Books, Articles & Other Resources
Book titles
As women/ wom!n, An Anthology of Non-conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways & Wonders invites us to take seriously our role in furthering ideas, values, and practices in everyday life that constitute oppression. In spotlighting a multilayered multiplicity of stories on rebels, resistance, and restoration, this becomes a handbook of “how to” transform instead of conforming to subjugation. The anthology introduces us to the ways and wonders of non-conformism and its liberatory uses, especially for women. Non-conformism is the watchword here: it is a lifesaver, a blueprint for new visions, and a gateway to much-needed restorative justice.
This powerful compilation of stories, created from the margins in inter-media formats by a powerful group of rebel women is a vital contribution to the politics of liberation. Moving beyond cosmopolitan imaginaries, these narratives of overcoming and transcendence directly challenge the necropolitics of the times and stress the urgency of building communities of womanist wayfarers, firmly rooted in dismantling hierarchies of pain and oppression and in transforming hearts into fists. These courageous warriors reveal how the radicalization of feminist thought can create new social universes of repair and resistance while at the same time forging an enduring compassion for others.
Series: Brill, Social Sciences in Asia, Volume: 42
Volume Editors:
Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Kelvin E.Y. Low, Noorman Abdullah
and Anna-Katharina Hornidge
This volume explores how the city and the sea converse and converge in creating new forms of everyday urbanity in archipelagic and island Southeast Asia. Drawing inspiration from case studies spanning Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and New Caledonia, the volume rethinks the place of the sea in coastal cities, through a mobility-inspired understanding of urbanity itself. How might conceptualisations of contemporary coastal urbanisms be approached from the sea, in ways that complicate singularly terrestrial, fixed framings of the city? What connections, contradictions, and dissonances can be found between sea change and urban change? While addressing these questions, the authors re-centre more marginal voices of those who dwell and work in islanded metropoles, offering new insights on the futures and contested nature(s) of littoral urban transformation.
Breaking down the lines that falsely separate land and sea, city and shore, wet and dry, this carefully collated, beautifully curated text provides critical scholars researching coasts, islands, seas and cities a deep reflection of the intersections, relations and entanglements of these spaces: how the urban and the ocean coalesce, crash, creep, collide and create worlds anew – on and offshore and the spaces between. A must-read text at a moment of climate crisis, rising seas, ecological decline and human response – this volume offers profoundly necessary empirical and theoretical contributions to understanding complex social ecologies in the context of postcolonial histories.
This book is a rare and much needed attempt at theorizing life that is both oceanic and terrestrial, the life that dominates and characterizes human and more-than-human assemblages in archipelagic countries. Maritime STS work in Southeast Asia and elsewhere would, therefore, benefit from this book when it needs to examine the limits and porosity of the maritime world, and the material traffics between the ocean and the hinterland.
With a Foreword by Prof. Sujit Sivasundaram
A rich ethnography that pays meticulous attention to a complex social fabric made up of locals, settlers and migrants, with multiple linguistic and religious affiliations, sometimes contending fishing practices, and migration and livelihoods patterns as they have been affected by tsunami, war and the aftermaths of both. It draws from and speaks to a range of disciplines – from political science and sociology, to critical geography and cultural studies, and contributes to diverse fields of inquiry, including conflict and its relationship to a “cold” peace; coastal/maritime livelihoods; identity, cooperation, and collective action.
By unveiling the vast heterogeneity of fisher migrants and settlers, the book demonstrates in an excellent way how research should not merely focus on the articulations of identity, but more so the inherent properties and qualities of the diverse interdependencies they come to sustain.
This multi-sited island ethnography illustrates how the embattled politics of (im)mobility, belonging, and patronage among coastal fishing communities in Sri Lanka´s militarised northeast have intersected in the wake of civil war. It explores an undertheorized puzzle by asking how the conceptual dualisms between co-operation and contestation simplify the complex lifeworlds of small-scale fishing communities that are often imagined by scholars through allegories of rivalry and resource competition.
Drawing on ordinary interpretations and lived practices implicated in the vernacular term sambandam (bearing multiple meanings of intimacy and entanglement), the book traces how intergroup co-operation is both affectively routinised and tactically instrumentalised across coastlines, and at sea. Given its distinct focus on translocal and ethno-religiously plural collectives, the study maps recent historic formations of diverse practices and their contentions, from networked ‘piracy’ and dynamite fishing, to collective rescue missions and coalitional lobbying. Moreover, this work serves as an open invitation to academics, policymakers and activists for re-imagining multiple modes of ethical being and doing, and of everyday sociality among so-called deeply divided societies.
