Bananas and Bullets: Non-Governmental Governmentality in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The state and the civil society are often presented as two opposing forces in both popular and academic circles. The state is ascribed with vertical properties, while the civil society, and thereby NGOs, are “rooted” and representing something “from below”. In this thesis I problematize the term NGO in that I question it’s ‘non-governmental’ properties. I argue, more specifically, that power should be understood by following power relations and the concrete and tangible exercise of power, instead of relying on general formulations like NGOs or the state. By following an internal NGO conflict in Sri Lanka, I will review how power is distributed between and betwixt such general formulations, and that certain political trajectories seek to uphold such dichotomies. I furthermore show that informal, unofficial and personal networks embed actors from both civil society and the state, while the formal, official and public discourse equals many NGOs with terrorists and Western imperialism. By employing a theoretical perspective drawing on Michel Foucault, and so-called ‘governmentality studies’, I will show how political rationalities might differ, while the strategies concerning governance can be shared. This means to show how the internal conflict reacts on ‘external’ factors with ambiguity; the state represent something ‘good’ and ‘bad’ simultaneously, in the wake of local conflict