influenced inter-ethnicrelations in other irrigation schemes of the East, such asAllai Extension. Allai Extension was established in the1950s and provided irrigation land and water to Sinhalese


settlers from the South of Sri Lanka in the left bank andthe upstream fields of the right bank of the scheme. Tamiland Muslim farmers from the area received land at the tai-lend of the scheme. Such a policy, which gives land andwater upstream to Sinhalese and land at the tailend toTamil and Muslim farmers downstream is also observedin other irrigation schemes, such as Gal Oya in the south-east (Uphoff, 1996). This hydraulic layout provides Sinha-lese farmers with a strategic advantage in control overwater resources and water flows of the irrigation schemes.

Inter-ethnic user conflicts over water resources in thecentrally managed Allai irrigation scheme remained largelysuppressed before the outbreak of the civil war. After theoutbreak of the civil war, though, smaller disputes overwater distribution in the scheme easily became ethnicised,because they were mainly fought between Sinhaleseupstream users and Tamil or Muslim downstream users.A redrawing of administrative boundaries provided Sinha-lese farmers of the left bank with their own sub-district andtheir own Sinhalese divisional secretary who would ensurethat their interests were met. Tamil and Muslim farmersbelonged to Muthur sub-district with mainly Tamil divi-sional secretaries. In effect, this created a situation whereeven the ‘‘state’’ consisted of different and ambiguousstreams of power.

The military confrontation in the 1980s and later in the1990s brought violence and uncertainty to the area, andmany farmers became temporarily displaced. In the1990s, tensions and violence also took place between Tamiland Muslim farmers, and created a basic level of suspicionbetween the different ethnic groups. The Sinhalese farmers,in order to protect them from LTTE attacks, were sanitisedin a system of army checkpoints and camps and theinvolvement of farmers in military combat as home guardsalienating them further from Tamil and Muslim farmers(Thangarajah, 2003). While the 1980s and the early 1990swere periods of high uncertainty and predominance of vio-lence, the intensity of violence calmed down into a precar-ious equilibrium between the armed forces and the LTTEtowards the second half of the 1990s. Fighting was con-fined to smaller attacks and the broader lines of controlbetween army and LTTE only shifted gradually. However,the spheres of control of army and LTTE were volatile, didoverlap and were dynamic in space and time. The LTTEoccupied some remote areas of Muthur sub-district andthe jungle areas surrounding Allai Extension Scheme (the‘‘uncleared areas’’), while the army was in control of themajor market towns and the roads (‘‘cleared area’’) duringday time. In the night, however, as was also the case in Bat-ticaloa (case 1), the LTTE exercised a firm control overpretty much of the area, including the Sinhalese settle-ments. The LTTE created a system of taxation for Tamil,Muslim and Sinhalese farmers and everybody had to paytaxes in order to be able to cultivate their fields. In Tamilvillages, the LTTE also interfered in village politics. Thearmy, on the other hand, had established a system ofcheckpoints where they controlled the flow of goods

and regularly arrested Tamils suspected of LTTE collab-oration.

This regime of intimidation, violence and oppression cre-ated a delicate space–place tension: place, the home, com-munity, the location where one’s livelihoods was rootedcould be at times a source of security and at times a sourceof danger. Similarly, the outer space, the jungle areas, theremote paddy fields, remote places outside the own place,could be areas of high insecurity or of refuge dependingon the dynamics of the political geographies. In times ofhigh military tension, escalation, and attack, place, thehome could easily become a trap and people had to flee intothe outer space, e.g. the jungle, where they often stayed for aconsiderable time before returning to their place, especiallyduring the 1980s and early 1990s. On the other hand, withthe precarious politico-geographical equilibrium of the late1990s, home became a more secure place, whereas the outerspaces became sources of insecurity, especially when theycrossed ‘‘virtual’’ or real ethnic boundaries and the own(ethnic) place had to be left into the ‘‘ethnic’’ space of oneof the other. These volatile spatial regimes of control andpower shifted not only throughout the daytime, but alsoalong a longitudinal time axis, where shifting balances inthe spatial equilibrium of military power also affected theregimes of political control and thus the manoeuvring spacein the livelihood systems of the peasants. Furthermore,these manoeuvring spaces of peasants differed significantlyamong the three ethnic groups.

While Allai Extension Scheme continued to functionalmost throughout the years of civil war, the governanceof water flows and access to land became intertwined withthe military dynamics of the war, the political geographiesof spatial control and the ambiguous institutional environ-ment. Entitlement disputes became reinterpreted in thelight of the inter-ethnic struggle of a larger scale dependingon the shifting regimes and spheres of spatial controlbetween the two fighting parties. Two lines of resourcecompetition can be distinguished: first disputes betweenSinhalese upstream and Tamil downstream farmers (1),and secondly, disputes between Tamil and Muslim down-stream farmers (2). The disputes between Sinhaleseupstream and Tamil downstream farmers became reinter-preted in the light of the State’s ethnically biased land pol-icy. Tamil paddy cultivators complained that Sinhaleseupstream farmers diverted more water for their cultivationthan was allocated to them creating water shortages ordelayed water delivery for downstream (Tamil andMuslim) farmers.

