Graduate student Kaori Hatsumi, under the direction of Dr. E. Valentine Daniel, will investigate the local-level, long-term effects of prolonged civil war on people whose livelihoods are dependent on the local environment. Her research will be carried out as a comparative study of fishermen in Sri Lanka, some of whom were displaced by civil war and are now isolated in a different geographic zone, and some of whom have have not been directly affected by the conflict. However, globalization of the Sri Lankan fisheries sector has impacted both communities.
Hatsumi will undertake 11 months of field research among the fishermen of both communities. Through oral history collections, participant observations and archival study on the fisheries industry, she will document and study (a) the history of the displacement, (b) the manner in which they continue to practice fishing under drastically reduced and restricted conditions, (c) the entailments of their lives in a new global political-economy, and (d) the effects these changes have brought not only on fishing as a mode of subsistence but also as a mode of existence.
The research is important because it will develop an unique, integrated approach to understanding the experience of internally displaced populations, a group whose size continues to increase worldwide. Hatsumi will complement her studies of economic and adaptive resilience with semiotic analysis of suffering and social belonging, integrating both cognitive and non-ideational factors such as the body, ecology, environment and labor into data collection and analysis. The findings will have practical bearing for agencies of humanitarian intervention and the research will contribute to the education of a graduate student.
