Tom Widger
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 630708 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Tom Widger |
| NOMBRES | Tom |
| APELLIDO | Widger |
| FIRMA | WIDGER T |
| AFILIACIONES | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4573-1814 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 23 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 23 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2009 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
The Sovereign Poison
Growing concerns over pesticide exposure have fueled calls for stricter regulations. Yet, governments—often constrained by the pressures of global markets—frequently fall short in implementing effective controls. The Sovereign Poison explores the failed efforts of both the European Parliament and the Sri Lankan government to ban glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. Introducing the concept of “poisoncraft,” Tom Widger delves into th…
The Worlds of European and South Asian Poisoncraft
Business as Normal
This year’s editorial comes at a moment of transition: our editors for the last 5 years, James Staples and Rebecca Marsland, are stepping back to be replaced by Tom Widger, a Professor of Anthropol...
Religious Nationalism, Strategic Detachment and the Politics of Vernacular Humanitarianism in Post-War Sri Lanka
In this article, I am concerned with the ways different ethnic and religious groups in contemporary Sri Lanka use rhetorics of humanitarianism. Exploring a range of examples drawn from an inner city community, humanitarian foundations and national government, I show how different actors deploy cosmopolitan and nationalist humanitarian rhetorics to obfuscate claims of war crimes and communal favouritism on the one side, and to encourage allegiance…
Kin, friends, philanthronationalists
Through an historical ethnographic analysis of Sri Lanka's oldest charity, the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society, this article explores changing modalities of humanitarian "relations" in colonial and post-colonial contexts. For two hundred years, "the Society" would provide a model of liberal humanitarianism premised on "friendship," a civil and secular relation that the organisation distinguished from "kinship" on the one side and "religion" on the…
Research As Development
Book forum on 'Research as Development
Glyphosate regulation and sovereignty politics around the world
Bayer's best-selling herbicide, glyphosate, is a once in a generation product. This pesticide has come to symbolize widespread opposition to corporate influence over agrochemical regulation and led to calls for greater democratic accountability in science. In the 1960s, the modern environmental movement was born from campaigns against the insecticide DDT. In the 2010s, glyphosate is helping to foster new coalitions between environmentalists and n…
Monsoon uncertainties, hydro-chemical infrastructures, and ecological time in Sri Lanka
In this chapter, the authors argue that anthropological discussions of time will remain limited if alongside human time we do not also consider that which falls beyond – the expansive ecologies of time. A study of time in agricultural contexts like the Mahaweli Irrigation and Development Project (MDIP), which sit at the forefront of clashes caused by the meeting of Green Revolution technologies and monsoon uncertainties, necessarily must reset th…
Trading Futures
In this article, we explore what happens when idea(l)s of Islamic charity ( sadaqah ) and social enterprise converge within a low-cost public health clinic in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For both the clinic’s wealthy sponsors and the urban poor who use it, interpreting the intervention as a pious expression of care toward the poor or as a for-profit humanitarian venture meant extending different futures to the poor. The ambiguous temporalities of gifts a…
Introduction to the Basas 2019 special section
This special section of Contemporary South Asia is dedicated to the papers presented at the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS). The 2019 Conference wa
The Time of Anthropology
I do not define time, space, place and motion as being well known to all. But it must be observed that the vulgar conceive those quantities only from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which, it is proper to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar
You Can Give Even if You Only Have Ten Rupees
Recent research on contemporary modalities of Islamic or Muslim philanthropy has focused on processes of subjectification through which givers and recipients of charity are habituated or craft themselves to an ethic of piety, social responsibility, and (neoliberal) economic virtuosity. These studies, however, have concentrated almost exclusively on those who give charity, leading to an over-emphasis on the perspectives of givers, and on their rol…
Ambivalent Objects in Global Health
Suicides, poisons and the materially possible
