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 -