Date: Tuesday 4 April 2023
Timezone: 5-6pm (AEST) (UTC+10), 1.30- 2:30pm MMT (UTC+6.30)
host: Myanmar Research Centre (ANU)

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This week’s New Pubs features Khin Thazin and Campbell on how Covid/ the coup have affected Burmese migrant workers in Singapore; Simpson et al on Myanmar’s arrested environmental activism; and Thako and Waters on Karen Mother-Tongue based education on the Thai-Burma border.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

Peninsula Plaza, Singapore

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This week’s New Pubs features McCarthy’s book on non-state service provision from 1990 to the coup; a podcast on Fiskesjö’s 2021 book on the Wa, hosted by Cheesman; and Banki on transnational solidarity art vis-a-vis the Myanmar revolution.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

Date/time: Tuesday 21 March 2023, 12.30–2.00pm, Room 2.54 (APCD Boardroom, Level 2) Hedley Bull Building ANU   

Title: How Thai, and Burmese, torturers talk

Speaker: Nick Cheesman  

Abstract: In 2021, a group of anti-narcotics cops in Nakhon Sawan, Thailand suffocated a man to death with plastic bags. The torture and killing would have gone unreported but that it was captured on a video, which a lawyer posted online. The video, in which the voices of the torturers are audible, serves as a starting point for this presentation. In it I revisit Elaine Scarry’s (1985) thesis that torture is not an element of interrogation, but the opposite: interrogation is internal to the structure of torture. In torture the captive’s ground becomes increasingly physical and the torturers’ increasingly verbal. That is to say, the political dynamic of violent degradation in torture is located not in how captives speak when tortured, but in how torturers themselves talk. 

How do torturers talk? And how do answers to this question present opportunities for rethinking the relation between law, violence and political order? I address these questions by describing research on torture in Thailand conducted during 2018-19 and 2022, supplemented by data from Myanmar prior to the 2021 coup there. I argue that in Thailand and Myanmar, torturers’ talk works not to elicit facts but establish subject positions. It is pedagogical, not epistemological, concerned not with the production of knowledge but with the affirmation of the rightness of torturers’ views and practices. What is at stake is not the truthfulness of captives’ answers, but their demonstrated ability to learn and perform assigned roles in the torture situation. The task for politically engaged research on torture, among other categories of state violence, is to describe and understand the part that such pedagogies of torment play in arrangements for the domination of some people by others.  

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Meeting ID: 462 106 827 25 
Passcode: uXWmcD

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All AAS attendees are welcome to join!

Date: Saturday, March 18, 2023

Time: 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

Boston Sheraton Hotel – Riverway (5th Floor)

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This week’s New Pubs features Norén-Nilsson on civil society leadership in Southeast Asia; Banerjee on India’s connectivity projects with Myanmar after the coup; and Egreteau on the “widening of the revolutionary whirlwind.”

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

image from Egreteau’s article

Stalemate reveals the history and contemporary politics of the United Wa State Army (UWSA), Asia’s strongest insurgent army on Myanmar’s border with China. This ethnographic tale recounts how a highland group, often dismissed as rebels or narcotraffickers, maintains a relational autonomy between two powerful lowland states. The Wa polity engages rather than evades these surrounding states, yet struggles to fit into their registers of sovereignty and statehood.

More information here

expected out in June 2023

Please see the following opportunity for a fluent Burmese speaker/writer to join the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship: https://forms.gle/LAyUbxMkF7LJENuS7.

အလုပ်ခေါ်စာ – လက်ထောက်အယ်ဒီတာ၊ IJBS

သက်တမ်းကုန်ဆုံးရက် – ၃၀ ရက်နေ့ မတ်လ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်။

သိစပ်မြင်နှံ့လွတ်လပ်သော မြန်မာ့သုတေသနဂျာနယ် (https://ddec1-0-en-ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=https%3a%2f%2fijbs.online&umid=00f14dbe-bba3-4b1c-8820-722946638be5&auth=8d3ccd473d52f326e51c0f75cb32c9541898e5d5-641572c8691aabd9a0455c8c8096a66abe22e29e) သည် ဂျာနယ်နှင့် ၎င်း၏အရေးကြီးသော လုပ်ငန်းတာဝန်များကို ထောက်ပံ့ပေးရန် အယ်ဒီတာချုပ်နှင့် အတူတကွ အလုပ်တွဲလုပ်နိုင်မည့် လက်ထောက်အယ်ဒီတာတစ်ဦးကို ရှာဖွေနေပါသည်။ လျှောက်ထားသူသည် အဆင့်မြင့်ပညာရေး၊ သုတေသနနှင့် ထုတ်ဝေဖြန့်ချိရေးတို့တွင် စိတ်အားထက်သန်မှုရှိရန် လိုအပ်ပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံနှင့် နိုင်ငံသူနိုင်ငံသားများရင်ဆိုင်ရမည့် စိန်ခေါ်မှုများနှင့် အခွင့်အရေးများကို ရှေးရှုမျှော်မြင်နိုင်ရပါမည်။​

ယခုခေါ်ယူထားသော အလုပ်နေရာသည် ပျော့ပြောင်းမှုရှိပြီး၊ အဝေးမှဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်ကာ လျှောက်ထားသူ၏ နေထိုင်ရာနိုင်ငံပေါ်မူတည်ပြီး လူချင်းတွေ့ဆုံဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်မည့် အခွင့်အလမ်းများလည်း ရှိပါသည်။

This week’s New Pubs features Haosheng and Liu, who argue ASEAN has gone beyond non-interference after the coup; Fox et al on a decade of media sector reform and then collapse; and Lall with an overview of education in Myanmar.

As ever, see our Recent Publications page for all of the citations and for past weeks.

source: Robin Hood