Developing an object-oriented perspective on suicide, in this article the author challenges critical global health scholarship and sociological theories of ambivalence by showing how a focus on 'materially possible' suicide prevention can offer culturally relevant solutions to a suicide epidemic in a resource-poor setting. Taking the example of pesticide regulation in Sri Lanka, he demonstrates why, in theoretical terms, banning toxic pesticides …
Visions of philanthronationalism
Philanthronationalism – the pursuance of corporate ‘good governance’ and equality initiatives for ethno-religious political ends – shapes at a fundamental level business practice in Sri Lanka. In this article, Sri Lankan firms’ approaches to the management of ‘diversity and inclusion’ in human resourcing, brand development, and market expansion and outsourcing are explored. While many in the private sector appear to wish to promote the creation o…
Philanthronationalism
Over the past few years, the role of private sector organizations as actors and investors in development processes has received increased attention. This article explores the rise of 'philanthronationalism' in Sri Lanka: the co-development of business and philanthropy methods as a response to patronage, nationalization and militarization in the post-war environment. Drawing on ethnographic research into indigenous forms of corporate social respon…
Suicide and the 'Poison Complex
Suicide prevention efforts in Asia have increasingly turned to 'quick win' means restriction, while more complicated cognitive restriction and psychosocial programs are limited. This article argues the development of cognitive restriction programs requires greater consideration of suicide methods as social practices, and of how suicide cognitive schemata form. To illustrate this, the article contributes an ethnographically grounded study of how s…
Reading Sri Lanka's Suicide Rate
By the final decade of the twentieth century, rates of suicide in Sri Lanka ranked among the highest in the world. However, in 1996 the suicide rate began to fall and was soon at its lowest level in almost 30 years. This decline poses problems for classic sociological theories of suicide and forces us to question some fundamental assumptions underlying social scientific approaches to the suicide rate. Drawing from sociological, medical epidemiolo…
Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem
Suffering, Frustration, and Anger
Suicide and the morality of kinship in Sri Lanka
Ethnographic research amongst Sinhala Buddhists in community and clinical settings in the Madampe Division, northwest Sri Lanka, suggests that local understandings and practices of suicidal behaviour reflect the kinship structure. In particular, acts of self-harm and self-inflicted death arise in response to the breaking of core kinship rights, duties and obligations, or as a challenge to inflexibility or contradictions within the system. In eith…
Dance and the nation
Buddha in Sri Lanka
The Time of Anthropology
I do not define time, space, place and motion as being well known to all. But it must be observed that the vulgar conceive those quantities only from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which, it is proper to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar
Suicide and the morality of kinship in Sri Lanka
Ethnographic research amongst Sinhala Buddhists in community and clinical settings in the Madampe Division, northwest Sri Lanka, suggests that local understandings and practices of suicidal behaviour reflect the kinship structure. In particular, acts of self-harm and self-inflicted death arise in response to the breaking of core kinship rights, duties and obligations, or as a challenge to inflexibility or contradictions within the system. In eith…
Philanthronationalism
Over the past few years, the role of private sector organizations as actors and investors in development processes has received increased attention. This article explores the rise of 'philanthronationalism' in Sri Lanka: the co-development of business and philanthropy methods as a response to patronage, nationalization and militarization in the post-war environment. Drawing on ethnographic research into indigenous forms of corporate social respon…
You Can Give Even if You Only Have Ten Rupees
Recent research on contemporary modalities of Islamic or Muslim philanthropy has focused on processes of subjectification through which givers and recipients of charity are habituated or craft themselves to an ethic of piety, social responsibility, and (neoliberal) economic virtuosity. These studies, however, have concentrated almost exclusively on those who give charity, leading to an over-emphasis on the perspectives of givers, and on their rol…
Reading Sri Lanka's Suicide Rate
By the final decade of the twentieth century, rates of suicide in Sri Lanka ranked among the highest in the world. However, in 1996 the suicide rate began to fall and was soon at its lowest level in almost 30 years. This decline poses problems for classic sociological theories of suicide and forces us to question some fundamental assumptions underlying social scientific approaches to the suicide rate. Drawing from sociological, medical epidemiolo…