Articles, essays, policy briefs etc.
Journal articles
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., V. Sreekanta, V., D. Mwambari, S. Mehta, and M. Majumder. (2023) The Unruly Arts of Ethnographic Refusal: Power, Politics, Performativity, in FENNIA: International Journal of Geography, Fennia 201(2) 169–182. Link to the entire special issue, ´Practising refusal as relating otherwise: engagements with knowledge production, ´activist´ praxis, and borders´.
Partelow, S et al., (2023). Five social science intervention areas for ocean sustainability initiatives, npj Ocean Sustainability 2:24. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-023-00032-8.-
Godamunne V, Abdeen AJ, Siriwardane-de Zoysa R (2022). Shored curfews: Constructions of pandemic islandness in contemporary Sri Lanka. Maritime Studies https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-022-00262-5
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., Sondang, IF, and Ganda Purnama, A. (2021). Opto-Haptic Fieldwork Encounters in Pandemic Southeast Asia. Fieldsights , Members’ Voices. Available online: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/opto-haptic-fieldwork-encounters-in-pandemic-southeast-asia .
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., Schöne T, Herbeck, J., Illigner, J., Haghighi, M., Simarmata, H., Porio, E., Rovere, A., and Hornidge, AK. (2021). The ‘wickedness’ of governing land subsidence: Policy perspectives from urban Southeast Asia. PLOS ONE, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250208 .
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (2021). Decolonizing Seascapes: Imaginaries and Absences on an Island Hub. Postcolonial Interventions VI(I), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4483976
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. & Herbeck, J. (2020). Futuring ‘Blue Urbanisms’: Pluralizing the Littoral in Urban Southeast Asia, International Sociological Association E-symposium. Available online: https://esymposium.isaportal.org/resources/resource/futuring-blue-urbanisms/
Hornidge AK, Herbeck J; Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. and Flitner, M. (2020). Epistemic Mobilities: Following Sea-Level Change Adaptation Practices in Southeast Asian Cities, American Behavioral Scientist , DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764220947764
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. Beyond the Wall: Dyking as an object of everyday governance in the Bay of Manila . Marine Policy , Vol. 112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2019.103661
Viana Inés G, Siriwardane-de Zoysa R, Willette Demian A, Gillis Lucy G (2019.) Exploring how non-native seagrass species could provide essential ecosystems services: a perspective on the highly invasive seagrass Halophila stipulacea in the Caribbean Sea, Biological Invasions , DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-019-01924-y
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., Fitrinitia, IS and Herbeck, J. (2018) Watery Incursions : The Securitization of Everyday ‘Flood Cultures’ in Metro Manila and Coastal Jakarta, International Quarterly for Asian Studies , Vol 49 (1-2) : 105-126.
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. and Hornidge, AK. (2016) Putting Lifeworlds at Sea: Studying Meaning-making in Marine Research, Frontiers in Marine Science 8, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2016.00197
Weeratunge N, Béné C, Siriwardane R, Charles A, Johnson D, Allison EH, Nayak P, Badjeck MC. (2014) Small-scale fisheries through the wellbeing lens . Fish and Fisheries , 15(2):255-279.
Book chapters
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (forthcoming) Following currents: Oceanic and littoral Sri Lanka. in Ruwanpura et al. (eds). Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka, London: Routledge.
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (2023). Foreword. Performing Memories and Weaving Archives: Creolized Cultures across the Indian Ocean, Sayan Dey, London: Anthem Press.
Simarmata, HA, Rafliana I, Herbeck H, Siriwardane-de Zoysa R (2023). Futuring ‘Nusantara’: Detangling Indonesia’s Modernist Archipelagic Imaginaries . in S. Partelow et al. (eds). Ocean Governance: Pasts, Presents, Futures . Cham: Springer.
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. and AK Hornidge (2022) Tidal Turns: Coastal Urbanities in Island Southeast Asia , in Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., KEY Low, N. Abdullah and AK Hornidge (eds), Coastal Urbanities , Leiden: Brill.
