The Historiography of the Social, Environmental, Economic and Political Systems of Pesalai, A Village in the Mannar District, Sri Lanka: A Content Analysis

Abstract

Historiography reveals many visible and latent facts and opinions about how the history of communities and regions and the evolution of their social, environmental, economic, and political systems (SEEPS) are constructed according to the historian's perspective. This paper aims to provide a content analysis on how the historical construction of the discourse of the SEEPS effectively addressed the issues - especially in the textual and historical construction found in a historical text titled The Cultural Roots of the Pesalai Society, authored by S.A. Miranda. The book narrates the arrival and operation of the Western Colonizers resulting in the consequent socio-political transformation in the local community, changes in religious, cultural, and national identities and the ultimate evolution of new changes in the SEEPS. This content analysis focuses on establishing the relationships between the social, political, and environmental systems in the historical discourse of the book and assessing the historiographical representation of the SEEPS and the controlling factors in constructing the history of the Pesalai village and the Mannar District. The text combines integrated SEEPS providing governance-centric, anthropocentric, and eco-centric perspectives, while a theocentric discourse dominates the text. The book presents the information chronologically and thematically. This paper assesses the author's historical construction to study the impacts of the human-nature interface and natural and human-made changes related to the village system comparable to the whole district. It reveals the challenges and the creation of hybrid and multiple-use social and environmental systems, the interaction of the societal relationships with nature, and the village systems aligned to the political and social systems. The discourse reveals an attempt at reconciling a perennial conflict or competition of sustainable SEEPS against each other.