‘Territorial anxieties and the impossibility of boundary demarcation’ a lecture by Prof. Benedikt Korf, Department of Geography, University of Zurich will be held at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), auditorium on January 28, 2020 at 4.00 p.m.
The talk is dedicated to the work of late Prof. Shahul Hasbullah and discusses Prof. Korf’s collaborative research with him on the politics of boundary demarcations of local administrative units in Eastern Sri Lanka to commemorate Prof. Hasbullah’s academic legacy. Taking the controversy around the formation of a new administrative entity, Koralai Pattu Central D.S. division (KPC) and the delineation of its territorial boundaries as a case study, this research shows the impossibility of demarcating local administrative boundaries to the satisfaction of ‘local people’, because the demands voiced by ‘local’ populations are deeply contradictory and antagonistic, especially if they are couched in an ethnic register. The presentation will trace the history of the evolution of KPC and neighbouring D.S. divisional secretariats and the Pradeshiya Sabha system from the late 1980s, to illustrate how administrative boundary demarcation and ethnic segregation became increasingly entangled. The case of ‘KPC’ has lessons, not only for Batticaloa’s politics, but for boundary demarcation politics for administrative or electoral purposes in Sri Lanka more broadly.
Long time Professor of Geography at the University of Peradeniya , Prof. Hasbullah was a visiting scholar at the University of Zurich, University of Edinburgh, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Georgetown University. Serving the country as a member of many peace and reconciliation committees during wartime and after, he was a member of the 2017-18 Provincial Council Delimitation Committee, when he died in August 2018. He was also a member of the board of directors of the ICES.