Glyphosate regulation and sovereignty politics around the world
Bayer's best-selling herbicide, glyphosate, is a once in a generation product. This pesticide has come to symbolize widespread opposition to corporate influence over agrochemical regulation and led to calls for greater democratic accountability in science. In the 1960s, the modern environmental movement was born from campaigns against the insecticide DDT. In the 2010s, glyphosate is helping to foster new coalitions between environmentalists and n…
Ambivalent Objects in Global Health
Suicides, poisons and the materially possible
Developing an object-oriented perspective on suicide, in this article the author challenges critical global health scholarship and sociological theories of ambivalence by showing how a focus on 'materially possible' suicide prevention can offer culturally relevant solutions to a suicide epidemic in a resource-poor setting. Taking the example of pesticide regulation in Sri Lanka, he demonstrates why, in theoretical terms, banning toxic pesticides …
Suicide and the 'Poison Complex
Suicide prevention efforts in Asia have increasingly turned to 'quick win' means restriction, while more complicated cognitive restriction and psychosocial programs are limited. This article argues the development of cognitive restriction programs requires greater consideration of suicide methods as social practices, and of how suicide cognitive schemata form. To illustrate this, the article contributes an ethnographically grounded study of how s…
Kin, friends, philanthronationalists
Through an historical ethnographic analysis of Sri Lanka's oldest charity, the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society, this article explores changing modalities of humanitarian "relations" in colonial and post-colonial contexts. For two hundred years, "the Society" would provide a model of liberal humanitarianism premised on "friendship," a civil and secular relation that the organisation distinguished from "kinship" on the one side and "religion" on the…
Visions of philanthronationalism
Philanthronationalism – the pursuance of corporate ‘good governance’ and equality initiatives for ethno-religious political ends – shapes at a fundamental level business practice in Sri Lanka. In this article, Sri Lankan firms’ approaches to the management of ‘diversity and inclusion’ in human resourcing, brand development, and market expansion and outsourcing are explored. While many in the private sector appear to wish to promote the creation o…
Buddha in Sri Lanka
Dance and the nation
Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem
Suffering, Frustration, and Anger
Suicide and the morality of kinship in Sri Lanka
Ethnographic research amongst Sinhala Buddhists in community and clinical settings in the Madampe Division, northwest Sri Lanka, suggests that local understandings and practices of suicidal behaviour reflect the kinship structure. In particular, acts of self-harm and self-inflicted death arise in response to the breaking of core kinship rights, duties and obligations, or as a challenge to inflexibility or contradictions within the system. In eith…
Reading Sri Lanka's Suicide Rate
By the final decade of the twentieth century, rates of suicide in Sri Lanka ranked among the highest in the world. However, in 1996 the suicide rate began to fall and was soon at its lowest level in almost 30 years. This decline poses problems for classic sociological theories of suicide and forces us to question some fundamental assumptions underlying social scientific approaches to the suicide rate. Drawing from sociological, medical epidemiolo…
Suicide and the 'Poison Complex
Suicide prevention efforts in Asia have increasingly turned to 'quick win' means restriction, while more complicated cognitive restriction and psychosocial programs are limited. This article argues the development of cognitive restriction programs requires greater consideration of suicide methods as social practices, and of how suicide cognitive schemata form. To illustrate this, the article contributes an ethnographically grounded study of how s…
Visions of philanthronationalism
Philanthronationalism – the pursuance of corporate ‘good governance’ and equality initiatives for ethno-religious political ends – shapes at a fundamental level business practice in Sri Lanka. In this article, Sri Lankan firms’ approaches to the management of ‘diversity and inclusion’ in human resourcing, brand development, and market expansion and outsourcing are explored. While many in the private sector appear to wish to promote the creation o…
Philanthronationalism
Over the past few years, the role of private sector organizations as actors and investors in development processes has received increased attention. This article explores the rise of 'philanthronationalism' in Sri Lanka: the co-development of business and philanthropy methods as a response to patronage, nationalization and militarization in the post-war environment. Drawing on ethnographic research into indigenous forms of corporate social respon…
You Can Give Even if You Only Have Ten Rupees
