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This volume explores the life stories of ordinary Burmese by drawing on the narratives of individual subjects and using an array of interdisciplinary approaches, covering anthropology, history, literature, ethnomusicology, economics and political science. Burma is one of the most diverse societies in Southeast Asia in terms of its ethnic composition. It has a long history of resistance from the public realm against colonial rule and post-independence regimes.
However, its isolation for decades before 1988 deprived scholars of a close look into the many faces of this society. Looking into the life stories of members of several major ethnic communities, who hail
from different occupations and are of different ages and genders, this book has a particular significance that would help reveal the multiplicities of Burma's modern history. The authors of this volume write about stories of their long-term informants, close friends, family members, or even themselves to bring out a wide range of issues relating to migration, economy, politics, religion and culture. The constituted stories jointly highlight the protagonists' survival strategies in everyday life
that demonstrate their constant courage, pain and frustration in dealing with numerous social injustices and adversities. Through these stories, we see movement of lives as well as that of Burmese
society.
This volume explores the life stories of ordinary Burmese by drawing on the narratives of individual subjects and using an array of interdisciplinary approaches, covering anthropology, history, literature, ethnomusicology, economics and political science. Burma is one of the most diverse societies in Southeast Asia in terms of its ethnic composition. It has a long history of resistance from the public realm against colonial rule and post-independence regimes.
However, its isolation for decades before 1988 deprived scholars of a close look into the many faces of this society. Looking into the life stories of members of several major ethnic communities, who hail
from different occupations and are of different ages and genders, this book has a particular significance that would help reveal the multiplicities of Burma's modern history. The authors of this volume write about stories of their long-term informants, close friends, family members, or even themselves to bring out a wide range of issues relating to migration, economy, politics, religion and culture. The constituted stories jointly highlight the protagonists' survival strategies in everyday life
that demonstrate their constant courage, pain and frustration in dealing with numerous social injustices and adversities. Through these stories, we see movement of lives as well as that of Burmese
society.
Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang
Introduction: Burmese Lives in a Divided State
I. The Specter of Hardship
1. Mandy Sadan
The Extra-ordinariness of Ordinary Lives
2. Pascal Khoo-Thwe
The Kayan Padaung Community in Phekhon
II. Negotiating with the State
3. Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière
A Woman of Mediation
4. Eric Tagliacozzo
Burmese and Muslim: Islam and the Hajj in the Sangha State
III. Ways of Escape
5. Hsin-chun Tasaw Lu
Recounting, Resistance, and Reflection: An Analysis of a Burmese
Classical Musician's Narrative
6. James C. Scott
Dr. U Tin Win, Escape Artist
IV. At Burma's Margins
7. Maxime Boutry
The Maung Aye's Legacy: Burmese and Moken Encounters in the
Southern Borderlands of Myanmar, 1987-2007
8. Wen-Chin Chang
By Sea and by Land: Stories of Two Chinese Traders
V. Ethnicity and the Self
9. Ma Thida
A Mixed Identity, a Mixed Career
10. Karin Eberhardt
A Life in Service of Change
11. Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
From the "Loyal" to the "Revolutionary" Karen: Looking at Burma's
Post-Independent Eras
Wen-Chin Chang is Associate Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica
in Taipei, Taiwan. She is a native of Tainan, Taiwan and a PhD
graduate of the University of Leuven Belgium.
Eric Tagliacozzo is Professor of History at Cornell University, and
a PhD graduate of Yale University.
Both have been working in Southeast Asian Studies for some two
decades.
Burmese Lives succeeds in adopting personal narrative -- a rarely
used methodology -- in the study of contemporary Myanmar, examining
the interactions between the narrators and the contexts in which
the narrators live, and leading readers to know more about the
multifaceted realities of Myanmar history.
*Kai Chen, Political Studies Review*
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