Degrees of peace: universities and embodied experiences of conflict in post-war Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper examines the impacts of conflicts on universities and considers the corresponding implications for their ability to contribute to post-war recovery. Pushing against the methodological individualism associated with notions of human capital loss, I concentrate on the interaction between conflict and the social constitution of universities. I argue that the ways in which universities as social groups embody experiences of conflict can powerfully influence how they operate and how they interact with post-war peacebuilding and development. To operationalise the framing of universities as social groups, I introduce the concept of a university substrate as a means of thinking through the evolving constitution of universities. Drawing on 31 semi-structured interviews with university actors in Jaffna and elsewhere in Sri Lanka, I explore the case of the University of Jaffna and how it has been shaped by conflict. I outline the moulding of its social constitution by waves of departure during the conflict and by the environment created by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the main non-state actor in the war. This case study illustrates how the substrate lens can capture dynamics that are missed by human capital approaches and can help better explain the legacies of conflict for universities.