To Be or Not to Be a Hero: Recognition and Citizenship among Disabled Veterans of the Sri Lankan Army
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To Be or Not to Be a Hero : Recognition and Citizenship among Disabled Veterans of the Sri Lankan Army. / Weisdorf, Matti; Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund.
In: Conflict and Society: Advances in Research, Vol. 5, 2019, p. 96–114.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - To Be or Not to Be a Hero
T2 - Recognition and Citizenship among Disabled Veterans of the Sri Lankan Army
AU - Weisdorf, Matti
AU - Sørensen, Birgitte Refslund
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Sri Lanka
KW - veteran
KW - disability
KW - recognition
KW - citizenship
KW - social becoming
U2 - 10.3167/arcs.2019.050107
DO - 10.3167/arcs.2019.050107
M3 - Journal article
VL - 5
SP - 96
EP - 114
JO - Conflict and Society
JF - Conflict and Society
SN - 2164-4543
ER -
ID: 236614521