Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics


Book Description

An examination of the current political crisis in Burma, and in particular its Buddhist and socio-psychological aspects.




The Burmese Labyrinth


Book Description

In 2011, Myanmar embarked in a democratic transition from a brutal military rule that culminated four years later, when the first free election in decades saw a landslide for the party of celebrated Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, even as the international community was celebrating a new dawn, old wars were raging in the northern borderlands. A crisis was emerging in western Arakan state where the regime intensified its oppression of the vulnerable Muslim Rohingya community. By 2017, the conflict had escalated into a military onslaught against the Rohingya that provoked the most desperate refugee crisis of our times, as over 750,000 of them fled their homes to neighbouring Bangladesh. In The Burmese Labyrinth, journalist Carlos Sardia Galache gives the in depth story of the country. Burma has always been an uneasy balance between multiple ethnic groups and religions. He examines the deep roots behind the ethnic divisions that go back prior to the colonial period, and so shockingly exploded in recent times. This is a powerful portrait of a nation in perpetual conflict with itself.




Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar


Book Description

Walton explains political dynamics in Myanmar through Buddhist thought, providing a conceptual framework for understanding Myanmar's ongoing political transition.




Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement


Book Description

Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real consequences for how the oppressive military junta, in power since the early 1960s, governs the country. Drawing on more than ten years of extensive fieldwork in Burma, Ingrid Jordt explains how vipassanā meditation has brought about a change of worldview for millions of individuals, enabling them to think and act independently of the totalitarian regime. She addresses human rights as well as the relationship between politics and religion in a country in which neither the government nor the people clearly separates the two. Jordt explains how the movement has been successful in its challenge to the Burmese military dictatorship where democratically inspired resistance movements have failed. Jordt’s unsurpassed access to the centers of political and religious power in Burma becomes the reader’s opportunity to witness the political workings of one of the world’s most secretive and tyrannically ruled countries. Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement is a valuable contribution to Buddhist studies as well as anthropology, religious studies, and political science.




Demystifying Myanmar’s Transition and Political Crisis


Book Description

This book offers the assessment of Myanmar’s societal changes, development aspects, and political situation over the course of the nation’s short lived democratic transition disrupted by the coup d’état on 1 February 2021. A multitude of authors with different expertise add new dimensions of analysis to provide a foundation for any future international cooperation in Myanmar’s center and peripheries. The military’s institutionalization of its influence and control in political, economic and social affairs has negatively affected the safety, security and peace of people and their communities at the periphery. This in turn has led the people to undertake local grassroots initiatives towards securing a genuine democratic transition at the local and national level. The chapters probe into Myanmar’s transition and political crisis through in-depth discussion on the issues such as, but not limited to, state fragility, community resilience, political leadership, ethnic women’s organizations, human security, education equality, IDPs and non-state actors, ethnic community-based health organizations, the 2020 election, peace process, development issues, the coup’s destruction, and a new-born unity. The book covers an important collection of inputs from young and prominent scholars alike, offering a valuable resource for general readers, students, and practitioners. The editors present this volume as a vital collection to literature at a time of heated political crisis and societal responses on her current course since the contributors highlight the state of Myanmar by also focusing on the margins, the grassroots, and the recent coup.




The Buddhist Dead


Book Description

In its teachings, practices and institutions, Buddhism in its varied Asian forms is centrally concerned with death and the dead. This title offers a comparative investigation of this topic across the major Buddhist cultures of India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Tibet and Burma.







Ethnic Politics in Burma


Book Description

This book considers the conflict and civil war that has ravaged Burma, and considers the implications that conflict has had for Burma’s development and prospects for democratization.




The Politics of Love in Myanmar


Book Description

The Politics of Love in Myanmar offers an intimate ethnographic account of a group of LGBT activists before, during, and after Myanmar's post-2011 political transition. Lynette J. Chua explores how these activists devoted themselves to, and fell in love with, the practice of human rights and how they were able to empower queer Burmese to accept themselves, gain social belonging, and reform discriminatory legislation and law enforcement. Informed by interviews with activists from all walks of life—city dwellers, villagers, political dissidents, children of military families, wage laborers, shopkeepers, beauticians, spirit mediums, lawyers, students—Chua details the vivid particulars of the LGBT activist experience founding a movement first among exiles and migrants and then in Myanmar's cities, towns, and countryside. A distinct political and emotional culture of activism took shape, fusing shared emotions and cultural bearings with legal and political ideas about human rights. For this network of activists, human rights moved hearts and minds and crafted a transformative web of friendship, fellowship, and affection among queer Burmese. Chua's investigation provides crucial insights into the intersection of emotions and interpersonal relationships with law, rights, and social movements.




Myanmar’s Changing Political Landscape


Book Description

Myanmar has faced numerous divisions that hinder its democratization and peacebuilding processes since emerging out of decades of military dictatorship. The coup d’état in 2021 terminated Myanmar’s limited and nascent democratization under the civilian leadership of the National League for Democracy (NLD); not only did the coup regime resurface old struggles, but also created new ones. Against the backdrop of Myanmar’s changing political landscapes from military to quasi-civilian to civilian rule in 2016, and back to military rule in 2021, the book discusses the various forms of interconnected struggles, both old and new. In this process, the contributed chapters come together to highlight the changing dynamics of stakeholders, relations between agents and beneficiaries, and the generated evolutionary processes in Myanmar’s democratization and its reversal. This book brings an even mix of researchers both within and outside of Myanmar to critically discuss how different agents and their interactions, in the form of center-periphery as well as state-non-state relations, continuously shape today’s political landscape. Its interdisciplinary composition also invites readers from various backgrounds to grasp with engaged research that identifies the various challenges and addresses ways in which to facilitate change from local and international perspectives.