Decolonizing Ceylon: Introduction

Introduction Scholarly investigations of social space have frequently demonstrated that the form, constitution, and meaning of territorial and urban structures, landscapes, and the built environment in general, are constantly subject to change and reinterpretation. Moreover, the ways in which scholars conceptualize social space and its transformation are also in constant transition. This is evident in the emergence of important new conceptualizations in recent years such as notions of the “global city,” “growth machines,” “landscape models,” “liminal space,” and the increasing importance given to issues of culture, representation, and identity. 1 This suggests that not only is the satisfactory appraisal of contemporary spatial transformations often beyond the capacity of the analytical tools available, 2 but also that extant conceptualizations are increasingly contested. The study of historic colonial urbanisms and landscapes worldwide, as well as so-called vernacular built environments, also demonstrate the many changes in the way these phenomena are being perceived.3 These changes in the epistemological assumptions informing scholarly writing in the field broadly conceived as the social construction of space began especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly with the emergence of urban political economy at one level and vernacular architecture studies at another. If the political economists have convinced us that society is not in consensus but in conflict, scholarship undertaken within the cultural studies paradigm has reaffirmed that these conflicts go far beyond simple social dualities such as the capitalist and working classes or the colonizer and the colonized. It is in this broad and looselydefined area of multidisciplinary enquiry into the social construction of space that this study is located.

The main objective of this book is to explore the historical construction of the contemporary organization of space in one particular post-colonial society, namely, Sri Lanka. I refer here to the organization of world-regions in which Sri Lanka exists, to its territories, cities, landscapes, built forms, and their interconnections and meanings as part of changing political, economic, and cultural systems. The concern of this study, to cite Henri Lefebvre, is to explore spaces “perceived, conceived, and lived,” 4 and how they are formed and transformed, adapted and contested.

The principal premise of the study is that space is integral to the formation of society. Space is a constituent part of the polities, economies, and cultures in a

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society, if not on a one to one basis; it is conditioned by them and, at the same time, conditions them. “Society and space” therefore stands for the space constructed, occupied, engendered, and fashioned as part of the formation and transformation of social institutions and processes; “social” will also be taken broadly to include the political, economic, and cultural. Although “society” is a relatively weak and problematic analytical category, this weakness itself is used as a strategy to include more defined social structures, such as that of the nation, as well as less defined ones.

I use the term “spatial order” to refer to the spatial organization of political, economic, and cultural systems and structures. These include the system of administrative districts, provinces, and their capitals; the loci of capital investment and the economic command center; national, urban, and rural settlement patterns; interconnections such as circulation systems; building types and forms and the narratives and landscape models through which socio-spatial processes and relations take place. It is in this sense that the term “space” is used in this study, a usage which is broader than that of mere “physical” space. Both “social space” and “society and space” are used interchangeably with these meanings in mind.

“Society and space” is therefore strategically employed here to distinguish the spaces on which this study focusses from other forms, whether “empty,” 5 astronomical, absolute, and so-called natural spaces, 6 as well as the more metaphorical uses of such a concept. For example, until the transformation of “air space” from an unbound natural feature to a politically and economically meaningful airshed in the early twentieth century,7 this was a part of absolute space, to use Lefebvre’s terms. Absolute space here refers retrospectively to a social space prior to its entering into our socio-spatial discourses and practices. The production of society and space is, therefore, a broader process than the socialization of some existing absolute space, or the spatiality of a society.8 My objective in this book is also to examine a case relatively far from the postW orld W ar II centers of political, economic, and cultural domination and power such as the United States, western Europe, and Japan. It not only focusses on Sri Lanka, but adopts a perspective as close as possible to that of Sri Lankans. Aspects of the domination and influence of these centers of power over Sri Lankan society are addressed within broader economic, cultural, and spatial conceptualizations, such as those implicit in the ideas of the world-economy, colonial urbanism, and world-space. The study also aims to explore the differences such a perspective would make and what such a study can contribute towards the understanding of contemporary Sri Lankan society and space.

