Cultivating Health in Landscapes of Uncertainty: Mystery Kidney Disease and Agrarian Transformation in Dry Zone Sri Lanka

Main Article Content

Nari Senanayake

Abstract

Since the first reports of a mysterious new form of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKDu) emerged in the early 1990s, Sri Lanka's dry zone has become the epicenter of an epidemic that is slowly crippling agricultural communities across the island's rice belt. In this field report, I provide a detailed description of my fieldwork in two "CKDu hotspots" including an overview of my research design and some preliminary research findings. This work is grounded in feminist methodology and integrates ethnographic and archival fieldwork conducted in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka over the summers of 2013 and 2015 as well as eleven months of research in Sri Lanka over 2016-17.  This article elaborates on fieldwork that I undertook across a range of sites including libraries, farmers' fields, kidney screening clinics, and government offices. Collectively, an analysis of this data provides a deeper understanding of how the problem of CKDu reconfigures human-environment interactions, subjectivities, and relations of expertise in areas where the disease is endemic.

Article Details

Section
Board Reviewed
Author Biography

Nari Senanayake, Department of Geography, Penn State University

PhD Candidate, Department of Geography

References

Athuraliya, N, Tilak Abeysekera, Priyanie Amerasinghe, Ranjit Kumarasiri, Palitha Bandara, Upul Karunaratne, Abul Milton, and Alison Jones. 2011. "Uncertain Etiologies of Proteinuric-Chronic Kidney Disease in Rural Sri Lanka." Kidney International 80 (11): 1212–1221.

Chandrajith, Rohana, C.B. Dissanayake, Thivanka Ariyarathna, H. Herath, and J.P. Padmasiri. 2011. "Dose-Dependent Na and Ca in Fluoride-Rich Drinking Water —Another Major Cause of Chronic Renal Failure in Tropical Arid Regions." Science of The Total Environment 409 (4): 671–75.

Doolittle, Amity. 2015. "The Best of Many Worlds: Methodological Pluralism in Political Ecology." In The International Handbook of Political Ecology, edited by Raymond L. Bryant. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Elmhirst, Rebecca. 2015. "Feminist Political Ecology." In The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology, edited by Tom Perreault, Gavin Bridge, and James McCarthy, 519–30. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Handunnetti, Dilrukshi. 2012. "Arsenic, Cadmium or People?" Ceylon Today, August 19. http://www.ceylontoday.lk/59-10982-news-detail-arsenic-cadmium-or-people.html.

Haraway, Donna. 1989. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–99.

Jayatilake, Nihal, Shanthi Mendis, Palitha Maheepala, and Firdosi R. Mehta. 2013. "Chronic Kidney Disease of Uncertain Aetiology: Prevalence and Causative Factors in a Developing Country." BMC Nephrology 14 (1): 180.

McGuirk, P, and P O'Neil. 2010. "Using Questionnaires in Qualitiative Human Geography." In Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography, 3rd edition. London: Oxford University Press.

Nading, Alex. 2014. Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement. University of California Press.

Noble, Andrew, Priyanie Amerasinghe, Herath Manthrithilake, and Sutharsiny Arasalingam. 2014. "Review of Literature on Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu) in Sri Lanka." IWMI Working Paper 158. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute.

Nightingale, Andrea J. 2003. "A Feminist in the Forest: Situated Knowledges and Mixing Methods in Natural Resource Management." ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographers 2 (1): 77–90.

Nightingale, Andrea J. 2011. "Bounding Difference: Intersectionality and the Material Production of Gender, Caste, Class and Environment in Nepal." Geoforum 42 (2): 153–162.

Nightingale, Andrea J. 2012. "The Embodiment of Nature: Fishing, Emotion, and the Politics of Environmental Values." In Human-Environment Relations, edited by Emily Brady and Pauline Phemister, 135–47. Springer Netherlands.

Robbins, Paul. 2006. "Research Is Theft: Environmental Inquiry in a Postcolonial World." In Approaches to Human Geography, edited by Stuart Aitken and Gill Valentine, 311-324. London: Sage Publications.

Sultana, Farhana. 2011. "Suffering for Water, Suffering from Water: Emotional Geographies of Resource Access, Control and Conflict." Geoforum 42 (2): 163–172.

World Health Organization. 2012. "Investigation and Evaluation of Chronic Kidney Disease of Uncertain Aetiology in Sri Lanka. Final Report." World Health Organization and Government of Sri Lanka. http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items12/WHO%20final%20report%20on%20CKDu%20SL.pdf.