Shibanee Sivanayagam

ABSTRACT SUBMITTED: 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.