While such disputes often emerge in larger irrigationschemes in Sri Lanka, they became prisoners of a complexweb of ethnic clientelism and ambiguous political regimesof power. The field engineers and his technical assistantsof the Irrigation Department were predominantly Tamils.When Sinhalese farmers upstream blocked the flow ofwater to divert more water to their fields, the Tamil engi-neers had very little scope to interfere due to the intimatelink between the Sinhalese peasants and the armed forces


and the police. The Sinhalese peasants could easily threatenthe Tamil engineer would he take action against their (ille-gal) encroachment and water diversion or police officerscould intimidate Tamil civil servants not to take action.The office of the irrigation engineer was located within apolice camp, so that such acts of intimidation could be eas-ily conveyed in many different, mostly indirect forms andmessages.

In this fragile political field of intimidation and silentcoercion, Sinhalese peasants disposed of a strong politicalnetwork with army, powerful administrators, even Buddhistmonks, which were very influential on the level of nationalpolitics. The Sinhalese-dominated state had a strong politi-cal interest in keeping these Sinhalese peasants in the area,because this was essential for the State’s claim that the eastis a multi-ethnic area and this cannot become a Tamil home-land as demanded by the Tamil rebels. However, this polit-ical field was more ambiguous as appears at first sight.Sinhalese peasants complained about the LTTE extractingtaxes, abducting Sinhalese farmers and of cattle theft duringthe nights, when the police and army forces withdrew fromthe villages into their camps. The Sinhalese-dominated stateand military machinery could safeguard and even expandaccess to resources for its clientele, the Sinhalese peasants,but it was not in a position to provide full protection,because spatial control over time was so fluid.

While Sinhalese and Tamil farmers were separatedthrough the ‘‘border’’ of army camps, Tamil and Muslimsettlement patterns further downstream in the Allai Exten-sion Scheme were much more intertwined. Muslims mostlylive in larger market towns considering congested settle-ments as safe places of Muslimness, but their fields weremostly located outside of these safe places in the outer eth-nically mixed rural spaces. Muslim fields were located side-by-side with Tamil fields. In order to access their fields,Muslim farmers had to cross Tamil settlements and fields.In times of ethnic tensions between Tamils and Muslims orheightened military confrontation, the places of Muslim-ness in the towns became secure locations, but the outerspaces of their livelihoods became unsafe outer spaces, inparticular as spaces of the ethnic ‘‘Other’’. Tamil–Muslimtensions therefore transformed into place–space tensions:Muslim farmers were reluctant to access their fields locatedin the spaces of the ethnic other and Tamil farmers werehesitant to bring their market produce to the nearby mar-ket towns, which they considered as places of Muslimness.Many Muslim farmers consequently abandoned their fieldsaltogether or sold them for a low price to Tamil farmers.Sometimes, Tamil tenant cultivators refused to pay theirrent to Muslim landowners using subtle threats to get theLTTE involved should the landlord insist on payments.Some Tamil farmers utilised a situation of political tensionduring specific times of the cultivation period and har-vested fields of their Muslim neighbours when these wereafraid to come to their fields. Again, Tamil farmerswere protected in this opportunistic behaviour towardsthe ‘‘ethnic Other’’ by their link with the LTTE.

After the ceasefire agreement in 2002, Tamil–Muslimtensions increased in the research area. Muslim–Tamilcommunal violence in the early 1990s had left a generallevel of mistrust between the two ethnic groups behind,although Muslims and Tamils used to cooperate in eco-nomic exchanges, such as trade, marketing and other busi-nesses. The fragile equilibrium got out of balance after theceasefire agreement, because many Tamils now consideredtheir ‘‘ethnic’’ political field and space of manoeuvre to bestronger, because the LTTE could move more freely, evenin government-controlled areas. At the same time, manyMuslims felt increasingly vulnerable as a third party inthe conflict being left out from political negotiationsbetween Tamil and Sinhalese representatives on thenational level. In addition, the spatial spheres of controlwere considerably altered: after the ceasefire agreement,the Sri Lankan army could not use force openly, had to dis-mantle most army checkpoints and to allow free movementof goods and persons, which reduced their control over thearea. Tamil–Sinhalese grievances remained stalled becauseboth parties did not want to upset the precarious politicalbalance in the national negotiations. However, the rela-tions between Tamils and Muslims deteriorated quicklyand became subject to several violent clashes.

Tamil–Muslim clashes and violent fighting eruptedbetween youth gangs from both sides. Here again, accessto water and to fields became part of the struggle: Forexample, during Tamil–Muslim clashes in June 2002, lessthan half a year after the ceasefire agreement was signed,Tamil farmers blocked the water to fields located furtherdownstream which belonged to Muslims living in thenearby town. Resource access now became a political toolin inter-ethnic riots between farmers and local communitiesfrom different ethnic origin. Blocking the water flow to theethnic other’s fields was a formidable demonstration ofpower: interrupting water flows at specifically crucial peri-ods of cultivation could easily damage potential harvests.Perceived vulnerability and the spatial access to livelihoodresources became more fragile after these clashes. Muslimpeasants realised that access to fields could become impos-sible at any moment and the benefit from investing in cul-tivation could be easily lost. The place–space tensionsinherent in their livelihood system which separated theplace of home and place of livelihood source had becomea primary source of vulnerability.

