Download or read book Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma written by Mikael Gravers and published by Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the image of modern Myanmar/Burma tends to be couched in human rights terms - and especially of a heroic Aung San Suu Kyi opposing and oppressive military regime - in reality there are several conflicts with ethnic and religious dimensions, as well as political and ideological differences between the opposition and the ruling military regime. This is not surprising in a country where 30% of the population and much of the land area are non-Burman, and where contradictory tendencies towards regional separatism versus unitary rule have divided the people since before independence. In what is probably the most comprehensive study of Burma's ethnic minorities to date, this volume discusses the historical formation of ethnic identity and its complexities in relation to British colonial rule as well as the modern state, the present situation of military rule, and its policy of "myanmarification." Changes of identity in exile due to religious conversion are analyzed and discussed. Finally the book deals with relevant and recent anthropological and sociological theoretical discussions on the ethnic identity, boundaries, and space of all the main ethnic groups in Burma.
Download or read book Ethnic and Religious Diversity in Myanmar written by Perry Schmidt-Leukel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most comprehensive volumes on Myanmar's identity politics to date, this book discusses the entanglement of ethnic and religious identities in Myanmar and the challenges presented by its extensive ethnic-religious diversity. Religious and ethnic conjunctions are treated from historical, political, religious and ethnic minority perspectives through both case studies and overview chapters. The book addresses the thorny issue of Buddhist supremacy, Burmese nationalism and ethnic-religious hierarchy, along with reflections on Buddhist, Christian and Muslim communities. Bringing together international scholars and Burmese scholars, this book combines the perspectives of academic observers with those of political activists and religious leaders from different faiths. Through the breadth of its disciplinary approach, its focus on identity issues and its inclusion of insider and outsider perspectives, this book provides new insights into the complex religious situation of Myanmar.
Download or read book The Pa O written by Russ Christensen and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pa-O, one of Burma's many ethnic minorities, engaged in a forty-year insurgency against the government of Burma which ended in a cease-fire in 1994. This is the first book on the Pa-O in English. Drawing upon historical accounts, contemporary writing, and personal interviews, the authors present the mythological and historical background of the Pa-O in Burma and Thailand. They recount the recent political history and focus on the experiences and difficulties of one village community that was forced to relocate ten times between 1978 and 1996. Interviews provide first-hadn evidence of the difficult conditions under which the Pa-O live in Burma and Thailand.
Download or read book Burma Myanmar written by Mikael Gravers and published by ASIA Insights. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent changes in Burma/Myanmar have been called the "Burmese democratic spring." While the international media have mainly focused on the economic opportunities offered by these changes and on the doings and sayings of Aung San Suu Kyi, the reality is far more complex. The country is desperately poor, divided by ethnic and religious rivalries and continues to suffer from some of the world's most intractable military conflicts while powerful elite factions oppose reform. Where, then, is the country heading? What are the key challenges it will face? Who are likely to be the key players in the unfolding events? With contributions on topics like the political situation, international relations, ethnic and religious rivalries, and the economy, long-time observers of the situation offer insights and analysis that address these issues.
Download or read book Burma In Revolt written by Bertil Lintner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how Burma's booming drug production, insurgency, and counter-insurgency interrelate—and why the country has been unable to shake off thirty years of military rule and build a modern, democratic society.
Download or read book Bamboo People written by Mitali Perkins and published by Charlesbridge. This book was released on 2012-07-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two Burmese boys, one a Karenni refugee and the other the son of an imprisoned Burmese doctor, meet in the jungle and in order to survive they must learn to trust each other.
Download or read book Ethnic Diversity and Reconciliation written by Arend van Dorp and published by Langham Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forces of division, conflict, and fear threaten to separate us from the neighbor who does not look, act, or pray like us. However, followers of Christ are charged with embodying a unity that celebrates difference rather than fleeing from it. Ethnic Diversity and Reconciliation explores the implications of the church’s radical call to inclusive community in the context of Myanmar’s long history of ethnic conflict. Dr. Arend van Dorp outlines the theological foundations for understanding the church’s mandate as a diverse and unified missional body, while also engaging the very real challenges posed to this mandate by the cultural, religious, and historical realities faced by Christians in Myanmar. He demonstrates that while the challenges are vast, so is the potential for transformation and reconciliation when the church takes up its mantle and bears faithful witness to God’s love in a fractured world.
