Spectacular Futures, Development Brokers, and Bankrupt Vistas in Post-War Sri Lanka

Dr.Thiruni Kelegama (Lecturer in South Asian Studies, University of Oxford)

Wednesday 29th November 2023, 3pm

Lecture Theatre 3, Rendall Building

This talk examines how elite brokers reshape sovereignty and territorial control through mega-infrastructure development in the Indian Ocean region. Through an ethnographic study of the US$14 billion Chinese-funded Colombo Port City development in Sri Lanka, it analyses how presidentially appointed Commissioners exercise unprecedented authority over territorial governance through three interrelated mechanisms: legal-institutional innovation that creates exceptional jurisdictions, physical transformation of maritime space, and economic regulation that engineers specialised zones. These ‘infrastructure brokers’ represent a fundamental departure from traditional development intermediaries who operate at society’s margins. Unlike conventional brokers who mediate within existing frameworks, these elite actors architect new institutional arrangements that simultaneously extend and transcend state authority. Operating at the nexus of state power and international capital, they produce differentiated zones of governance that accommodate global investment while maintaining assertions of national control. By revealing how territorial authority is reconfigured through the intersection of elite agency and spatial production, this analysis contributes to understanding sovereignty’s transformation in an era of mega-infrastructure competition across the Global South.

Part of the Seminar Series “Transformations in Land, Labour, and Meaning in South Asia” organised by the Power, Space, and Cultural Change Cluster, Department of Geography and Planning.