Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T08:02:52.172Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Demonic Violence and Moral Panic in Postwar Sri Lanka: Explaining the Grease Devil Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2015

Rajesh Venugopal
Get access

Abstract

How can crisis, breakdown, violence, and collapse be explained in the social sciences? This paper engages with this broad question by studying an extraordinary episode of mass tension and anxiety in postwar Sri Lanka caused by a mystery male predator known as the “grease devil.” Reports of widespread attacks on women in mid-2011 by this shadowy, ubiquitous, and powerful being led to heightened levels of vigilance and fear across large parts of rural and peri-urban Sri Lanka. It had a particularly strong impact on the formerly war-torn northeastern part of the island, where it led to violent confrontations between affected communities and the police and military. Drawing on primary research and by engaging with a range of literatures across the historical and social science literature, this paper attempts to reconstruct and understand the grease devil crisis. In doing so, it identifies and evaluates the different ways in which the crisis could be explained and the extent to which these approaches produce analytically relevant insights.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 615 - 637
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Barnett, Lionel D. 1916. “Alphabetical Guide to Sinhalese Folklore from Ballad Sources.” Indian Antiquary 45:1–116.Google Scholar
Bartholomew, Robert E., and Sirois, Francois. 1996. “Epidemic Hysteria in Schools: An International and Historical Overview.” Educational Studies 22(3):285–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartholomew, Robert E., and Wessely, Simon. 2002. “Protean Nature of Mass Sociogenic Illness: From Possessed Nuns to Chemical and Biological Terrorism Fears.” British Journal of Psychiatry 180(4):300–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bass, Daniel. 2008. “Paper Tigers on the Prowl: Rumors, Violence and Agency in the Up-Country of Sri Lanka.” Anthropological Quarterly 81(1):269–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul. 2003. The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Chabal, Patrick, and Daloz, Jean-Pascal. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. 1973. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Paladin.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 1998. “Specificities: Official Narratives, Rumour, and the Social Production of Hate.” Social Identities 4(1):109–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Certau, Michael. 2000. The Possession at Loudun. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Derges, Jane. 2012. Ritual and Recovery in Post-War Sri Lanka. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Goode, Erich, and Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goodhand, Jonathan. 2010. “Stabilising a Victor's Peace? Humanitarian Action and Reconstruction in Eastern Sri Lanka.” Disasters 34(S3):S342–S367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gooneratne, Dandris de Silva. [1865] 1998. On Demonology and Witchcraft in Ceylon. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.Google Scholar
International Crisis Group. 2012. Sri Lanka's North I: The Denial of Minority Rights. Asia Report No. 219. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/219-sri-lankas-north-i-the-denial-of-minority-rights.pdf (accessed March 21, 2015).Google Scholar
Kapferer, Bruce. 1991. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Keen, David. 1997. “A Rational Kind of Madness.” Oxford Development Studies 25(1):67–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korf, Benedikt. 2012. “The Certainty of Uncertainty: Topographies of Risk and Landscapes of Fear in Sri Lanka's Civil War.” In The Spatial Dimension of Risk: How Geography Shapes the Emergence of Riskscapes, ed. Müller-Mahn, Detlef, 68–81. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Patricia. 2000. “Violence, Suffering, Amman: The Work of Oracles in Sri Lanka's Eastern War Zone.” In Violence and Subjectivity, eds. Das, Veena, Kleinman, Arthur, Ramphele, Mamphela, and Reynolds, Pamela, 171–204. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Nicholas. 2010. “UNPOL and the PNTL: Working Hand in Hand with the Community.” MA diss., University of York.Google Scholar
McGilvray, Dennis B. 1997. “Tamils and Muslims in the Shadow of War: Schism or Continuity?” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 20(S1):239–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGilvray, Dennis B. 2008. Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Myrttinen, Henri. 2010. “Histories of Violence, States of Denial—Militias, Martial Arts and Masculinity In Timor-Leste.” DPhil diss., University of Kwazulu-Natal.Google Scholar
Nakalawa, L., Musisi, S., Kinyanda, E., and Okello, E. S.. 2010. “Demon Attack Disease: A Case Report of Mass Hysteria after Mass Trauma in a Primary School in Uganda.” African Journal of Traumatic Stress 1(1):43–48.Google Scholar
