State-society relations and electricity infrastructure: Negotiating national energy security in Sri Lanka

In this dissertation, I use electricity production and distribution and grid expansion as a lens to view and understand state-society relations. After discussing how electricity has resource-like characteristics and institutional characteristics as a field of organization, I examine how groups in society interact with state officials and their corresponding institutions over electricity production and distribution and the pursuit of national energy security. Taking Sri Lanka as the focus of my inquiry, I conducted a qualitative research project to: (1) identify how class, ethnicity, and locality (urban or rural location) are constitutive of and constituted by electricity-infrastructure development and grid expansion initiatives; (2) identify how grid expansion contributes to processes of social inclusion and exclusion by reconstituting on-grid and off-grid populations, and; (3) determine the effects of privatization and environmental regulation on relationships between the state and groups in society. The methodological approaches include analyses of open-ended interviews, participant observation, surveys of government documents, and speeches and sermons delivered at protests against power-plant sitings to examine how groups in society engage the state as a social force. The study finds that privatization occurring in Sri Lanka's energy sector may have the effect of maintaining exclusion from electricity access rather than increasing access to electricity as the neoliberal paradigm asserts. Environmental regulations enable groups in society to include their concerns into the development process and to challenge state decision making that have been made on their behalf by the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). The research suggests that class, ethnic, and rural-urban relations are constitutive factors in electricity production and distribution that complement foci on the technical and economic dimensions of electricity-infrastructure planning.