While the ceasefire opened up spatial mobility for peopleacross the military borderline, the aftermath political riotsrefined this spatial mobility: Now spatial restrictions wereless imposed by the combatants, but developed in theminds of the people as perceived vulnerability in spacesdominated by the ethnic other. In this system, vulnerabilitybecame dynamic in spatial and temporal perspectives: anarea that was considered safe could become a no-go zonewithin a short time frame (Korf, 2004b). Incidencesbetween Tamils and Muslims in different locations faraway or political turmoil in the national negotiation pro-cess could easily upset the precarious balance of spatial


control and vulnerability. Whenever there was a clashbetween Tamils and Muslims somewhere in the Northeast,no Muslim would dare to intrude ‘‘Tamil’’ spaces in anyother location of the east and the other way round: Tamilswould not come to Muslim dominated market towns.

4. Commons, violence and moral powers

of resource access

The commons often transform into highly contestedspaces when there is political violence and civil war, whenthey become spaces of military contestation or withdrawalof combatant groups. Our focus in this paper was on thepolitical networks, scalar structuration of violence andthe place–space tensions between the places of livelihoodsurvival of peasants and fishermen and the spaces of thepolitical economy of war as it emerged from military com-bat and related political regimes of intimidation, controland physical coercion. Military and political actors issuedsecurity policies and subsequent access restrictions—formally by legal order, or informally by threat to assetsand lives invigorating spaces of access regimes. In thissituation, civilians were not only victims, but also agentsthat made use of these regime spaces created by institu-tional failures and proactively sought to alter entitlementsand resource access. Horizontal intra-group linkages(based on social capital) and dissociation from the ‘‘ethnicOther’’ can lead to internally strengthened, but highly seg-regated ethnic or religious communities. Where accessrights have been altered as an effect of the political dynam-ics of the conflict, and where actors voluntarily and pro-actively changed entitlement schemes by polarisation andethnicisation, the observed dynamic was directly linked tothe particular political condition of warfare and the subse-quent processes of social and political transition.

The political field within which these practices wereexercised was, however, very volatile in space and time.We have seen in the second case study (Allai) that thisambiguity of the political field and the changing politico-military regimes of spatial control created space–place ten-sions along ethnic lines, where the own ‘‘ethnic’’ placebecame the source of security while the outer spaces ofthe ‘‘ethnic other’’ produced perceptions of insecurity andvulnerability. Changes in political negotiations on thenational level and in spatial military or administrative con-trol affect these place–space tensions and the perceivedboundaries of secure places and insecure outer spaces. Ineffect, this process leads to the creation of homogenous eth-nic places which are separated from the outer spaces of the‘‘ethnic other’’. This process has not been stopped by theceasefire agreement in 2002, but rather accelerated, espe-cially in the Tamil–Muslim areas. Ethnic tension and evenviolence between Tamils and Muslims have their roots inthe perceptions of either side that the other would havegained an unjustified political advantage over access toresources. Competition over resource access has becomeframed in terms of life and death, the ethnic self and the

ethnic other, a frame which continues to be important afterthe ceasefire agreement has become effective. The ceasefireagreement has just shifted the politico-military spaces ofcontrol and reshuffled the delicate political fields pertinentin different places of the east.

Our studies suggest that the complex web of relations ondifferent scales provides various spaces for opportunisticgreed to be satisfied and grievances to be nurtured. Differ-ent processes of political negotiation, military contestationand control impinge on each other and create a delicatepower equilibrium which is volatile and shifting in timeand space, creating ambiguous space–place tensions anddifferentiated political fields of power and control. Greedis not confined to combatants as economic theories suggestand civilians are not only victims or agents of silent resis-tance. Rather, these different agents, their inter-relations,and the field in which they are immersed, create differentways and means to gain from the situation, while othersmay (partially) lose. In the Sri Lankan context, we cansee how different peasant and fisher groups use specificopportunities which emerge in their political field at a spe-cific time and place for small opportunistic gains at theexpense of the ‘‘Other’’, who is often termed in ethniccategories. Opportunism against this other appears to bemorally justifiable much easier than towards the ethnic self,because this opportunism can be reinterpreted within theframe of the broader struggle for territories. Morality, itappears, is constructed in the political field as a strategicresource. The relationship between resource access, gover-nance and conflict is therefore a complex one and cannotbe reduced to simple essentialisms in the Malthusian tradi-tion, the greed proposition or images of innocent peasantsas victims or forces of resistance.

Acknowledgement

Very helpful comments from two anonymous refereesand from Paul Robbins as editor are gratefully acknowl-edged. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Documents

War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka