Resisting Bare Life: Children's Reproduction of Quotidian Culture in a Sri Lankan Camp

Abstract

This article explores how children reproduce the culture of everyday life in the context of living in an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Using qualitative research with internally displaced children and the adults working with them (doctors, teachers and NGO workers), it explores the children's everyday social reality around the themes of family, peers, popular culture, and religious practices. In discussing this reproduction of the culture of everyday life, rooted within Tamil, and South Indian cultural practices, the author shows that children and adults resist their reduction to bare life.

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