Ceylon--which became Sri Lanka in 1972--was essentially a nineteenth century British colonial construction. The British colonization of the island was a much deeper and momentous process than the mere annexation of another colony to the Empire. Despite the country’s political independence in 1948, the spatial order and built environment of Ceylon were not seriously reorganized for another three decades. This demonstrates, in large part, the continuing hegemony of colonially constructed cultural perceptions of Ceylon, carried over by its economic elite, post-

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colonial political leaders, as well as other professional groups. “Post-colonial,” with its double meaning, denotes “after colonialism” as well as the continuation of colonially produced social structures and cultural perceptions. 9 The issue of the colonial construction of Ceylon, at its broadest level, is therefore crucial for understanding the post-colonial restructuring of society and space in Sri Lanka. This provides the historical dimension of the study. The focus on the colonial construction of Ceylon should not, however, undermine the complex history of Lankan societies which were constituted in many layers of society and space laid over several millennia; yet European colonialism had the most profound impact on Lankan societies in recent history. The more historic term, “Lanka,” is used here to identify the island before European colonization and, as argued in Chapter Two, Lanka does not represent a social or a political agency but rather, a peoplehood and a territory.

In this context, the book has two further aims. One is to develop a broad historical and theoretical framework for investigating the construction, institutionalization, and reproduction of “social space” as part of (west) European expansion beginning in the mid-fifteenth century. The focus here is on the spatial construction of Ceylon, as part of British colonization, its incorporation into the capitalist world-economy, and the institutionalization of a European, and principally British, cultural hegemony, mainly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Against this background, my other aim is to examine various Sri Lankan reactions, responses, and contestations to these developments, particularly in the post-colonial period. This includes the construction of certain identities (particularly, that of the elite) and the restructuring of cultural institutions (for example, Buddhism and the village) as they were adapted into the colonial system. I also examine the processes of decolonization and the formation of an independent state between the 1930s and 1970s and the restructuring of the Sri Lankan economy and polity in the 1980s, especially in regard to their spatial implications and consequences.

Context and Rationale This project intends to be a contribution to the multidisciplinary study of society and space. From the early 1970s, many scholars, particularly in geography and sociology, contested the neglect of space in addressing social relationships.10 Derek Gregory and John Urry aptly observed that “spatial structure is now seen not merely as an arena in which social life unfolds, but rather as a medium through which social relations are produced and reproduced.” 11 The study of social space has come to occupy a significant position in many disciplines and particular fields, not least in the study of world systems 12 and colonial urbanism, 13 among others.

The field of urban political economy,14 developed especially from the 1970s, was often restricted to particular spatial units, such as “cities” and “urban space,” and did not deal with the built environment at large. Yet an increasing number of scholars have viewed cities as parts of larger, global urban systems. Friedmann uses the world economy in which to locate “world cities,” 15 and King looks towards

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the metropole to explain some of the phenomena in colonial cities. Only since 1980, according to Friedmann, has “the study of cities has been directly linked to the world economy.” 16 However, where earlier studies in this mode were largely concerned with “the negative impact of developments in the periphery on the urban economies of the core,” 17 this study focusses on the reverse process.

Scholars of urban political economy have made a significant difference to the way urban studies are carried out. Yet the economic determinism and scientific objectivism inherent in this approach has often subordinated the culture and politics of space. King has addressed the development of what he terms colonial third cultures, the construction of built environments accompanying this, as well as the globalization of spatial forms. 18 Expanding and restructuring this perspective, I develop and employ a broader concept, including the political and cultural constitution of space, as perceived, conceived, and practiced, using a historical and global approach to space and time.

Although this study aims at developing an interpretative understanding of society and space in Sri Lanka, I also hope it will have wider significance for the understanding of developments in other post-colonial countries. Historical approaches from a global perspective that examine spatial issues as a part of the construction and the reproduction of a society--its economy, polity and culture--are strikingly absent in conventional Sri Lankan spatial studies, whether these refer to questions of urban and regional planning, or discussions of architecture, archaeology, and urban design. Colonialism, as a major historical process, has received little serious scholarly attention in Sri Lankan studies.