Recent research on contemporary modalities of Islamic or Muslim philanthropy has focused on processes of subjectification through which givers and recipients of charity are habituated or craft themselves to an ethic of piety, social responsibility, and (neoliberal) economic virtuosity. These studies, however, have concentrated almost exclusively on those who give charity, leading to an over-emphasis on the perspectives of givers, and on their rol…
Ambivalent Objects in Global Health
Suicides, poisons and the materially possible
Developing an object-oriented perspective on suicide, in this article the author challenges critical global health scholarship and sociological theories of ambivalence by showing how a focus on 'materially possible' suicide prevention can offer culturally relevant solutions to a suicide epidemic in a resource-poor setting. Taking the example of pesticide regulation in Sri Lanka, he demonstrates why, in theoretical terms, banning toxic pesticides …
Monsoon uncertainties, hydro-chemical infrastructures, and ecological time in Sri Lanka
In this chapter, the authors argue that anthropological discussions of time will remain limited if alongside human time we do not also consider that which falls beyond – the expansive ecologies of time. A study of time in agricultural contexts like the Mahaweli Irrigation and Development Project (MDIP), which sit at the forefront of clashes caused by the meeting of Green Revolution technologies and monsoon uncertainties, necessarily must reset th…
Trading Futures
In this article, we explore what happens when idea(l)s of Islamic charity ( sadaqah ) and social enterprise converge within a low-cost public health clinic in Colombo, Sri Lanka. For both the clinic’s wealthy sponsors and the urban poor who use it, interpreting the intervention as a pious expression of care toward the poor or as a for-profit humanitarian venture meant extending different futures to the poor. The ambiguous temporalities of gifts a…
Introduction to the Basas 2019 special section
This special section of Contemporary South Asia is dedicated to the papers presented at the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS). The 2019 Conference wa
The Time of Anthropology
I do not define time, space, place and motion as being well known to all. But it must be observed that the vulgar conceive those quantities only from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which, it is proper to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar
Glyphosate regulation and sovereignty politics around the world
Bayer's best-selling herbicide, glyphosate, is a once in a generation product. This pesticide has come to symbolize widespread opposition to corporate influence over agrochemical regulation and led to calls for greater democratic accountability in science. In the 1960s, the modern environmental movement was born from campaigns against the insecticide DDT. In the 2010s, glyphosate is helping to foster new coalitions between environmentalists and n…
Research As Development
Book forum on 'Research as Development
Religious Nationalism, Strategic Detachment and the Politics of Vernacular Humanitarianism in Post-War Sri Lanka
In this article, I am concerned with the ways different ethnic and religious groups in contemporary Sri Lanka use rhetorics of humanitarianism. Exploring a range of examples drawn from an inner city community, humanitarian foundations and national government, I show how different actors deploy cosmopolitan and nationalist humanitarian rhetorics to obfuscate claims of war crimes and communal favouritism on the one side, and to encourage allegiance…
Kin, friends, philanthronationalists
Through an historical ethnographic analysis of Sri Lanka's oldest charity, the Colombo Friend-in-Need Society, this article explores changing modalities of humanitarian "relations" in colonial and post-colonial contexts. For two hundred years, "the Society" would provide a model of liberal humanitarianism premised on "friendship," a civil and secular relation that the organisation distinguished from "kinship" on the one side and "religion" on the…
The Sovereign Poison
Growing concerns over pesticide exposure have fueled calls for stricter regulations. Yet, governments—often constrained by the pressures of global markets—frequently fall short in implementing effective controls. The Sovereign Poison explores the failed efforts of both the European Parliament and the Sri Lankan government to ban glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. Introducing the concept of “poisoncraft,” Tom Widger delves into th…
The Worlds of European and South Asian Poisoncraft
Business as Normal
This year’s editorial comes at a moment of transition: our editors for the last 5 years, James Staples and Rebecca Marsland, are stepping back to be replaced by Tom Widger, a Professor of Anthropol...
Political science (14 obras) · Sociology (14 obras) · Law (11 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 obras) · Sri lanka (10 obras) · Politics (8 obras) · Law (7 obras) · Anthropology (6 obras) · Ethnography (6 obras) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (6 obras)