Festschrift for Jonathan Spencer

Harini Amarasuriya

Thank you so much, Toby, for inviting me to be part of this event. I would have loved to have been there in person, for the whole two days of celebrating Jonathan’s work; unfortunately, that was not to be. I feel truly honored to be part of this gathering. In my intervention at this event, I will not be talking about Jonathan’s intellectual contribution but will focus on what his collaboration with Sri Lankan academics has meant to many of us.

I first met Jonathan sometime in 2005 in Colombo at a restaurant (that I don’t think exists any longer) over dinner. That meeting was a result of a conversation Jonathan had had with our friend and colleague, Ananda Galappatti. We had all been pulled into working on post-tsunami relief efforts since 2004, after the devastating Asian Tsunami, and by the time we were meeting Jonathan, we had reached a pretty high level of exhaustion and disillusionment with the humanitarian and development sector in Sri Lanka. Prior to our meeting Jonathan, we had all gathered at Ananda’s house and we started venting our frustrations and considering various other career options. Admittedly, this was quite late in the evening and after several rounds of gin and tonic, Ananda as he usually does, on such occasions . . . said “I have an idea.”  This time, his idea was for four of us to do a collective PhD. And, as we usually do when, Ananda says “I have an idea,” we scoffed and laughed rudely and moved on. Nevertheless, some time later that year, Ananda had gone on to meet Jonathan in the U.K. during a visit. The 2005 meeting in Colombo was a result of that meeting between the two of them. Long story, short, of us four of us who had been present at that gathering at Ananda’s house, eventually ended up in Edinburgh around 2007/8 for our PhDs. We didn’t do a “collective PhD”—I am still not quite clear what grand plan Ananda had in mind—but that idea did help us to secure funding and established us as a PhD cohort, if not directly speaking to each other’s work, definitely influenced by and influencing each other’s work.

This backstory is important because one of the most significant influences Jonathan has had on my own work as well as on many other anthropologists and social scientists in Sri Lanka is the idea of academic collaboration.   I don’t think Jonathan ever said anything to us directly but, working with Jonathan meant work had to be fun, involve long conversations, cooking and sharing meals, and this idea of producing knowledge collectively.  Even writing was collaborative—something that didn’t come easily to me, and shocked me at the start, as I was and am still quite insecure about sharing what I write with anyone else.  We all talk admiringly about collaboration and working together, but I think increasingly, the exigencies of career demands, publishing deals, competition for funding, promotion criteria, and all the other realities of academic life makes collaboration increasingly difficult. You rarely get rewarded for collective effort, collaboration, for sharing—quite the opposite in fact.

But Jonathan’s work, particularly in Sri Lanka, has been a product of long-nurtured relationships, built over time, based on trust, friendship, and sharing. From the perspective of someone who until fairly recently was a part of Sri Lankan academia, this was a quality that I began to increasingly appreciate. All too often, we are simply a field site, or local informants; rarely, does a more meaningful or sustained collaboration emerge out of the many encounters we have regularly whether with postgraduate students, early career, and established researchers. It was always different with Jonathan. It was because of Jonathan’s commitment to collaborative work that I was able to do some of my own most interesting and fulfilling work. And I can think of many other Sri Lankan colleagues of my generation—Dileepa Witharana, Asha Abeysekera, Premakumara de Silva, Siddarthan Maunaguru, Farzana Haniffa, Sharika Thiranagama, who have collaborated with Jonathan over the years, not to speak of the many others before me.

Jonathan’s work in Sri Lanka, starting in the 1980s, certainly reflects or even follows the twists and turns of the country.  Political violence, ethnicity, nationalism, religion and politics, militarization, urban beautification, politics of dissent, ethics and conscience in political activism; you can’t deny that Sri Lanka has provided plenty of subject matter to keep any anthropologist engaged for decades.

My collaboration with Jonathan has been since 2011, and it marked a time, when we were searching for new categories, fresh avenues for anthropological lines of inquiry in Sri Lanka. Many of us were beginning to feel limited by or frustrated by what seemed to be too much of a preoccupation with trying to explain all the complex things that were happening in Sri Lanka simply through the lens of ethnicity, nationalism, and political violence. The many conversations I had with Jonathan and with other colleagues, is what eventually led me to work on the ERC funded Comparative Anthropology of Conscience, Ethics and Human Rights project, led by Toby Kelly. It was certainly one of the most interesting bits of work I did in recent times: the people we met, the stories we heard and were privileged to document, at least for me, revealed parts of my own history and networks in ways that I had never understood before. I can’t help but wonder, how much that work influenced the very unexpected twist my own life took in 2020 that led to me leaving academic life and turning to a full time political career. So Jonathan, you and no less Toby, may be responsible for far more than simply the academic directions my life has taken!

But Jonathan’s engagement with Sri Lanka hasn’t been limited to academic inquiry, it has also contributed towards capacity and institution building. Not only has he supported academic careers, but also almost all the sociology/anthropology departments in Sri Lanka have benefitted from Jonathan giving his time generously for conferences, facilitating academic exchanges and collaborations or mentoring younger academics. I think some of his work in the Eastern part of Sri Lanka, resulted from an epic trip (also post-tsunami) to the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, with a group of architects who were intent on completely redesigning the small town where the university is located. I am not quite sure what happened to that ambitious project, but what I do know is that it led to some really interesting work about religion and politics in the East—also an extremely collaborative project.

For many of us in Sri Lanka, the University of Edinburgh and the Department of Anthropology is associated with Jonathan, and this event feels like it also marks an end of an era of a very close relationship between the Department of Anthropology in Edinburgh and Sri Lanka. Of course, all things are subject to change, that’s how it is and that’s how it should be.  But I think, Jonathan’s engagement with Sri Lankan academia and indeed the relationships he built over time with those linked to Sri Lanka’s intellectual life really demonstrates what intellectual collaboration, generosity and partnership can look like. And that’s an important and enduring legacy.

On a personal note, I think one of the reasons I think of Edinburgh like a second home is because of Janet and Jonathan’s hospitality and willingness to let us treat their home like our home away from home. I can’t count the number of times we have cooked in that kitchen and the many, many gatherings around that dining table. Thank you seems quite inadequate for all that. Nevertheless, thank you. I wish you all the very best as you enter another phase of your life and look forward to seeing you soon, in Sri Lanka and continuing our collaboration that started so many years ago.

Harini Amarasuriya is a Member of Parliament, Sri Lanka.  She was formerly Senior Lecturer, Open University of Sri Lanka.