Militarized Tourism and Gendered Political Economy of Respectability in Post-War Sri Lanka

Abstract

This article examines how respectability politics operates as economic infrastructure in postwar Sri Lanka’s militarized tourism sector. Focusing especially on the tourism sector, which developed intensely after the end of the war in 2009, the article conceptualizes a “political economy of respectability.” This research reveals how state-military-capital alliances deploy respectability as a mechanism for capital accumulation, requiring war-affected Tamil women workers to perform gratitude, modesty, and depoliticization as preconditions for employment. Through fieldwork conducted over several months and oral history interviews with former women workers, hotel managers, activists, and journalists in Sri Lanka, this research shows how women navigate this terrain through strategic performances while enduring surveillance, harassment, and demands to be respectful and disciplined workers. Contributing to a newer understanding of postwar development and feminist political economy, this article argues that respectability functions as a commodity in postwar societies like Sri Lanka, where the state–military alliance deploys respectability as a mode of extracting women’s labor, while women bargain respectability daily to access wages and survival. This dynamic reveals how postwar gendered economies must be understood in conjunction with cultural and affective norms regulating women’s participation, demonstrating that neoliberal militarized development sustains itself through mundane cultural violence embedded in demands for “respect.”