Abstract
A new kidney disease began to emerge in some farming populations in Dry Zone Sri Lanka since 1990s. This could not be attributed to diabetes, hypertension or any other known causes of renal damage. Over the past thirty years many studies have been conducted in order to isolate the causes of this new disease now reported from a number of dry zone areas in the country but so far no single or multiple disease causing agents have been established in Sri Lanka or any other countries where the disease has been reported even though there are many rival hypotheses contesting with each other. This paper examines the debates and contestations between science, understood as a body of knowledge guided by the scientific method and its outputs in the form of new technology with industrial applications, and the nationalist critique of science postulating on nativist grounds a globalization, including increased use of agro- chemicals as an outcome of globalization, as a trigger for the emergence of this new disease. As for the methodology used, the paper sketches the natural history of the epidemic using available evidence in media reports, scientific writings and a few creative writings about the epidemic. While a broad-based appraisal of globalization processes as to their wide-ranging impact on environment, health, social relations and consumerism is certainly warranted, a narrow nationalist reading, attributing the disease to purely external causes to the neglect of local circumstances and potential role of human behavior as factors contributing to the etiology of the disease is untenable.
Highlights
Globalization and nationalism are often seen as rival epistemologies that are critical of each other
The current paper elaborates the nationalist critique of the emergence of a chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) in selected farming communities in Dry Zone Sri Lanka in order to illustrate how globalization processes impinge on the livelihoods in the periphery and lives of people in the margins as perceived by local scientists, including the nationalists among them
The disease was identified as CKD of unknown etiology (CKDu) from 1996
Summary
Globalization and nationalism are often seen as rival epistemologies that are critical of each other. Global capital has made inroads into every imaginable aspect of life in the periphery of the world system These effects include changes in food habits, transitions in livelihoods, increased labour migration, development and increased utilization of land and water resources, mining and relocation of industries whereby relationship between capital and labour is reorganized with a view to enhancing returns to capital. Against this background, the nationalist critique of global capital has tried to identity and expose negative impacts of globalization in areas such as environmental degradation, global warming, human smuggling, super exploitation of labour, deterioration of health services and the emergence of new disease burdens. What is presented is a discourse analysis where nationalist discourse has challenged the scientific discourse on the disease for siding with the agrochemical lobbies in their effort to conceal the adverse effects of heavy use of agrochemicals (chemical fertilizer and pesticides) under the green revolution policies introduced since the 1960s
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