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Deep Cuts #15 – Gender in Burmese Politics (2 May)

Given the way that women have been at the forefront of the revolution, and that feminine power has been weaponized in interesting ways in the htamein protests, the intersection of gender and politics is a particularly relevant topic today. With apologies to the many other important texts on gender in Myanmar that we hope to get to at some point, we give you Spiro’s hard-to-find chapter on a village perspective on the danger of women’s sexuality, one we counterpoise with Chie Ikeya’s exploration of P Monin’s progressive (if bourgeois) ideas about sex. We have Tharaphi Than’s book on women in Burma, one that examines a number of interesting political positions held by women across history, including the role of woman soldiers; Jenny Hedström’s more recent work reveals how Kachin women provide emotional, physical, and material labour to support their autonomy efforts. Finally, Chu May Paing argues that Buddhist nationalist desires are mediated through the female body and its reproductive potential. And a bonus: for a related text that features women’s voices in political revolution, see our very first Deep Cuts, here.

Check here for the PDFs.

Announcement: New Co-Chair Htet Min Lwin elected

We have the results of the BSG election. Please congratulate Htet Lwin (Co-Chair) and Mu Lung Hsu (re-elected as Secretary)! 

For the Co-Chairship, it was basically a tie, and Elliott Prasse-Freeman stepped down to allow others to participate and focus on communications (website). We are grateful for Elliott’s service to the BSG over the past three years and appreciate his willingness to continue to provide publication updates. 

The BSG hopes to move forward this year with our extant initiatives, which include:

1. Burmese language sources and translation of our website. 

2.  Selecting and sponsoring a panel for AAS 2023 in Boston. 

3. Supporting scholars and students at risk.

4. Enhancing accessibility and inclusivity in Burma Studies. 

If you have any ideas for initiatives that the BSG should undertake, please feel free to contact (Tani.Sebro@Humboldt.edu) and Htet Min Lwin (hmlwin@yorku.ca). 

Deep Cuts #14 – ပွဲစား studies

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).

see here for PDFs.