Dependence on the flow of scholarship from the centers of knowledge production in the core W estern states has been a major constraint on the development of new paradigms. Although it is not necessary to view social and political structures as centrally and hierarchically organized in order to locate a study within a large spatial context, this has generally been the principal perception disseminated by core academic institutions. To oversimplify this argument, “global” approaches--as opposed to “local” ones--have marked a particular division of spatial perceptions between the dominant and the dominated. Here I am comparing Sri Lanka with imperial metropoles and hegemonic powers in the capitalist world-economy, such as Britain and the United States, and principal ideological centers such as Moscow (during the Cold W ar) or Teheran. In this context, it is no coincidence that an increasing number of historically and theoretically broad based studies of Sri Lankan society and space (including this one) are being undertaken by scholars from academic institutions in the dominant core states rather than those in Sri Lanka.19 The vast majority of Sri Lankan literature on spatial issues has not only adopted short term perspectives, focussing narrowly on normative, practice-oriented studies, but has also relied on colonially constructed perceptions. These include such issues as housing standards, particularly policy studies dealing with the up-grading of socalled “slum” dwellings and “shanties,” without properly questioning the valueladen premises of these categories. These have often been derived from upper class

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perceptions of the city and the built environment, whether colonial or post-colonial.

Solutions to urban problems thus identified are constrained by so-called developmentalism, suggesting the need to follow the W estern model of industrialization. Moreover, the conditions and parameters of the existing spatial order and built environment are considered as given, synchronic, and uniform, and the society viewed as being in consensus rather than in conflict. The professions and professionals assume that they are engaged in an apolitical mission of serving the “public good.” 20 By ignoring the larger global and long-term context, most studies adopt upper class and post-colonial value systems in their approach to the larger society.

Archaeologists too have paid little attention to the political, economic, and cultural “context” within which historic buildings and cities were constructed.21 Nonetheless, such work has given rise to more substantive debates on historical processes, including the relationships between religious and royal buildings and peasant house forms and social stratification. 22 The important link between these studies and other research on contemporary spatial issues has yet to be established.

These developments have, however, created interest among an increasing number of historians23 and architects,24 although still few in number, to engage in issues relating to the social and cultural production of space and built forms.

A number of scholars have also carried out space related studies within a larger spatial spectrum: for example, in architectural research, Senake Bandaranayake’s study of roof patterns in historic Sri Lankan society draws on parallel developments in other parts of what he calls “Monsoon Asia”; in urban geography, K. Dharmasena’s research on the changing significance of the Colombo port is undertaken in relation to other ports in the South Asian region. 25 In a large majority of these studies, however, the contexts in which they have been undertaken-temporal, spatial, political, cultural--have been very narrow.

The most significant object of this book is, however, to highlight the promise society and space offers as a field of study. Space is fundamental in any form of communal life as well as in any exercise of power. 26 The primacy of the visual, for example, in most architectural studies, economy in urban studies, place in some studies in geography, have largely undermined the significance of “social space” as a central category. According to Gottdiener, “this project remains undeveloped (as in the discourse of Soja) or ignored (as in the work of the reductionist, capital logic school).” 27 It is therefore appropriate for us to develop the study of society and space beyond the boundaries of the Lefebvrian discourse, to view space beyond being a material entity within conventional political economy studies, or merely as a representation of social processes.

Analytical Framework and Premises As in many studies, this book raises a number of conceptual issues concerning the appropriateness to the society of existing social and spatial units, their relationships, and analytical tools. I refer here to the problems posed by the use of

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a knowledge produced by professional and academic institutions in a “Euro-centric” world for the study of society and space in, especially, politically subordinate, economically peripheral, and culturally marginal societies, when viewed in relation to globally dominant cultures.28 Although many scholars have examined various aspects of what might be called the production of space over the last three decades, most of these approaches pose at least five fundamental problems in regard to their applicability to cases outside the “W est,” or the capitalist center, which now also includes parts of east Asia.

First, by placing the focus on the dominant social and spatial structure, or processes, in a core W estern state, most studies employ a dualistic logic that connects the object with a “W estern” opposition, for example, tropical-temperate, colonymetropole. Such attempts to provide meaning for the object of study tend to displace institutions and practices in “non-W estern” societies into parts of Westcentric structures, as if the whole is structurally determined and hierarchically organized. The application of categories such as “pre-colonial” and “pre-capitalist” to societies prior to their being incorporated into European political and economic systems tends to fix “colonial” and “capitalist” as the main points of reference for the historical development of those societies. These categories subordinate indigenous histories, especially when the continuity of foreign histories are imposed by adding the suffix “post-,” whether post-colonial or post-modern.