Neuner, Frank, Pfeiffer, Anett, Schauer-Kaiser, Elisabeth, Odenwald, Michael, Elbert, Thomas, and Ertl, Verena. 2012. “Haunted by Ghosts: Prevalence, Predictors and Outcomes of Spirit Possession Experiences among Former Child Soldiers and War-Affected Civilians in Northern Uganda.” Social Science & Medicine 75(3):548–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1970. “The Idiom of Demonic Possession: A Case Study.” Social Science & Medicine 4(1):97–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Leary, Brendan, and McGarry, John. 1995. “Regulating Nations and Ethnic Communities.” In Nationalism and Rationality, eds. Breton, Albert, Galeotti, Gianluigi, Salmon, Pierre, and Wintrobe, Ronald, 245–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1988. “The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia.” American Ethnologist 15(1):28–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rampton, David. 2011. “‘Deeper Hegemony’: The Politics of Sinhala Nationalist Authenticity and the Failures of Power-Sharing in Sri Lanka.” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 49(2):245–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1996. “Theft of Life: The Globalization of Organ Stealing Rumours.” Anthropology Today 12(3):3–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 2000. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology 41(2):191–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, David. 1994. Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Gurharpal. 2010. “Reassessing ‘Conventional Wisdom’: Ethnicity, Ethnic Conflict and India as an Ethnic Democracy.” In Ethno-nationalist Movements in India, ed. Baruah, Sanjib, 99–119. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smooha, Sammy. 2002. “The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State.” Nations and Nationalism 8(4):475–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somasundaram, Daya. 2007. “Collective Trauma in Northern Sri Lanka: A Qualitative Psychosocial-Ecological Study.” International Journal of Mental Health Systems 1(5):1–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spencer, Jonathan. 2000. “On Not Becoming a Terrorist.” In Violence and Subjectivity, eds. Das, Veena, Kleinman, Arthur, Ramphele, Mamphela, and Reynolds, Pamela, 120–40. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jonathan. 2008. “A Nationalism without Politics?: The Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Institutions in Sri Lanka.” Third World Quarterly 29(3):611–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Venugopal, Rajesh. 2008. “Cosmopolitan Capitalism and Sectarian Socialism: Conflict, Development, and the Liberal Peace in Sri Lanka.” DPhil diss., University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Venugopal, Rajesh. 2010. “Sectarian Socialism: The Politics of Sri Lanka's Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).” Modern Asian Studies 44(3):567–602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Rebecca. 2013. Enduring Violence: Everyday Life and Conflict in Eastern Sri Lanka. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Waller, John. 2009. “Looking Back: Dancing Plagues and Mass Hysteria.” Psychologist 22(7):644–47.Google Scholar
Walton, Oliver. 2011. “Aid, Peacebuilding and the Resurgence of War: Buying Time in Sri Lanka.” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 49(4):547–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Gordon. 2011. The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers. London: Random House.Google Scholar
Wessely, Simon. 1987. “Mass Hysteria: Two Syndromes?” Psychological Medicine 17(1):109–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitaker, Mark P. 1997. “Tigers and Temples: The Politics of Nationalist and Non-Modern Violence in Sri Lanka.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 20(S1):201–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise. 2000. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wirz, P. 1954. Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon. Leiden: E.J. Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yalman, Nur. 1964. “The Structure of Sinhalese Healing Rituals.” Journal of Asian Studies 23(S1):115–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daily Mirror (Colombo, English). 2011. August 12–23.Google Scholar
Daily News (Colombo, English). 2011. August 5–25.Google Scholar
Divaina (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 21–24.Google Scholar
Lakbima (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 23.Google Scholar
Lankadeepa (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 24.Google Scholar
Lankaviews.com (English). 2011. August 15.Google Scholar
Sunday Leader (Colombo, English). 2011. August 21.Google Scholar
Sunday Observer (Colombo, English). 2011. August 14.Google Scholar
Sunday Times (Colombo, English). 2011. August 14–21.Google Scholar
Tamilnet (English). 2011. August 17–25.Google Scholar
Virakesari (Colombo, Tamil). 2011. August 5–September 7.Google Scholar
Daily Mirror (Colombo, English). 2011. August 12–23.Google Scholar
Daily News (Colombo, English). 2011. August 5–25.Google Scholar
Divaina (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 21–24.Google Scholar
Lakbima (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 23.Google Scholar
Lankadeepa (Colombo, Sinhala). 2011. August 24.Google Scholar
Lankaviews.com (English). 2011. August 15.Google Scholar
Sunday Leader (Colombo, English). 2011. August 21.Google Scholar
Sunday Observer (Colombo, English). 2011. August 14.Google Scholar
Sunday Times (Colombo, English). 2011. August 14–21.Google Scholar
Tamilnet (English). 2011. August 17–25.Google Scholar
Virakesari (Colombo, Tamil). 2011. August 5–September 7.Google Scholar