Appreciating Beena Sarwar’s Documentary on Sri Lanka’s Parlous Situation

AUTHOR unknown –– An Item sent by  Nandi Jasentuliyana — Ex-Richmond College and long resident in USA

This documentary is by Beena Sarwar….. https://www.dawn.com/news/1864914

“There is a fine line between order and chaos. Its tenuous separation lies at the heart of the grand cycle of oppositional linkages in myth and history, in which fate, humans and nature seek a way out of the turbulence to which they may well have themselves contributed.

Journalist and activist Beena Sarwar’s jewel-like documentary Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines examines the economic collapse of 2022 in Sri Lanka. In the film’s 25-minute run, she presents a range of voices that reflects the cultural and philosophical attitudes weaving through the analysis of political catastrophe.

Her journalistic methodology is quintessentially an anthropological one, and specifically one that anthropologists would identify as an “emic” approach. Emic methods (as distinguished from “etic” methods) give preference to the point of view of the interlocutor. …”

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EMIC = The emic perspective is the insider’s perspective, the perspective that comes from within the culture where the project is situated—for example, gender perspectives of women involved in a project in Afghanistan. [That is — the investigaor and/or sociologist adopts and accepts the ‘eyes and viewws’ of the personnel observed or speaking –Michael Roberts]