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The Politics of Everyday Life in Twenty-First Century Myanmar1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2011

Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
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Abstract

Myanmar has been conventionally regarded as one of the most repressive countries in the world. As a result, many scholars, journalists, and human rights organizations understandably focus their attention on the draconian policies of the Myanmarese military regime. When the country makes headlines, the story of events taking place is typically framed in terms of state oppression and direct popular opposition. This leads to a restrictive view of the “political” dimensions of life in Myanmar, an approach to the topic that deals with only a small number of admittedly important subjects: authoritarian governance, organized efforts to bring about systemic change, and the fate of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate whose latest release from house arrest put Myanmarese politics back in the headlines in November 2010. What is left out of the picture—or given only glancing attention—are a host of social, economic, and cultural issues that also have political dimensions and implications, namely the efforts by Myanmarese citizens to carve out space for independent, meaningful action on a personal level. These actions, which have political aspects but stop short of being outright forms of dissent, will be my focus in this essay.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 641 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2011

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References

2 Some of the most influential works in the vein that interests me here have been done by James C. Scott; see, for example, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Other important studies include Tsai, Kellee, Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), see esp. p. 12)Google Scholar; and Tripp, Aili Mari, Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar, see esp. p. xv; and Kerkvliet, Ben, The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 Tsai (2007), p. 12; Tripp (1997), p. xv.

4 Kerkvliet (2005); his comments echo a classic definition of politics as a matter of who gets what resources, in what proportion, when, how the distribution is done, and with what justifications; see also Leftwich, Adrian, ed., What Is politics? An Activity and its Study (Polity Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

5 Kyemon, July 4, 2008, 4. In Myanmar language.

6 Weekly Eleven, July 8, 2008, 12.

7 Myanmar Times, January 25–31, 2008, 9. In Myanmar language. As of 2009 there were approximately 1,150 kyats per dollar at the market exchange rate.

8 Myanmar Times, January 25–31, 2008, 9. In Myanmar language.

9 Myanmar Times, May 8–14, 2009, 7.

10 Weekly Eleven, July 8, 2008. One driver told the Myanmar Times that he usually bring home about 5,000 kyats per day (5 USD); but there are also days when he has to pay for his taxi rental out of his own pocket.

11 Myanmar Times, January 25–31, 2008.

12 Myanmar Times, May 8–14, May 2009.

13 For instance, high-ranking government officials or university department heads received about 60 gallons petroleum and additional amounts of natural gas per month free of charge to operate government-owned cars for official purposes.

14 In 2010, the government tried to sell these impounded cars to the public through auction, thereby driving down the prices of automobiles in Myanmar. Furthermore, more domestically produced cars are available, and Chinese imports have increased and are permissible, reducing the profits for black market operations.

15 Weekly Eleven, August 5, 2009, 7.

16 Amidst poverty illegal lottery flourishes in Myanmar, One World South Asia, 21 July 2009, accessed August 3, 2009, http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/amidst-poverty-illegal-lottery-flourishes-in-myanmar.

17 Myanmar Times, January 11–17, 2008, 25.

18 The influence of Buddhist religious practices (which are mixed with local cultural practices) and supernaturalism on the lives and activities of Myanmarese is fully discussed by Manning Nash and Melford Spiro, who conducted anthropological studies in villages in Myanmar in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

19 Myanmar Times, January 11–17, 2008, 25.

20 The hierarchy of meritorious acts of self-sacrifice aimed at earning kutho or merit in Myanmarese Buddhist society runs as follows: (1) building pagodas, (2) sponsoring a novice monk, (3) building a monastery and donating it to a monk, (4) donating a well or bell to a monastery, (5) feeding a group of monks, (6) feeding and giving alms to individual monks, and (7) feeding and giving hospitality to laymen. Nash, ManningThe Golden Road to Modernity, (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar see esp. p. 114).