Second is the tendency to approach problems from the center of the structure, further marginalizing the already marginalized. Most urban studies marginalize the vast majority of the world’s population simply because of the fact that it does not live in urban areas, and the rural is the antithesis of the urban. Or, if urban studies do take “non-mainstream” populations into account, it is as part of the so-called urban “informal sector.” Similarly, the “traditional” history of architecture largely ignores the large array of popular dwellings worldwide, or subordinates them as “vernacular” as opposed to “Architecture.” The intentions and intensity of such approaches certainly vary from one project to the next; however, these frameworks are not adequate for the study undertaken here.

I am, however, not proposing a Sri Lanka-centrism or a “periphery-centrism” in place of a “core-centrism.” Such positions would defeat the very purpose of challenging the idea of centrism, dualism, totalization, and subordination. The principal premise is that different “worlds” and structures operate simultaneously, some related, some overlapping, and some dependent. The particular spatial discourse often depends on the social and spatial position of the author as subject.29 Moreover, the separation of a particular phenomenon or a structure from the rest would only weaken the study by freezing the interrelated phenomena in time and space and decontextualizing the particular object of inquiry which can be understood most fruitfully as part of intertwined global phenomena.30 Third, this method of producing knowledge in the core academic centers has marginalized and underdeveloped other discourses. The west European domination over the world, in particular, has crippled the competence of the dependent societies to develop their own perspectives on society and space. 31 It is therefore clear that

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this study must largely depend on the approaches and tools that it criticizes. In this context, I use theories and perspectives critically and selectively, loosening their boundaries and opening up the discursive space for further expansion. The study draws on a range of perspectives, including world systems (in relation to Sri Lanka’s changing position in the world-economy over time), theories of colonial urbanism (in regard to the derivation and circulation of discourses in architecture and planning), urban restructuring,32 nationalism and cultural identity, 33 landscape interpretation, 34 and cultural theory (in terms of micro-structures of power and knowledge), and notions of the world and global city and globalization. 35 The situation in regard to sources is similar. In regard to sixteenth and seventeenth century southern India, Sanjay Subrahmanyam has argued that the sources that have been used are largely those of the Europeans who arrived in Asia after 1500. 36 This is also the case of Sri Lanka.

Fourth is the coherency of conceptual tools. Since the study of various aspects of space is concentrated in many disciplines, including architecture, urban planning, cultural geography, cultural anthropology, urban sociology, art history, and macro sociology, the framework employed in this study is essentially multidisciplinary, but also selective. The multidisciplinarity proposed here, however, does not imply the accep tance o f a ninete enth ce ntury we st Europe an disc ip lina ry compartmentalizations, but rather a single larger discipline--unidiscipline--in which I focus on society and space. I well understand that the different theories on which I draw are not directly congruent but operate in tension when put together, especially since scholars use discipline-specific concepts and employ different approaches to spatial issues. 37 This should not, however, be taken as an apology since there can never be a “pure” and complete theoretical framework.

Finally, space is characterized by both not having any meaning and by having the potential of multiple meanings. Such meanings are constructed through spatial practices as well as through reading, that is, interpreting them. Yet these categories are not congruent. As Lefebvre suggests, social space is constructed and lived before it is read and conceptualized. 38 All these processes are political for they are inextricably bound to the material interests of various classes and positions of power within a society, and also to different scholarly interests of disciplines and professions. As much as pure theoretical frameworks do not exist, neither do pure empirical data. They are all produced within particular perceptions. I am, however, not rejecting the significance of either of these, but highlighting my consciousness of their limitations. I take a middle path between empiricism and theoreticism.39 A basic premise of this study is that various social spheres--political, economic, and cultural--and “scales” of space--world, national, building--are not determined by one or the other scale or sphere, but are constructed and operate simultaneously.

Social spaces that occur at various scales, however, influence each other, converging at certain points producing nodes, such as capital cities, centers of resistance, or colonial port cities. The study, therefore, seeks to investigate the ways in which various socio-spatial processes overlap and interact, producing particular nodes and multivalent, polysemic spaces and, in relation to building form,

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architectural symbolism. These social spheres, spatial units, and their convergences are socially produced. The politics of construction of spaces and spatial structures is therefore of the utmost importance for the understanding of a particular society, culture, and its constituent spaces.

