Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the interactions between boundary creation, capitalist enculturation and changing notions of land tenure in the context of tourism development zones along coastal Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the interactions between boundary creation, capitalist enculturation and changing notions of land tenure in the context of tourism development zones along coastal Sri Lanka. Following the devastating Asian tsunami in 2004, the government of Sri Lanka introduced a no-build buffer zone along the coastline of the disaster affected areas. Whilst the policy placed restrictions on the repair of damaged homes and local businesses, the tourist industry was, however, exempt from the no-build buffer zone and was given special permissions to build hotels and restaurants within the no-build buffer zone. Such a policy has since invited a wave of land grabs and outsider-driven development spearheaded by representatives of the aid and tourism industry, foreign investors and urban Sinhalese entrepreneurs. As a result, construction taking place along the coast, the resultant privatisation of land and the removal of locals from their ancestral land has resulted in a sense of dislocation among coastal Sinhalese. This paper investigates coastal Sinalese's negotiation of land tenure across increasingly tenuous socio-political boundaries resulting from the rise of tourism development zones. I posit that through the negotiation of coastal development, simultaneously manifested through acts of resistance as well as acts of collusion, coastal Sinhalese establish the bases for novel patterns of kinship between themselves and 'outsiders' in a bid to retain control over ancestral land.