The Hybrid Island: Culture Crossings and the Invention of Identity in Sri LankaNeluka Silva This collection of essays constitutes a tribute to the hybrid and multicultural nature of Sri Lanka's society and cultures, composed of Sinhala, Tamil, Muslims and Burghers and including the major faiths - Buddhism, Hindu, Islam and Christianity. The volume challenges assumptions of ethnic purity (based on myths of origin - Aryan, Dravidian, Semitic, European) by attempting to recover a hidden history of hybridity, and critiques facile celebrations of hybridity by assessing when hybridity is empowering and when it is not. The essays in this book cover a range of topics from the personal effects of hybridity to its political ramifications. They examine the Veddas and the Sinhalese, common kinship patterns of the Sinhalese and Tamils, the demonization of the Burghers of mixed ancestry, hybrid music forms and the Kandyans and hybrid 'things'. |
Contents
Where Have All the Väddas Gone? Buddhism | 1 |
Whats in a Name? Aryans and Dravidians in | 20 |
Modernity New Ethnicities | 41 |
the Biography | 71 |
The Performance of Hybridity in the Visual Culture | 93 |
A Search for Good Luck and Common Ground | 127 |
European Modernity and AfroIberian | 146 |
Other editions - View all
The Hybrid Island: Culture Crossings and the Invention of Identity in Sri Lanka Neluka Silva No preview available - 2002 |