The concept of locale provides the necessary connection between society and space. Locales refer to the use of space to provide settings for social interaction.

They can range from a room in a house, a street-corner, the shop-floor of a factory, to towns, cities, and national territories. It is usually possible to designate locales in terms of their physical properties, either as features of the material world or, more commonly, combinations of those features and human artifacts.40 It is in this context that I begin my investigation of Sri Lanka. I see Iberian expansion in the late fifteenth century as the crucial “beginning� of a long term trend in which today’s larger spatial structures have not only been constructed but can also be explained. This trend reached its apogee in the late nineteenth century with the beginning of the demise of British hegemony in the island. As Lefebvre notes, Neither capitalism nor the state can maintain the chaotic, contradictory space they have produced. We witness, at all levels, this explosion of spaces. At the level of the immediate and the lived, space is exploding on all sides. ... Everywhere people are realizing that spatial relations are social relations. At the level of cities we see not only the explosion of the historical city but also that of the administrative frameworks in which they had wanted to enclose the urban phenomenon.41 This book focusses on the construction, contestations, and transformation of this meta-space, in regard to both its organization and its meaning, from the late nineteenth century onwards.

Finally, I do not undertake a separate review of the relevant literature, but examine this at appropriate points in the text. Moreover, the fact that I draw on arguments and ideas appearing in certain works does not mean that I necessarily subscribe to the overall ideas which the authors of particular works have argued.

Descriptions and analyses are of necessity constructed within the limits of the language and the intellectual frameworks of those who make them, and these form the particular contexts for their ideas. 42 Using ideas from other works changes their context, and also their meaning.

Themes and Organization The main theme of this study is the spatial constitution of the processes of colonization and decolonization, and their political, economic, and cultural structures, institutions, and processes. In more detail, the study addresses the following themes:

C The European development of a particular spatial practice based on a perception of the world as a knowable, controllable, and manageable single space. This

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C

C

C C

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begins with the Iberian expansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and its continuation by west European powers in constructing a system of states and empires as the territorial matrix for organizing power and economy at a worldscale.

The origins of colonial urbanism, in the late fifteenth century, the use of urban structures in the construction of west European empires, and the implications of Europe-centered urban structures for the post-colonial world.

The spatial constitution of the British colonization of Ceylon, its incorporation into a capitalist world-economy, and the hegemonizing of a European cultural system.

The homogenization of an “official� landscape across the empire and indigenous responses to this in producing a critical-vernacular architecture; the deployment of such an architecture in constructing a national identity.

The adaptation of colonial subjects and the restructuring of indigenous institutions and their spaces within a colonial system.

The challenges to colonial, capitalist, and post-colonial political and administrative systems by nationalist, socialist, ethnic- and youth-based political organizations and their impact on the society and space of Sri Lanka.

The spatial implications of the demise of United States hegemony and the bipolar world political order, and the restructuring of Sri Lankan society and space.

The study is organized both thematically and chronosophically,43 using trajectories and stages of particular social and spatial formations to define time and organize chapters. Hence, it does not attempt to build a comprehensive history nor a totalized view. Temporally, I locate this study in what Braudel has called very long time (hundreds of years). 44 Although Braudelian times are economistic in their conceptualization, I use these concepts to address society and space in the following order, though with some adjustments where necessary. Part One investigates the construction of a larger world space by west European powers, from the late sixteenth to the late nineteenth century, and within this, the society and space of Ceylon. Part Two examines the Ceylonese and Sri Lankan responses, particularly adaptations and contestations, to this society and space. These processes, however, are explored in terms of two different sets of responses (discussed below), the time frames of which overlap. This part also addresses the social and spatial restructuring of Sri Lanka in the 1980s.

Notes 1. See Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, and Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); James S. Duncan, The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, eds., Writing Worlds: Discourse, Texts, and Metaphors in the Representation of

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Landscape (London: Routledge, 1992); Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

2. For a useful overview, see Jane Jacobs, “Qualitative Research in Urban Studies,” in Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, eds., Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text, and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape (London and New York: Routledg, 1992).

