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The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in Myanmar's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Lynette J. Chua
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Abstract

This article examines how activists build a movement for sexual orientation and gender identity minorities in Myanmar, a country that is known for violent suppression of protests and is undergoing political reform. Based on original fieldwork, it finds that activists deploy a strategy of “vernacular mobilization of human rights” to persuade others to join their cause despite the risks to personal safety and to get around political constraints on collective organizing. Conceptualized at the intersection of the cultural study of human rights and social movements scholarship, “vernacular mobilization of human rights” theorizes the relationship between vernacularization—the translation and local adaptation of human rights—and movement micromobilization, specifying how the former unfolds as collective action framing processes. Through vernacularization activities, such as human rights workshops, movement leaders reframe grievances and shift the attribution of blame to empower and recruit new activists. Furthermore, with these framing processes, they generate a political community with a collective identity and social networks that they use to continue expanding the movement. The article enriches debates about the implications of implementing human rights and understandings of the relationship between human rights and movement mobilization, especially under repressive or uncertain political conditions.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 299 - 332
Copyright
© 2015 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Funding was provided by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant (WBS No. R-241-000-118-646), National University of Singapore. I thank Catherine Albiston, Nick Cheesman, Melissa Crouch, Prasenjit Duara, David Engel, David Gilbert, Andrew Harding, Elaine Ho, Mark Massoud, Michael McCann, Calvin Morrill, Michael Musheno, Eugene Quah, Rachel Stern, the editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as the audiences at the 2014 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting and the Centre for the Study of Law and Society, University of California-Berkeley, where earlier versions of this article were presented. I also thank assistants Naw Mar Moora, Khine Khine Zin, Shaun Kang, Koh Wei Jie, Jannelle Lau, Phua Jun Han, Maria Acton Thomas, U Kyaw Maung, Intan Wirayadi, and Yeo Sam Jay. Most of all, I am grateful to the study informants.

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