This week we feature Benedicte Brac de la Perriere’s wonderful gem of an essay on “Lay Lay,” a pwe-sa (broker) in Yangon. Through an ethnography of Lay Lay’s life, in which she acts as a go-between for various enterprises and schemes, we learn how this ubiquitous but understudied social role functions. In the end, when Lay Lay turns to political activism, we see the similarities between economic and political pwe-sa. (And I can confirm that Lay Lay indeed became a social activist, as I actually met her in my own research on contentious politics in Myanmar!)
Izzy Rhoads likewise explores the pwe-sa in her article in the recent Kyed edited volume (see here for e-book download). Rhoads shows that pwe-sa are not simply market-facilitators, but their significant market experience and superior access to information makes them effective justice brokers as well, in which they serve as “primary arbiter[s] in housing-related dispute settlement[s]” (284).
On this theme, we will also throw a plug for Kristina Simion’s Rule of Law Intermediaries: Brokering Influence in Myanmar (Cambridge University Press, 2021). It’s a bit too soon after publication to just brazenly throw the entire PDF up on the site, so it will have to stay just a shout out. But her work also looks at the pwe-sa figure, also in the realm of the law.
Also, one last quick thing: there are a number of other gorgeous articles in this much ignored volume Burmese Lives in which Brac de la Perriere’s essay lives, so I’ve decided to upload the whole book (minus Boutry’s article, which i couldn’t get to download. See his tribute page as a consolation).
Burma Studies Group 