Abstract—At the end of the three decade old (ethnic) war, Sri Lankans are slowly but progressively moving towards reconciliation and, perhaps, to finding political solutions to many issues. This progress raises the question of how people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds collaborate when the political and social environment is still vulnerable to tensions and clashes. In order to explore this situation further, I carried out seventeen months of phenomenological research in Sri Lanka, observing many examples of inter-ethnic collaborations. In this article, I describe such everyday collaborations through which I call “commongrounds”, a concept I employ to illustrate the ways and means in which the multi-ethnic middle-class community create harmonious social space for everyone to share in ethno-politically volatile Sri Lankan society. I will draw upon insights from Barth, Harrison, Bourdieu and Neofotistos to discuss my research findings on how members of Sri Lanka’s middle-class community create everyday relationships based upon their own classifications of “good” and “bad”, which cross rigid ethnic boundaries. Index Terms—Ethnicity, nationalism, commongrounds, middle-class, ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka. I. INTRODUCTION Countries experiencing ethnic tensions are affected by a great variety of integrating and disintegrating forces, a fact evident in discussions centring on political solutions to societal divisions by means of power sharing that have taken place throughout history. The people of Sri Lanka suffered immensely following independence from Britain in 1948. Ethnic tension, violence, fear and intimidation paralysed the development of the country as well as the opportunities of its peoples to enjoy freedom. The 31-year long civil war that ended in May 2009 cost the country not only scores of human lives but resources that should have been disbursed for the eradication of poverty and the improvement of the welfare of the people. Not infrequently, international forums such as the United Nations and associated bodies, along with academic writings, tend to focus upon the elite‟s political behaviour, peace talks, military action and power sharing models. In other words, the wider world has viewed Sri Lanka as a theatre of violence and bad politics. While films and teleplays have narrated the peoples‟ suffering to some extent, they have also served as a catharsis rather than initiating broader Manuscript received September 29, 2013; revised November 5, 2013. This work was supported by the Department of Anthropology Research Fund (2010-2013). Anton Piyarathne is with the Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia and Department of Social Studies, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka (e-mail: anton.piyarathne@mq.edu.au, antonpiyarathne@gmail.com, apiya@ou.ac.lk). movements and social change to eradicate suffering and create peace. Even though the war in Sri Lanka ended in 2009, the influence of divisive nationalist forces, chauvinist ideologies and ethnic politics persist. The government, which is yet to address crucial issues related to ethnic tension, seems unable to come up with lasting solutions. Despite all of the above constraints, it is within this milieu that the people of Sri Lanka must prosecute their everyday social reality. Although post-independence Sri Lanka saw a lot of politically-motivated tension and a spate of ethnic clashes, a considerable amount of integration prevailed among the members of the various ethnic groups, who mostly lived in heterogeneous communities. They withstood the on-going provocation from various ethno-national and political corners. It was the people‟s own initiatives that allowed them to enjoy “commongrounds”, not the miracles of politicians. In this article I explore how peoples from diverse ethnic backgrounds create environments in which all can live in relative peace. Special reference is made to the middle-class, who resides in the urban area of Sri Lanka‟s capital city of Colombo. The above circumstances urged me to carve out a concept called “commongrounds”, which I wish to treat as one pragmatic concept although it is written using two words according to English grammatical order. My notion of the concept does not allow social engineers to treat “common” and “grounds” as two separate entities. I approach the notion of “commongrounds” not as a settled state but as a continuing field of struggle similar to Michael Jackson‟s [1] examination of human well-being in Sierra Leone. I admire the way he employed this static phenomenon in a lively discussion. The Sri Lankan people have had to endure a social life that has required them to cope with a variety of divisive forces, e.g., ethnic-nationalism, chauvinism, religious extremism and ethno-political factions. The nature of the struggle of ordinary people in this volatile political environment has been taken for granted or deliberately not made visible in most academic writings [2]-[4]. In their analyses of ethnic tension in Sri Lanka, scholars including those discussed below, have basically adopted four approaches: primordialist, constructivist, instrumentalist and modernist. Examination of these approaches will facilitate an understanding of the socio-economic and political backdrop to the tension as well as of the approaches. The primordialist approach discusses language, religion, and culture in relation to the conflicting ethnicities and nationalism [5]-[6]. Advocates of this approach tend to argue that historical factors, in particular the age-old Sinhala/Tamil rivalry, can explain the on-going conflict. However, I will suggest that the explanations put forward are weak if not incorrect. Construction of Social Lives in Ethno-Politically Ruptured Sri Lanka Anton Piyarathne 443 DOI: 10.7763/IJSSH.2014.V4.396 International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, Vol. 4, No. 6, November 2014