3. See Anthony D. King, Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System (London: Routledge, 1990); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Setha Low and Erve Chambers, eds., Housing, Culture, and Design: A Comparative Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Jean-Paul Bourdier and Nezar AlSayyad, eds., Dwellings, Settlements, and Tradition: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989).

4. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 34-36.

5. See Gary McDonogh, “The Geography of Emptiness,” in Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh, eds., The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1993), 3-16.

6. See Chapter Three below; Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 30.

7. David Wallace, ed., Metropolitan Open Spaces and Natural Process (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970) in McDonogh, “The Geography of Emptiness,” 14.

8. Lefebvre is somewhat confusing in regard to this issue. For him, social space is not socialized space [that already exists]. (190) Yet, he also argues that every space is already in place before the appearance in it of actors. (57) In this sense, space is also objective for him. Lefebvre moves between structuralism/scientism and subjectivism/social construction.

9. See Ella Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial’,” Social Text 31-32 (1992): 99-113; Anne McClintock, “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post Colonial’,” Social Text 31-32 (1992): 84-98.

10. Representative titles include David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), in which he argued that “there are plenty of those with a powerful sociological imagination ... who nevertheless seem to live and work in a spaceless world.”

(24) In Spatial Divisions of Labor (London: Macmillan, 1984), Doreen Massey demonstrated that behind major shifts between dominant spatial divisions of labor within a country lie changes in the spatial organization of capitalist relations of production, the development and reorganization of which she calls spatial structures of production. (7) See also Manuel Castells, City, Class and Power (London: Macmillan, 1980); The City and the Grass Roots (London: Arnold, 1983).

11. Derek Gregory and John Urry, eds., Social Relations and Spatial Structures (New York: St. Martins Press, 1985), 3.

12. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974); The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1989); Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); Janet AbuLughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Peter J. Taylor, Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis (London: Belhaven Press, 1993); Paul L.Knox and John Agnew, The Geography of the World Economy (London: Edward Arnold, 1990).

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13. For example, Anthony D. King, Global Cities: Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London (London: Routledge, 1990); Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy; Wright, The Politics of Design; Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (London: Belhaven Press, 1997).

14. See Mark Gottdiener and Joe R. Feagin, “The Paradigm Shift in Urban Sociology,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 24 (1988): 163-87.

15. John Friedmann, “The World City Hypothesis,” Development and Change 17 (1986): 69-84; “Where We Stand: A Decade of World City Research,” in Paul L. Knox, and Peter J. Taylor, eds, World Cities in a World System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21-47.

16. Friedmann, “The World City Hypothesis.”

17. Anthony D. King, “Colonialism, Urbanism and the Capitalist World-Economy,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 13 (1989): 3.

18. Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1976); Urbanism, Colonialism and the World-Economy.

19. For example, Florian Steinberg, “Town Planning and the Neo-Colonial Modernization of Colombo,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 8 (1984): 530-546; Duncan, The City as Text; Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New Haven, and London: Yale University Press, 1992).

20. See for example, Roland Silva, “Traditional Design and Modern Architecture,” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (September-November, 1991): 11-13.

21. For example, Senerat Paranavitana, The Stupa in Ceylon (Colombo, 1945); Art and Architecture of Ceylon: Polonnaruwa Period (Colombo, 1954); Roland Silva, “Lessons of Town Planning from Ancient Ceylon,” CIA (Ceylon Institute of Architects) 1 (1972): 8-15, 29.

22. Senake Bandaranayake, Sinhalese Monastic Architecture: The Viharas of Anuradhapura (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974); “Form and Technique in Traditional Rural Housing in Sri Lanka,” ASA 1 (1978): 9-13; “Sri Lanka and Monsoon Asia: Patterns of Local and Regional Architectural Development and the Problem of the Traditional Sri Lankan Roof,” in Leelananda Prematilleke, Karthigesu Indrapala, and J.E. Van Lohuizen-deLeeuw, eds., Senerat Paranavitana Commemoration Volume (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978): 2244.

