Reducing Structural Violence through Entrepreneurial Tourism: Case Study in Hambantota District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Tourism is increasingly recognized as an effective means of achieving peace in world. In this paper tourism’s contribution for peace will be discussed in a broader sense with identification of structural violence as the main cause of Sri Lankan conflict. Structural violence is the process of deprivation of needs. It is characterized politically as repression, and economically by exploitation. The methodology used in this paper to identify ‘how entrepreneurial tourism can contribute to alleviate structural violence’ was basically qualitative. The methodology was based on the grounded theory which portrays the world as being complex and organized by both overt and hidden power structures. It was revealed during the process of data collection that the structural violence was functioning by means of polarization of the social structures such as caste, ethnicity, economic status, nobility, educational status into different strata together with grouping of people into the consequential ends leading to social uneasiness. People engaged in entrepreneurial activities are entrapped in a viscous system of unfair resource allocation and production exploitation operating through intermediaries. The paper suggests that it is necessary to seek remedies to increase the capacity of entrepreneurs to overcome the destructive force of the structural violence.