Shibanee Sivanayagam

The dissertation fieldwork grant was used to conduct 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka to understand the changing cultural, economic, and symbolic significance of the palmyrah tree. I interviewed over 50 staff and toddy tappers at 27 of the 39 Palmyrah Development Cooperative Societies (PDCS) in the Northern Province and conducted participant-observation at various sites of palmyrah production including palmyrah handicraft workshops with women. Through snowball sampling and serendipitous encounters, I was able to meet and interview individuals who had played a part in the creation of palmyrah cooperatives in 1972; individuals who had been involved in Tamil militancy and, through the palmyrah industry, the economic development of “Eelam” (the contested homeland demanded by Tamils during the armed conflict); and individuals involved in contemporary disputes with the state over palmyrah resources. I also conducted archival research at the Sri Lankan National Archives in Colombo and Kandy and obtained colonial and post-colonial records of caste disputes relating to palmyrah toddy tapping. Interviews also opened access to precarious individual archives and Tamil language self-published books, magazines, and reports in which people from toddy tapping communities narrate and record their own important (but also side-lined) histories of resistance.