"CRISIS in SRI LANKA and the WORLD" - by Asoka Bandarage

“CRISIS in SRI LANKA and the WORLD” – by Asoka Bandarage

"CRISIS in SRI LANKA and the WORLD" by Asoka Bandarage

Asoka Bandarage Crisis in Sri Lanka provides an in-depth analysis of Sri Lanka’s on-going political and economic crisis taking into account the island’s historical evolution with an emphasis on external political and economic intervention. The book discusses the unequal economic and financial architecture of the global economy which set the framework for the debt and socio-economic crisis in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. The book also explores the emergence of the crisis in the context of the accelerating geopolitical conflict between China and the USA in the Indian Ocean. It concludes with a consideration of the ethical dilemmas behind the debt and survival crisis in Sri Lanka and across the world. It points out a range of social movements and initiatives in Sri Lanka and the Global South which subscribe to collective and ecological alternatives and a path of sustainability and social justice.

Asoka Bandarage received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. She has served on the faculties of Brandeis University, Georgetown University and Mount Holyoke where she received tenure. Prof. Bandarage is the author of books: Colonialism in Sri Lanka (De Gruyter); Women, Population and Global Crisis (Zed Books); The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka (Routledge); Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan) and other publications on political-economy, ecology, ethno-religious conflict as well as mindfulness and social action. Her latest book is Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World: Colonial and Neocolonial Origins: Ecological and Collective Alternatives (De Gruyter, 2023).

Dr. Bandarage has written for the Huffington Post and Asia Times, given innumerable academic lectures and media interviews and serves on the Advisory Boards of Critical Asian Studies, Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and the International Buddhist Association of America. www.bandarage.com

At John Medley Linkway Meeting Room, John Medley Building, Grattan Street, University of Melbourne, Parkville.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111203454/html#overview

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World	1
Chapter 2: Pre-Colonial Era to Colonial Rule and Capitalism: C. 3 BCE to 1948	22
Chapter 3: ‘Flag Independence’, Left-Wing Nationalism and Decolonization, 1948 – 1977	61
Chapter 4: Neoliberalism, Authoritarianism and Recolonization, 1977 –2009	90
Chapter 5: Geopolitical Rivalry, Neocolonialism and Political Destabilization, 2009 –2019	122
Chapter 6: Debt Colonialism, Inequality and the Crisis of Survival, 2019 – 2022	158
Chapter 7: Ecological and Collective Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization