Sri Lankan Lessons : Reimagining Ethnic Habitus through Language Policy and Education

This book analyses the post-conflict reality of language policy and planning in Sri Lanka. It examines and interprets how socio-politically and economically driven decisions, shaped by both exogenous and endogenous factors, have demonstrably generated negative socially situated conditions that exacerbate existing struggles in state-building in Sri Lanka. The book takes a kaleidoscopic view of the mixed implications of mother-tongue instruction and bilingual education through application of a Bourdieusian lens. In light of the legacies and influence of the bitter civil disruptions of the latter part of the 20th century, especially a 30 year-long ethnic conflict in which language education settings were a regular feature of dissent and conflict, compromise and innovation, the volume looks at Language Policy and Planning in education, with reference to the wider socio-political context of ethnic relations and post-colonial reconstruction. This book is of interest to sociologists of language, education and peacebuilding, conflict analysts, development studies personnel and political scientists, as well as university students, linguistic anthropologists, researchers, and language policy planners.