Structures of Trust and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract Sinhala Buddhists in inner-city Colombo, Sri Lanka, turned to local- and national-level structures of trust in their quest to stay safe and mitigate suffering during the COVID -19 pandemic. We explore this through an ethnographic case study of the Sri Narada temple in Narahenpita and a textual analysis of the national government’s response to the pandemic. Our research shows that both the temple and national government advocated similar pathways to immunity, including vaccination, Ayurveda, and Buddhism. We argue that in both instances, conceptions of health are plural and relational and embedded in the broader social context, as opposed to individualist notions of health. They also encompass moral issues around social service, merit, and what it means to be a “good” Buddhist. However, these common pathways led to dissimilar outcomes, mediated by qualitatively different relations of trust.