Life on the Edge of Existence: Change and Everyday Life in Eastern Sri Lanka

Alice Kern’s doctoral thesis at the Department of Geography explores the question of how people manage from day to day in an environment marked by marginality and insecurity. Drawing on ethnographic field research in eastern Sri Lanka, she studies in situ the strategies used by the Tamil and indigenous (Vedda) peoples to come to terms with everyday life. After thirty years of civil war and the 2004 tsunami, globalization and capitalism are now making inroads. Alice Kern brings these individuals into focus in an unhurried and sincere manner. Their everyday experiences and stories, colored by money and violence but also by compassion and hope, form the core of her work. Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the project combines expertise in political geography, anthropology, and economics, and sheds light on a life marked by violence.