Download or read book Not Out of Hate written by Ma Ma Lay and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 1991-05-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not Out of Hate—published in Burmese in 1955 and set in 1939–42—was Ma Ma Lay’s fifth novel and one that further cemented her status as one of twentieth-century Burma’s foremost writers and voices for change. A journalist by trade, Lay applied her straightforward observational style with compassion and purpose to the story of Way Way, a teenage village girl whose quiet life assisting her father in his rice-brokerage business is disrupted by the arrival of U Saw Han, the cosmopolitan Burmese rice trader twenty years her senior. When she first encounters him, Way Way is entranced by his Western furnishings, servants, and mannerisms. The two marry, but before long, it becomes clear that U Saw Han’s love is a stifling one that seeks to obliterate her traditional ways. Not Out of Hate was enormously popular in Burma and went through several editions in the 1950s and 1960s. When Ohio University Press published its English translation, in 1991, it became the first significant fictional account of prewar Burma available in English since George Orwell’s Burmese Days, and provided a Burmese counterpoint to Orwell’s novel. Translated into English here for the first time, the novel is an engaging drama, finely observed work of social realism, and stirring rejection of Western cultural dominance.
Download or read book Ethnic Politics in Burma written by Ashley South and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ideas which have structured half a century of civil war in Burma, and the roles which political elites and foreign networks - from colonial missionaries to aid worker activists - have played in mediating understandings of ethnic conflict in the country. The book includes a brief overview of precolonial and colonial Burma, and the emergence ethnic identity as a politically salient characteristic. It describes the struggle for independence and the parliamentary era (1948-62), and the quarter century of military-socialist rule that followed (1962-88). The book analyses the causes, dynamics and impacts of on-going armed conflict in Burma, since the 1988 'democracy uprising' through to the 2007 'saffron revolution' (when monks and ordinary people took to the streets in protest against the military regime). There is a special focus on the plight of displaced people, and the ways in which local and international agencies have responded. The book also examines one of the most significant, but least well-understood, political developments in Burma over the last twenty years: the series of ceasefires agreed since 1989 between the military government and most armed ethnic groups. The positive and negative impacts of the ceasefires are analysed, including a study of civil society among ethnic nationality communities. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of social and political change in Burma, and a re-examination of some commonly held assumptions regarding the country, including issues of ethnicity and federalism. The book concludes with a brief Epilogue, taking account of Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma on 2 and 3 May 2008, resulting in a massive humanitarian crisis.
Download or read book Everyday Justice in Myanmar written by Helene Maria Kyed and published by Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how ordinary people in present-day Myanmar obtain justice and resolve disputes and crimes in a time of contested transition in government, politics, society, and the economy. Its empirical questions serve as a lens to analyze the wider dynamics of state making, the role of identity politics, and the constitution of authority in a country emerging from decades of military rule and civil war. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies with ordinary people's experiences to the fore, its contributions illustrate that legal pluralism exists in urban as well as rural contexts: from the cities of Yangon and Mawlamyine to the Naga hills, the Pa-O self-administered zone, the Thai refugee camps, and villages in the Karen and Mon states. In all of these places, the official state system is only one among many avenues for people seeking resolution in criminal and civil cases. Indeed, a common practice is to evade the state whenever possible. Most people prefer local and informal resolutions, and therefore the main actors consulted in everyday justice are village elders, local administrators, religious leaders, spiritual actors, and the justice systems or individual members of ethnic organizations. Prevailing are also a range of alternative understandings of (in)justice, misfortunes, and disputes that differ from those of the state-legal system. These alternatives are based on different cultural norms, religious beliefs, and forms of identification. Despite the ongoing transition in Myanmar, the long history of military rule and conflicts based on ethnic divisions continue to foster a mistrust in the state and an orientation towards 'the local' in everyday justice. The book explores these forms of state evasion and what it means more broadly for state-society relations in the current transition.
