ABSTRACT

Global advocacy is often supported by knowledge extracted directly from local spaces that are also the objects of international governance or intervention. This knowledge is resonant to the extent that it imbues advocacy with perceptions of grounded expertise. Using the case of NGO practitioners conducting fieldwork in post-war Sri Lanka, this chapter explores how spaces of knowledge extraction mediate their epistemic horizons. On the one hand, it is found that interactions with the survivors of violent conflict expose advocates to a logic of victimhood that is divergent from the diplomatic and governance logics circulating at the global level. Yet, NGO practitioners’ exposure to the domestic political arena, a relatively narrow range of local media sources and elite-oriented civil society gatekeepers also acts to reinforce the minimalist policy problematique that dominates the global advocacy space; a problematique that fails to question the ethnocratic structure of the Sri Lankan state.