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From Village Boy to Global Citizen (Volume 1): The Journey of a Journalist is the first of an autobiographical trilogy that tells the story of a rustic lad born and raised in the southern tip of the British colony of Ceylon (now independent Sri Lanka) but left his country at the age of 26 on a geographical “conquest” of the world that turned him metaphorically into a global citizen. Starting his professional career as a journalist for the Daily News, Ceylon’s premier English-language daily, he became a journalism teacher at the age of 32, when he received a doctorate in mass communication. However, he continued practicing journalism as a free-lancer throughout his teaching career in Malaysia, Australia and the United States. Volume 1 unfolds the transition of the author’s life from a village kid to a global journalist and educator. It dramatizes the obstacles he had to overcome, as well as the support he received from his benefactors, in the transition.
When author Shelton A. Gunaratne was born in January of 1940 in Pathegama, Sri Lanka, life was simple for the poor people in this sparsely populated village. But it was this village that raised him. Through twenty-six biographical sketches of some of the villages most colorful characters, Gunaratne paints a portrait of what life was like in this rural setting. This collection of sketches, first published in the Ceylon Daily NewsMyna, the new village head-man; Vel Vidane, an unctuous official and the irrigation headman; cowards Wala Semba and Naamba; Singappuru Basunnehe, the goldsmith; Kankanama, the cinnamon peeler; Kalu Appu, the fierce burglar; Redi Nenda, the humble washerwoman; Menike Nenda, a village beauty; and Kunu Nachchile, the witchlike animal lover. Demonstrating the Buddhist/Daoist principle that unity and diversity are inextricably interconnected, Village Life in the Forties provides not only a social history, but also a greater global under-standing of the life and times of rural Ceylonese during and around World War II.
" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
The papers in this volume were presented at the first National Workshop on the Status and Future Directions of Research pertaining to the water sector in Sri Lanka, held at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall, Colombo, Sri Lanka during 4-6 November, 1998. The aim ofthe conference was for policy makers and senior water managers in Sri Lanka to share and discuss the findings, implications and uses of current research dealing with any aspect of water, and to prioritize future research needs, develop a national water research strategy and initiate a network of water researchers in Sri Lanka and abroad to carry out relevant research in the future. In selecting papers for the conference, priority was given to those authored by persons who had limited opportunities to disseminate their research findings or share empirical experiences. Although the main language of the conference was English, authors were specifically encouraged to present papers in either Sinhala or Tamil.
Focusing on ways in which cultural nationalism has influenced both the production and critical reception of texts, Salgado presents a detailed analysis of eight leading Sri Lankan writers - Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunasekera, Shyam Selvadurai, A. Sivanandan, Jean Arasanayagam, Carl Muller, James Goonewardene and Punyakante Wijenaike – to rigorously challenge the theoretical, cultural and political assumptions that pit ‘insider’ against ‘outsider’, ‘resident’ against ‘migrant’ and the ‘authentic’ against the ‘alien’. By interrogating the discourses of territoriality and boundary marking that have come into prominence since the start of the civil war, Salgado works to define a more nuanced and sensitive critical framework that actively reclaims marginalized voices and draws upon recent studies in migration and the diaspora to reconfigure the Sri Lankan critical terrain.
Human vulnerability to natural disasters is an age-old phenomenon. Besides nature~s wrath, human interventions, too, have led to many calamities in the recent past. The heedless pace of development has left us ecologically barren. Most of the world~s people live in ~developing~ economies, as do most of the world~s poor. They also face the most debilitating consequences in the form of economic and social disruption caused by disasters. The long history of disasters and their intensity has brought the question of disaster management to the forefront. Disaster mitigation is a major component of a disaster management plan. Mitigation entails measures to reduce the physical, economic and social v...
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