Describes the social fabric of a rural community that has become a reservoir of soldiers for the Sri Lankan nation in the brutal war against Tamil separatists.

Masking Terror
How Women Contain Violence in Southern Sri Lanka

Alex Argenti-Pillen

2002 | 256 pages | Cloth $69.95
Anthropology | Political Science | Women's/Gender Studies | Asian Studies

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter 1: How Women Contain Violence: Introduction

PART I: THE WILD IN UDAHENAGAMA
Chapter 2 "Have some tea with a peace of Nirvana!": A Lifetime Under the Gaze of the Wild
Chapter 3 "Even the wild spirits are afraid": The Gaze of the Wild in Five Neighborhoods

PART II: CAUTIOUS DISCOURSES ABOUT THE WILD
Chapter 4 "We can tell anything to the milk tree": Udahenagama Soundscapes
Chapter 5 "Those and these things happened": Ambiguous Forms of Speech
Chapter 6 "She said that he had said that": The Use of Reported Speech

PART III: AGENTS OF DISCOURSE Discursive Change
Chapter 7 "It wasn't like that when we were young": Civil War, National Mental Health NGOs, and the International Community of Trauma Specialists
Chapter 8 The Power of Ambiguity: Concluding Discussion

Notes
Bibliography
Index