Description

The prolonged war and violence in Sri Lanka dispersed many Tamil families across international borders. Desire and anxiety to reunite with family members became part of everyday life. Waiting for refugees claims to be heard, waiting for the visas to be approved after marriages so that the spouses could unite, waiting to leave the site of violence, waiting to return from refugee camps in India back to Sri Lanka or elsewhere, waiting for the disappeared and imprisoned sons and daughters to return home became a part of life among the Tamils. The constant mobility, immobility, dispersion and uncertainty created conditions for a new sociality within which the notion of waiting was expanded, prolonged and became ordinary. How do people inhabit the zone of waiting in the time of mobility and violence? How do people live by waiting? ‘Waiting’ I argue is not state of being in limbo but an everyday time and space which people have to learn to inhabit the everyday life in uncertainty.

Sidharthan Maunaguru is an Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies Programme, National University Singapore. Maunaguru completed his PhD in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, USA. He was awarded a Newton International Fellowship by the Royal Society and British academy and hosted by University of Edinburgh. He is currently completing a book on transnational marriages that looks at how Sri Lankan Tamil communities dispersed by war recreate their sense of community by attempting to rebuild personal and familial networks through the institution of marriage. His research is based on multi-sited fieldwork and intersects with anthropology, history and philosophy. His work has been supported by grants from the Wenner Gren, the National Science Foundation, and British academy. He has taught previously at the University of Peradaniya, Sri Lanka and Johns Hopkins University.