Jonathan Spencer

Biographic Data

ID84492
NAMEJonathan Spencer
GIVEN NAMESJonathan
FAMILY NAMESpencer
SIGNATURESPENCER J
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Edinburgh
ORCID0000-0001-6660-6919
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS53
TOTAL CITATIONS491
AUTHOR COUNT49
EDITOR COUNT4
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1983
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX13

  • Seeking evidence of intersectional effects in emergency hospital readmissions of adults in England (2016–2019)

    Open AccessJonathan Spencer, Richard Ward et al.ARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2026

    BACKGROUND: Using a large administrative dataset, we explore intersectional effects in the risk of unplanned readmission after hospital discharge in England. We test whether the size and direction of these effects aligns with societal power dynamics that underpin theories of intersectionality. METHODS: We use logistic regression to explore the risk amongst adults in England, of an unplanned readmission within 30 days of discharge from hospital be…

  • Disaster Nationalism: Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka

    Jonathan SpencerARTICLEJournal of Anthropological Research2026

  • Snapshots from the Struggle, Sri Lanka April-May 2022

    Open AccessKrishantha Fedricks, Farzana Haniffa et al.ARTICLEAnthropology Now2022Cited by: 2References: 2

  • The Intimate Life of Dissent Ánthropological Perspectives

    Open AccessTobias Kelly, Harini Amarasuriya et al.BOOKThe Intimate Life of Dissent…2020Cited by: 6References: 60

    In the evening yab gzhis sras kyu left

  • You Can Do Anything With a Temple: Religion, philanthropy, and politics in South London and Sri Lanka

    Open AccessSidharthan Maunaguru, Jonathan SpencerARTICLEModern Asian Studies2018Cited by: 5References: 16

    Our title quotation is taken from an interview with the chief trustee of a leading Hindu temple in south London, and captures the curious mixture of philanthropy, politics, and individual ambition that has emerged around Sri Lankan Tamil temples in the diaspora. During the long years of civil war, temples became centres of mobilization for the growing Tamil diaspora, and were often accused of channelling funds to the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Ta…

  • Securitization and its discontents: The end of Sri Lanka's long post-war

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLEContemporary South Asia2016Cited by: 8References: 2

    In the 5 years after the 2009 defeat of the secessionist insurgency by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Sri Lankan armed forces expanded in numbers, moving into unexpected niches – tourism, urban planning, training university students. With the defeat of the Rajapkasa government in 2015, this process of ‘securitization’ or ‘militarization’ appeared to go into swift retreat. This paper considers the experience of the post-war years and as…

  • With That, Discipline Will Also Come to Them: The Politics of the Urban Poor in Postwar Colombo

    Harini Amarasuriya, Jonathan SpencerARTICLECurrent Anthropology2015Cited by: 18References: 15

    After the end of the country's 30-year civil war in 2009, the Sri Lankan armed forces continued to grow despite the complete absence of obvious military threats to the government. Under the guidance of the president's brother, the Ministry of Defence has played a leading role in town planning through the Urban Development Authority (which formally became part of the ministry in 2010). Colombo has seen an aggressive program of improvement, which s…

  • Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace

    Jonathan Spencer, J Goodhand et al.BOOKCheckpoint, Temple, Church and…2014

  • Anthropology, Politics, and Place in Sri Lanka: South Asian Reflections from an Island Adrift

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLESouth Asia Multidisciplinary…2014Cited by: 5References: 22

    How does the idea of 'South Asia' play out in the politics and public culture of Sri Lanka? As an island, long connected by the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, it has always been a place of comings and goings. Yet, paradoxically, this fact seems to often generate efforts to imagine it as necessarily bounded and unattached to the adjacent subcontinent. The problems of place-making that follow from this move, it is suggested, may be a source of S…

  • A Certain Gesture: Reflections on the Murder of Sivaram

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLEJournal of Historical Sociology2013

    In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a generation of young Tamils in Sri Lanka joined one or other of the militant separatist groups that sprang up in opposition to the Sinhala-dominated government of Sri Lanka. This paper examines the life of one member of this generation, the journalist and intellectual, Sivaram Dharmaratnam, who was abducted and murdered in Colombo in 2005. Sivaram's death provoked a flood of reflections from his peers and these…

  • Anthropology and the Political

    Jennifer Curtis, Jonathan SpencerCHAPTERThe Sage Handbook of Social…2012

  • Performing democracy and violence, agonism and community, politics and not politics in Sri Lanka

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLEGeoforum2012Cited by: 17References: 18

    The paper examines the construction of the political as a space of contestation in Sri Lanka. Empirically, the article draws on two different field projects, one locating in a Sinhala village in the south of the country in the early 1980s, the other in a Muslim town in the East in the late 2000s. The case studies concentrate on the relationship between religion and politics, and specifically the way in which religion – Buddhism, Islam – is presen…