23. See, Senake Bandaranayake, et al., eds., Sri Lanka and the Silk Road of the Sea. (Colombo: The Sri Lanka National Commission for UNESCO and the Central Cultural Fund, 1990); “Monastery Plan and Social Formation: The Spatial Organization of the Buddhist Monastery Complexes of the Early and Middle Historical Period in Sri Lanka and Changing Patterns of Political Power,” in D. Miller, M. Rowlands, and C. Tilley, eds., Domination and Resistance (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 179-195; R.A.L.H. Gunawardana, “Anuradhapura: Ritual, Power and Resistance in a Precolonial South Asian City,” in Ibid, 155-178.

24. For example, Vidura Sri Nammuni, “Design Teaching at Moratuwa: The Tip of the Iceberg,” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (Dec 90-Feb 91):15-18; Nihal Bodhinayake, “What is Ornamentation, Where is Architecture?” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (Mar-May 1991): 15-16; T.K.N.P. de Silva, “The Sri Lankan Tradition for Shelter,” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (Jun-Aug, 1990): 2-11; Ashley de Vos, “Some Aspects of Traditional Rural Housing and Domestic Technology,” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (Sep-Nov 1988): 8-16; “Landscaping in the Sri Lankan Context,” The Sri Lanka Architect 100 (Dec 1991-Feb

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1992): 51-56.

25. Bandaranayake, “Sri Lanka and Monsoon Asia;” K. Dharmasena, The Port of Colombo 1860-1939 (Colombo: Lake House Publishers, 1980); “Colombo: Gateway and Oceanic Hub of Shipping,” in Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from 16th to 20th Centuries, ed., Frank Brooze (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1989): 152-172; “The Growth of International Shipping in Sri Lanka, 1750-1985: The Experience of a Developing Country,” In Lewis R. Fisher and Helge W. Nordick, eds., Shipping and Trade, 1750-1950: Essays in International Maritime Economic History (Pontefract, England: Loft House Publications, 1990), 235-250.

26. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed., Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 252. See also Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

27. Mark Gottdiener, “Space as a Force of Production. Contribution to the Debate on Realism, Capitalism and Space,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 11 (1987): 406.

28. See Nihal Perera, “Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York,” in Anthony D. King ed., Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital, and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis (London: Macmillan, 1996): 137-157.

29. Gayathri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds (London: Routledge, 1988); “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in P. Mellancamp ed., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 217-313; Homi K. Bhabha, “The Other Question- The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse.” Screen 24 (1983): 18-36; Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Collin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980); “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22-27; Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990).

30. I am aware of the fact that scholars have successfully argued in favor of global perspectives and that the contemporary trend is to search for specificity. What I propose is a broad-based perspective with the necessary specificity.

31. Susantha Goonatilake, Crippled Minds: An Exploration into Colonial Culture (New Delhi: Vikas Publishers, 1982).

32. Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes; Joe R. Feagin, The Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political Economic Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Norman I. Fainstein et al., eds., Restructuring the City (New York: Longman, 1983); Michael Peter Smith and Joe R. Feagin, eds., The Capitalist City: Global Restructuring and Community Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).

33. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1991); Stuart Hall, “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity,” in Anthony D. King, ed., Culture, Globalization and the World-System, 19-39; “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,” in ibid, 41-68; Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity.

34. Duncan, The City as Text; Zukin, Landscapes of Power.

35. Sassen, The Global City; Friedmann, “The World City Hypothesis”; King, Global Cities; Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992).

36. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce, Southern India 15001650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2.

Introduction

13

37. Mark la Gory and John Pipkin, Urban Social Space (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1981), x.

38. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 34, 143.

39. See Duncan, The City as Text (182) for a similar idea.

40. Anthony Giddens, “Time, Space, and Regionalization”, in Derek Gregory and John Urry eds., Social Relations and Spatial Structures (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 271-2.

41. Henri Lefebvre, “Space: Social Product and Use Value,” in Critical Sociology: European Perspective, ed., J. Freiberg (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1979), 290; See also Robert Rotenberg. “Introduction,” in Robert Rotenberg and Gary McDonogh, eds., xiv.

42. See Duncan, The City as Text, 12.

43. For Pomian, chronosophy speaks of time and makes time the object of a discourse.

(Krzysztof Pomian, “The Secular Evolution of the Concept of Cycles,” Review II (1979): 569.)

44. Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences,” in Peter Burke, ed., Economy and Society in Early Modern Europe: Essays from Annales (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1972), 13.