As the Deep Cuts series crosses the half-year threshold, we wanted to clarify its goals. Because its texts emerge from the Burma Studies reading history and intellectual interests of one person, they are inevitably partial. Deep Cuts has featured a lot more anthropology than art history, for instance. This runs the risk of framing what Burma Studies “is” or should be, at least to the limited extent of what is featured on this website. This is not the intention. And so this note is to encourage contributions from the community that would diversify the cuts. Please send to (soceep [at] nus.edu.sg) your ideas, hopefully with a short blurb describing the text and why it’s important, and let us know if you would like your name featured or not.

see here for the cuts, which will go to a bi-weekly format from now on. 

This week’s New Pubs features two essays from the recently released Simas: Foundations of Buddhist Religion, edited by Carbine and Davis, and then an article by Roberts on secular and religious influences on neighborhood construction in Mandalay.

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

Join members of Witness and The Rohingya Project as they officially launch their project archiving the 2017 Rohingya genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Time: 30 August 2022, 9:30pm to 10:30pm (Singapore Time)

Register here.

see here for our entire calendar of events.

François Robinne and Mandy Sadan, co-editors of a 2007 volume reappraising Edmund Leach’s Burma work, have a concluding essay that applies the concept of ‘transethnicity’ to Myanmar. They use the concept to destabilize the analytical primacy of the ethnolinguistic group through a pincer move wrought by two different scalar reorientations. First, they consider the broader social systems in which many ethnic groups interact (“transethnicity may refer to a somewhat arbitrarily defined area in which a social system exists, whatever may be the ethnic diversity of that area” (300), a reorientation which also allows them to get “below” the ethnic group to stress that often the relationships that matter “are not between ethnolinguistic subgroups, but between villagers and partners, whose exchanges and networks contribute to the establishment of social cohesion, albeit an unstable cohesion, in a multi-ethnic landscape” (304).

And it’s only 11pp long, with a map!

Robinne, François and Mandy Sadan, “Postscript: Reconsidering the dynamics of ethnicity through Foucault’s concept of ‘spaces of dispersion’” in Robinne and Sadan eds Social dynamics in the highlands of Southeast Asia: Reconsidering political systems of highland Burma by ER Leach. Brill, 2007.

See here for the PDF, and for all the other cuts.

click here to register

Since Myanmar’s military leaders staged a coup on 1 February 2021, an estimated 10,000 soldiers and police officers have defected by joining the ‘people’s side’ in opposing military rule. These defectors refuse to be complicit in the violent crackdowns and killings of civilians by the military. Arguably, the number of defectors is low compared to the estimated 300-350,000 strong Myanmar military, and so far, there are no signs that the defections have changed the military leaders’ course of action. Nonetheless, defections constitute a significant symbolic blow to the military’s internal coherence and legitimacy. Also, the degree to which defectors have organised themselves and aligned with the anti-coup, pro-democracy opposition to the military is unprecedented in Myanmar’s long history of military rule. Based on online sources, interviews and historical analysis of the Myanmar military, this presentation discusses the motivations behind as well as the obstacles to defections.

About the speaker: Helene Maria Kyed, senior researcher and research unit leader, DIIS, Copenhagen. Anthropologist by training, Helene Maria Kyed has done research on security and justice related issues in Mozambique, Swaziland, and Myanmar, focusing on theoretical questions of violence, sovereignty and legal pluralism.

The Shan Collections Fellowship is aimed at individuals from Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand.

This fellowship will be hosted by the Asian and African Collections department. The British Library holds about 3000 manuscripts from Southeast Asia, forming the largest and most significant collection of Southeast Asian manuscripts in the UK. Of these, approximately 100 manuscripts, divided between the Burmese and Thai collections, are written in Shan language and script, spanning from the 18th–19th centuries, and including some of the highlights of these collections. The Library also holds ca. 100 print publications in Shan, including early printed books from the 19th century. This Chevening British Library Fellowship is an opportunity to work closely with curatorial staff in the Library’s Southeast Asia Collections on cataloguing and researching Shan language manuscripts and print publications.

more information here.

please see the letter from Professor Justin Watkins about the imminent termination of Burmese at SOAS, and please write to SOAS here:

Dear Colleagues and friends in Burma Studies –

With concern and sadness I’m sharing the news that the post of Professor of Burmese at SOAS, University of London, has been scheduled for termination and, if things go as SOAS plans, more than a century of scholarship and research in the lanɡuaɡes and linɡuistics of Myanmar and mainland SEAsia will draw to an end in just over a month. Some very limited Burmese language teaching may continue for now, but not by me, even after 23 years of service. It is some comfort that dear ဆရာကြီး John Okell is not alive to see his legacy being dismantled.

It’s not clear why the Professor of Burmese post has been selected for removal, now that SOAS is under new leadership and recovering well from the financial meltdown of 2020. It seems particularly at odds with the ethos of SOAS to be cutting UK scholarship in Burmese at a time when Myanmar is in such an awful position, and also at odds with the founding charter of SOAS “to accept a special commitment to language scholarship relating to Asia, Africa and the Middle East.”

I call upon colleagues, former students and all those who would wish SOAS to reverse this decision to write to the Director or Deputy Director of SOAS in the most persuasive and supportive way you can, making the case for keeping the Professor of Burmese post. Do share this news with others who may wish to voice support, and feel free to email me privately for further information if you would like.

လေးစားလျက်

Justin Watkins
Professor of Burmese
SOAS, University of London

University of Sydney offers a “postgraduate research scholarship”, which we think means pre-PhD but might mean during PhD. see here for more details. Deadline in mid September

After a fairly long “summer” / monsoon hiatus, we have an event to promote! The Foreign Correspondence Club of Thailand will be hosting the following people to discuss the future for the Rohingya community in Myanmar.

Details: 7pm (Thai time), 25 August 2022, livestreamed on the FCCT Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/FCCThailand). more info: https://www.fccthai.com/events/115

Aung Kyaw Moe, advisor on Rohingya issues, National Unity Government of Myanmar, Ministry of Human Right

Shahidul Haque, Former Bangladesh foreign secretary and Bangabandhu Chair at Delhi University, India

Laetitia van den Assum, former Netherlands ambassador and member of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State (2016-17)

Chutima Sidasathian, a journalist specializing in human trafficking issues

Kingsley Abbott, director of global accountability and international justice, International Commission of Jurists and former senior legal advisor at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Moderator – Gwen Robinson, past president of the FCCT 

see here for our full calendar of events.

This week’s New Pubs features Green’s new book on Burmese silver since the colonial era; Cohen et al with a comparative look at medicine across India, Myanmar, and Thailand; and Bergès on the way cultural heritage abets peacebuliding in Rakhine state.

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