“A Letter To Lanka: Soil that Breaks, Soil that Binds” by by Ilakkiya Mariya Simon

We would like to share an article by Ilakkiya Mariya Simon about her documentary “A Letter To Lanka” and her reflection on the question of identity for a person from the second generation of an exiled family living in Norway.

to read the article

About “A Letter To Lanka” documentary

A Letter To Lanka moves between memories of the civil war to the present political turmoil during Aragalaya’s protests. Told through a poetic and personal journey of the filmmaker`s reconnection to land, soil and people, it invites the audiences into existential questions of belonging in a chaotic world. What does it mean to be at home in the world? What binds people together, and what can break them apart?

About Ilakkiya Mariya

Ilakkiya Mariya Simon has recently completed her Master of Visual Anthropology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She holds a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen, where she founded The Ethnographic Film Club. Prior to getting into anthropology, she was a teacher and movement practitioner from different disciplines and arts. Her experiences with movement and her Sri Lankan ancestry are what underpins her anthropological interest exploring existential themes of home, belonging, identity, and the environment. Ilakkiya is passionate about her intimate and fragmented relationship to Sri Lanka.

New articles on religiosity among Tamil Hindu youths in Norway by Valen Kleive

Hildegunn Valen Kleive has recently published two articles (one in English and another in Norwegian) looking at religiosity among young Tamil Hindus in rural Norway.

The first (in English), ‘Belonging and Discomfort: Young Hindu Religiosity in Rural Norway’ is published in the Nordic Journal of Religion and Society and may be accessed here.

The second ‘Mestring og balanse. Trekk ved ung hindureligiøsitet’ is published in Prismet and may be accessed here. An English translation will follow at a later date.

“Nationalism as meaningful life projects: identity construction among politically active Tamil families in Norway” by Stine Bruland

We would like to announce the release of an article written by Stine Bruland on “Nationalism as meaningful life projects: identity construction among politically active Tamil families in Norway”

Abstract

This article explores the motivations for how and why national Tamil identity becomes so desirable for politically active Tamil parents in Norway. What leads them to socialize their children into an embodied understanding of what it means to be Tamil – closely related to the Tamil Tiger discourse and practice? The article discusses how private practices of relatedness become technologies of nationhood, and vice versa. I argue that in their transnational lives, the children’s Tamil identity offers a way for the politically active parents to ease nostalgia for their own childhoods and a way to create a meaningful life for themselves and their children in a transnational context.

Author biographies

STINE BRULAND is a research assistant at the Department of Ethnography at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. From August 2011 she will be a PhD fellow at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Reference of the article: Stine Bruland, “Nationalism as meaningful life projects: identity construction among politically active Tamil families in Norway”, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume 35, Issue 12, 2012

source: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/01419870.2011.599851#tabModule