  • Debate: Religion and Revolution

    Open AccessMark Juergensmeyer, Sidharthan Maunaguru et al.ARTICLEReligion and Society2012

    For some decades, the religious rebellion of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries was characterized by political violence, terrorism, and strident rhetoric. Then in 2011, the events collectively known as Arab Spring seemed to offer a new model: mass movements leading to democratic reform and electoral change. The elections of 2012 swept religious parties and leadership into office in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Is this the face of t…

  • Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India by Anand Pandian

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLECultural Anthropology2012References: 9

  • The politics of tolerance: Buddhists and Christians, truth and error in Sri Lanka

    Jonathan SpencerCHAPTERPursuit of Certainty2010

  • The Perils of Engagement: A Space for Anthropology in the Age of Security

    Jonathan SpencerARTICLECurrent Anthropology2010Cited by: 13References: 17

    In the winter of 2006-2007, British anthropologists became embroiled in a series of protests about a planned research program on "radicalisation" to be jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. By linking research on so-called Islamic radicalisation to UK intelligence and UK counter-terrorism policy, the program, it was argued, posed unacceptable levels of risk to other researchers. This p…

  • A Nationalism without Politics?The illiberal consequences of liberal institutions in Sri Lanka

    Jonathan SpencerARTICLEThird World Quarterly2008Cited by: 18

    This paper examines the relationship between developmental and cultural nationalism through an extended case study of the Sri Lankan conflict. It highlights, in particular, the deeply political process of the construction of nations in which the usual opposition between politics and an anti-political realm of the nation or culture itself plays an important role. The conflict, it is argued, has to be understood first of all in political terms, as …

  • Anthropology, Politics, and the State: Democracy and Violence in South Asia

    Open AccessJonathan Spencer, Jonathan B SpencerBOOKAnthropology, Politics, and the…2007

    In recent years anthropology has rediscovered its interest in politics. Building on the findings of this research, this book, first published in 2007, analyses the relationship between culture and politics, with special attention to democracy, nationalism, the state and political violence. Beginning with scenes from an unruly early 1980s election campaign in Sri Lanka, it covers issues from rural policing in north India to slum housing in Delhi, …

  • Order and Disorder: Anthropological Perspectives

    Tilo Grätz, Peter Just et al.BOOKOrder and Disorder2007

    Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examining order within the political and legal spheres and in contrasting local settings, the papers in this volume highlight its complex and contested nature. E…

  • Anthropology, Politics, and the State: Democracy and Violence in South Asia (New Departures in Anthropology)

    Jonathan SpencerBOOKAnthropology, Politics, and the…2007

  • Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in a Transnational World

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2004Cited by: 2References: 1

    Buying and Believing: Sri Lankan Advertising and Consumers in. Transnational World. Steven Kemper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 263 pp

  • Appalling fascination: The Emerging Anthropology of « the Political » in Postcolonial South Asia

    Jonathan SpencerARTICLEJournal des anthropologues2003

    This paper starts from a very specific ethnographic context – the carniva­lesque world of electoral politics in rural Sri Lanka in the early 1980s – and moves out to propose a new object for anthropological enquiry in postcolonial South Asia. My earlier work in Sri Lanka had delineated the ways in which a strong local understanding of « politics » (desapalanaya) and the « political » had developed in the years since Independence. The political wa…

  • Women Behind Bars: Explanations and Implications

    Open AccessJo Deakin, Jonathan Spencer et al.ARTICLEThe Howard Journal of Criminal…2003

    Increases in the women's prison population in the UK, in line with many other industrialised countries, is occurring at an alarming rate and yet the types of offences for which women are imprisoned and the lengths of sentences they receive suggest that most present little risk to society. However, the personal and social costs to these women and their families of being imprisoned, and the economic costs to society, can be immense. Through an anal…

  • A nation 'living in different places: Notes on the impossible work of purification in postcolonial Sri Lanka

    Open AccessJonathan SpencerARTICLEContributions to Indian Sociology2003Cited by: 18References: 20

    The article explores the relationship between migration and the nation-state in Sri Lanka. In particular, it investigates the shifting political and moral responses to the movement of human populations in the colonial and postcolonial periods. From at least the mid- 19th century, migration was seen as something requiring active 'management' by colonial officials; with the emergence of mass politics in the 1930s, new rhetorics of national purity a…

  • Sri Lanka

    Jonathan SpencerBOOKSri Lanka2002

    1. Introduction Jonathan Spencer Part One: Colonialism, History, and Racism 2. The Generation of Communal Identities E.Nissan and R.L Stirrat 3. The People of the Lion: the Sinhala Identity and Ideology in History and Historiography R.A.L.H. Gunawardana 4. Historical Images in the British Period John D. Rogers 5. The Politics of the Tamil Past Dagmar Hellman-Rajanayagam Part Two 6. Nationalist Rhetoric and Local Practice: The Fate of the Village …