ABSTRACT
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka may seem an unlikely candidate for inclusion in any assessment of socialism as an anthropological problem. Its political difficulties have attracted the attention of some distinguished anthropologists (Obeyesekere 1984; Tambiah 1986; Kapferer 1988), but usually for quite other reasons, like the intractability of its ethnic problem and the steady growth of political violence. Yet the country has retained the designation ‘socialist’ in its official title, and most of the different agents involved in recent politics have at some time or another in the recent past thought it appropriate to identify themselves as socialists.
