Seeing Like A Donator: Guiding Communities Into Better Lives In The Aftermath Of The Indian Ocean Tsunami

The paper provides an ethnographic insight into a privately initiated housing project conducted in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in Southern Sri Lanka. Informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality, the aim is to understand how private donators attempt to shape the conduct of beneficiaries thereby governing their mentality through humanitarian aid and its techniques. Foremost the paper analyses the background in which donators create a framework to project their logic and vision to illustrate how their particular socialised knowledge and networks influence the project plan and implementation process. Thereby, most importantly, the paper analyses the way donators define and imagine 'better lives' for the recipients of their aid. Subsequently an insight is gained into how today's everyday community life appears in relation to the newly defined 'modelled' life.