Event, Archive, Mediation: Sri Lanka's 1971 Insurrection and the Political Stakes of Fieldwork

• Published in: Comparative studies in society and history Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 186 - 217
• Main Author: Hewage, Thushara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.01.2020
• Subjects: Archives & records; Armed forces; Comparative analysis; Comparative studies; Concept formation; Copyright; Ethics; Ethnicity; Ethnography; Extraction; Field study; Fieldwork; Insurgency; Mediation; Minority & ethnic violence; Modernity; Narratives; Nationalism; Political history; Politics; Postcolonialism; Reading; Rebellions; Scholarship; Sri Lanka

In recent years, much scholarship has revealed how archives and archival artefacts mediate processes of knowledge extraction, production, and representation. Yet, there remains a certain assumption of the archive's transparent availability as a given location for disciplinary work. This essay a...