| 16 November – 5pm (UK time) The Cambridge South Asia Seminar 16 November, 5pm In-person Room SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT Please register using this link: Meeting Registration – Zoom Abstract: The transition to partial civilian rule in Myanmar in 2011 was meant to herald progress towards more socially-oriented governance following decades of autocratic austerity. Both successive governments, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy administration (2015-2020), instead encouraged charitable, philanthropic and private non-state actors to plug social gaps while avoiding state welfare spending. Informed by Dr. McCarthy’s forthcoming monograph (Cornell University Press, 2023) and ongoing research on hybrid social order, this presentation will consider the long durée of ‘social outsourcing’ in Myanmar: its autocratic origins in the collapse of socialism in 1988; its repercussions for post-2011 notions and practices of ‘democracy’; and the role of non-state welfare mechanisms and ideals in sustaining contemporary resistance following the February 2021 military coup. |
Burma Studies Group 