Download or read book The Hidden History of Burma Race Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century written by Thant Myint-U and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?
Download or read book History of the Shan State written by Aung Tun (U Sai) and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shan are the largest of the many national ethnic groups residing in the Union of Myanmar. After migrating from their early home in the Hwangho-Yangtze region of China, they settled in the eastern part of today's Myanmar, primarily in the Shan Plateau, around the first century AD. The Shan dominated the political stage for a few centuries, founding three historically important dynasties in the heartland of Myanmar at Pinya, Sagaing, and Inwa. Shan history then merges with that of Myanmar until after World War II and Myanmar's independence from the British, when the Shan initiated efforts to establish an autonomous state. Sai Aung Tun deftly traces the cultural and political history of the Shan people from their origins, to Myanmar independence, and up to the constitutional crisis of 1962. His work highlights particularly the political affairs of the Shan state from 1946 to 1962. He details the Second Pang Long Conference of 1947, which brought about the historic agreement of all the nationalities of Myanmar to work together for independence. He examines the significant role played by the Shan people in the debate on whether Myanmar should adopt a federal system of administration, and their efforts to draft a new constitution. He concludes with an account of the military coup of 1962, which effectively sabotaged the constitutional reform process, a stalemate that still persists today. Unique among Shan histories is the in-depth analysis of the Kuomintang incursion into the Shan States in the early 1950s, with its political, military, and economic consequences. Sai Aung Tun has amassed a substantial amount of primary materials in the text proper, including verbatim excerpts from conference interviews and speeches, as well as a rich collection of official documents, minutes, and reports in the appendixes. The historical critique of existing constitutional weaknesses will be of interest to those who advocate the drafting of a new constitution in Myanmar. The pleas for unity and goodwill among the ethnic groups, made by various leaders nearly half a century ago, will resonate with readers today. This comprehensive reference work will be an invaluable resource for all Shan scholars and Myanmar observers, and an excellent addition to any reference collection on Southeast Asia.
Download or read book Myanmar s Rohingya Conflict written by Anthony Ware and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers new analysis of the complexities of the conflict and new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable
Download or read book Language Education and Nation building written by P. Sercombe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume tracks the complex relationships between language, education and nation-building in Southeast Asia, focusing on how language policies have been used by states and governments as instruments of control, assimilation and empowerment. Leading scholars have contributed chapters each representing one of the countries in the region.
Download or read book The Politics of Federalization in Myanmar written by Dulyapak Preecharush and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the trajectory of federalization in Myanmar's political development, evaluating the attitudes of different political actors toward, and negotiation strategies for, designing federalism. It argues that three factors drive federalization in Myanmar, namely constitutionalization, conflict management, and democratization. The confluence of these forces arrived at a critical juncture in 2011, the start of Myanmar's political transition, leading to significant changes in Myanmar's federation process. By analyzing the changes and continuities in federalism building, the book charts the dynamic pathway toward Myanmar's current federalization, revealing how periods of progress and stagnation reflect varying world views and the individual strategies of prominent political actors. Offering a systematic conceptual framework on federalism in Myanmar, this will be a useful resource for students and scholars of Political Science, Comparative Politics, and Southeast Asian Politics.
Download or read book Human Rights and International Criminal Law written by Borhan Uddin Khan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-03-16 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book considers human rights approaches to crimes from a theoretical and practical perspective, analyses various crimes under international law, and examines the application, implementation and enforcement of international criminal law.
Download or read book Repossessing Shanland written by Jane M. Ferguson and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shan have been fighting since 1958 for the autonomous state in Southeast Asia they were promised. Jane M. Ferguson articulates Shanland as an ongoing project of resistance, resilience, and accommodation within Thailand and Myanmar, showing how the Shan have forged a homeland and identity during great upheaval.
