This week we feature a special book, at least to your Deep Cuts stenographer, one I proselytize first and foremost to all new Burma Studies students. It is Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung’s Behind the Teak Curtain (2004), a long-term, patient, and granular study of agrarian political economy and rural relations when people said that that kind of research simply could not be done. It probes localized understandings of “democracy” and governance and how maneuver and survival were possible under rapacious authoritarianism. Given the impressive “Anyatha Revolution” within the revolution occurring right now, it particularly warrants another look.
Burma Studies Group 