Caste and its Systemic Challenges in Sri Lanka within a Multispecies Perspective
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Abstract
Building on earlier research (Silva, 2025), this paper argues that caste in Sinhala society is not merely a human affair, but a multispecies entanglement in a tropical setting involving humans, animals, plants and spirits. It follows that dynamics within these other species are equally relevant for understanding the nature, extent and the challenges of caste in contemporary society. Drawing from a variety of ethnographic research in different contexts, the paper elaborates how human-spirit, human-animal and human-plant relations are mediated by caste in Sinhala society and the challenges resulting from the breakdown of hierarchies in each of these domains, the reluctance of young people from subordinate castes to perform what they perceive as demeaning tasks in public and the decline in domesticated elephant stocks needed for sustaining elaborate rituals such as the Kandy Asala Perahara involving a public display of human and non-human hierarchies.
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