Negotiating reconstruction: understanding hybridity in Sri Lanka’s post-disaster and post-conflict reconstruction processes

This paper considers the diverse processes of ‘reconstruction’ that have taken place in Sri Lanka following the devastating tsunami in 2004, and the end of the war in 2009. We argue for a reading of post-crisis reconstruction in Sri Lanka which complicates the ‘liberal’ versus ‘authoritarian’ binary often used to characterise these reconstruction processes, and brings to the fore the complexity of the decisions and tensions around reconstruction in Sri Lanka. We advocate using the concept of hybridity to better understand the multiple processes of reconstruction that have taken place in Sri Lanka since 2004, how they interact and how an approach to reconstruction that is unique to Sri Lanka may be in the process of being negotiated.