“Between Bama and Batha: Considering religious racialisation in colonial Burma”

Speaker: Matthew Venker, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University 
Date: Tuesday 26 September 2023
Time zone: 12-1pm (AEST), 8.30-9.30am MMT 

register here

Abstract

Scholarship on Myanmar, from its colonial history, to its citizenship crises, and the 2021 coup, has heretofore critically interrogated the relationship between ethno-racial identity and socio-political power. However, we have yet to address one important question: what exactly is the difference between ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ in the context of Myanmar? This dialogue proposes the utility of reading Burmese history through the analytic lens of critical race theory to identify ethnicity and race as separate, though related, social processes, each with distinct ramifications. This talk will present new research on family law litigation involving mixed Chinese-Burmese Buddhist families in the wake of the ‘British Burma Law’s Act’ (1898-1948) to make the case that racialisation in Burma is drawn along lines of religious rather than ethnic distinction, and that it has historically been drawn along highly gendered lines.

Matthew Venker  is a cultural anthropologist studying the historical intersections of race, religion, and citizenship in Burma. His dissertation, Racial Categories, Religious Distinctions: Mixed Buddhists and the Burma Laws Act 1898-1947, interrogates how British colonial structures created new categories of legal personhood that divided the colony’s Buddhist population. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2023. He is currently a Visiting Fellow with the Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.