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. and Salleh, J. (2022) Sanded: Sedimented Pasts and Shored Futures in ‘Outer’ Singapore , in Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R., KEY Low, N. Abdullah and AK Hornidge (eds), Coastal Urbanities , Leiden: Brill. Open Access
Herbeck, J., Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (2022). Transformations of Urban Coastal Nature(s): Meanings and Paradoxes of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Adaptation in Southeast Asia . In: Misiune, I., Depellegrin, D., Egarter Vigl, L. (eds) Human-Nature Interactions . Cham: Knight. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01980-7_6 Open Access
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (2022) Islanded Hauntings: Sri Lanka’s Seascape Imaginaries and Mythico-histories of the Insular. in S. Dey and A. Nirmal. (eds). Histories, Myths and Decolonial Interventions: A Planetary Resistance , London/Delhi: Routledge.
Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. and Amoo-Adare, E. (2021) The Bi-polar Waterfront: Paradoxes of Shoreline Placemaking in Contemporary Accra and Colombo, In: P. Godfrey and M. Buchanan, eds. Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities , London: Bloomsbury.
Schulz, Karsten and Siriwardane, Rapti (2016) The Risk Frontier: Social Transformations in Rural and Peri-urban Ghana, in Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability in Rural West Africa , In: J. Yaro and J. Hesselberg (Eds.), Berlin: Springer, pp. 171-189.
Essays, book reviews, working papers & policy briefs
Sridhar A, Jalais A, Siriwardane-de Zoysa R, Anantha S (2022) The Indian Ocean Southern Collective: A Collaboratory for Postnormal Coastal Knowledge Production. Items: Insights from the Social Sciences . Available online: https://items.ssrc.org/crisis-and-collaboration-across-the-indian-ocean/the-indian-ocean-southern-collective/.
Book review for Anthropos 115: 20 ) : King, Tanya J., and Gary Robinson (eds.): At Home on the Waves. Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. 372 pp. ISBN 978-1-78920-142-0. (Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology, 24)
(June, 2021).Godamunne, V. and Siriwardane-de Zoysa R. (2021). Between jab lines and pandemic orientalism in urban Sri Lanka, UCL Medical Anthropology blogs, https://medanthucl.com/2021/03/16/between-jab-lines-and-pandemic-orientalism-in-urban-sri-lanka/
Perrin, Sam and Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa (2017) Women in marine science: The efficacy of ecofeminist theory in the wake of historical critique, ZMT Working Paper no. 3, Bremen.
Schulz, K. and Siriwardane, R. (2015) Depoliticized and Technocratic? Normativity and the Politics of Transformative Adaptation. Earth System Governance Working Paper No. 33, Lund and Amsterdam.
Weerawardhana, C. and R. Siriwardane (2015) “Rice Mafia” in Colombo: Presidential campaign. South Asia , 35(1), 91-97.
Siriwardane, R. (2014) War, Migration and Modernity: The Micro-politics of the Hijab in Northeastern Sri Lanka. ZEF Working Paper No. 127, Bonn.
Siriwardane, R. and S. Winands. (2013) Between hope and hype: Traditional knowledge(s) held by marginal communities. ZEF Working Paper No. 115, Bonn.
External Resources (select articles)
Chao, S. & E. Enari. (2021). Decolonising Climate Change: A Call for Beyond-Human Imaginaries and Knowledge Generation. e-Tropic, published online (open access).
Collard, R-C, J. Demsey, & J. Sundberg. (2015). A Manifesto for Abundant Futures. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(2): 232-330.
Leung, A. (2021). An “Othered” Land Reclamation: Decolonization in Anticipation of Another Great Flood. Journal of Architectural Education 75(2), https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2021.1947671.
Lobo, M. and M. Parsons (2023). Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities. Progress in Environmental Geography 2(1-2), https://doi.org/10.1177/275396872311792. (open access).
Narayanan, Y. For multispecies liberatory futures: Three principles toward “progress” in anti-anthropocentric environmental geography. Progress in Environmental Geography 2(3): 10.1177/27539687231183449. (open access).
Terry, N., A. .A. Castro, B. Chibwe., C. Karuri-Sebina, C. Savi., and L. Periera. Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree. Environmental Science & Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103615103615. (open access).
Podcasts & other multimodal content
Standing on the Shoulders Podcast: On Plural Futures and Multi-Species Companionship (with Anab Jain).
Reflections on a Vanishing Future, “Multispecies Justice and More-than-human Entanglements“. Dany Celermajer podcast episode no. 389.
The Animal Turn podcast, “Re-design” with Michelle Westerlaken.; “Right to the City” with Marie Carmen Shingne and more, in Deezer.