Justine Chambers is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her postdoctoral research is part of a large 5-year study funded by the Danish Consultative Research Committee for Development Research, exploring the interplay between climate change actions, conflict and peacebuilding in Myanmar. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University and the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. She has more than ten years experience researching and writing on Myanmar, with a focus on moral identity, ethno-national conflict and everyday experiences of climate uncertainty. Chambers first book, Pursuing Morality: Buddhism and Everyday Ethics in Southeastern Myanmar (National University of Singapore Press, 2024) adds an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary Plong Karen Buddhist lives in Myanmar’s southeast. Her work has also appeared in The Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology, The Journal of Contemporary Asia, The Journal of Burma Studies and Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues. She has also co-edited three volumes for the ANU’s Myanmar Update series, with the latest Myanmar in Crisis: Living with the Pandemic and the Coup published in July 2023 by the ISEAS-Yusok Ishak Institute in Singapore. Chambers has also worked as a research consultant on issues related to the conflict-climate nexus, customary land rights and everyday justice.
Myanmar is in a protracted revolutionary situation. State military authority has been greatly wea... more Myanmar is in a protracted revolutionary situation. State military authority has been greatly weakened but has not collapsed in the face of an array of armed and unarmed forces, new and established, which have fought against the junta that seized power in 2021. What forms of solidarity have contributed to the making of a revolutionary situation in Myanmar? How have they been sustained? Where and why has solidarity been hindered or broken? These questions animate the contributions to this Special Issue. To introduce them, this article explains the adoption of “revolution” as a category to describe and interpret events in Myanmar since the military coup. It does this by juxtaposing the period of transition in the 2010s, and interpretations of it, with the post-coup situation. It argues that as the transition paradigm became commonsense, it constrained understanding about happenings in Myanmar. Everything was debated in reference to an anticipated future state. Against that way of proceeding, the article advocates for description and interpretation of the revolutionary situation that turns on its radical contingency and eventfulness.
Myanmar’s Spring Revolution has been built around the actions and voices of what is often referre... more Myanmar’s Spring Revolution has been built around the actions and voices of what is often referred to as “Generation Z.” Beginning with widespread creative acts of protest, the growth of a powerful civil disobedience movement and violent resistance in the form of People’s Defence Forces, Myanmar’s younger generation have galvanised the country-wide revolution against the leaders of the 2021 military coup. Much of the literature theorising revolutions emphasises their rupture-like qualities and treats revolutionary events as the fundamental unit of analysis. Against this way of proceeding, building from anthropological debates this article makes a case for understanding how young people experience and live with revolution. Drawing on the experiences of young revolutionaries in Karen State, the article highlights the importance of understanding revolutions from below
The overall objective of this meta-study is to synthesise and connect lessons and results from de... more The overall objective of this meta-study is to synthesise and connect lessons and results from development research projects (FFU projects) into a more coherent body of knowledge on the intersection between climate change, insecurity, and conflicts. It combines emerging insights from eight Danida-funded projects, which includes research in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Somaliland and Tanzania. As a collective body of work, research from the selected projects shows that climate change is not a causal instigator of conflict, but feeds into existing dynamics and historical tensions. This includes, for example, historical and contemporary land alienation laws, policies and frameworks, which increase tensions over diminishing resources. The meta-study concludes, with a list of key recommendations to support tailored and adaptive climate change programming in conflict affected states.
This policy brief investigates opportunities and challenges for upgrading climate change support ... more This policy brief investigates opportunities and challenges for upgrading climate change support and financing to fragile and conflict-affected states as part of the global ‘climate, peace and security’ agenda. Drawing on desk-based research of academic publications, aid agency reports, media sources, independent research and expert interviews with researchers, analysts and policy makers, we argue that the urgency of the climate crisis necessitates a rethinking of global climate financing in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. We employ a comparative case study approach and focus on Myanmar and Somalia to illustrate the opportunities and challenges for climate programming in fragile and conflict affected states. We analyse how the current model of climate financing has failed to reach vulnerable populations and contexts experiencing the gravest effects of climate change. We argue that a new approach to climate financing is needed to channel funds where they are needed most, through a dedicated funding body which creates clearer pathways for channelling funding to the local level, including in areas controlled by non-state armed groups.
With the Myanmar military junta excluded from COP28, the UN needs to explore alternatives to stat... more With the Myanmar military junta excluded from COP28, the UN needs to explore alternatives to state attendance – or risk sidelining and underfunding vulnerable, conflict-affected countries
Since the early days of the 2021 Spring Revolution, young women have been at the center of many o... more Since the early days of the 2021 Spring Revolution, young women have been at the center of many of the protests against Myanmar's military coup. Women in Myanmar are traditionally viewed as mothers, carers, and wives whose roles mostly belong to the domestic sphere. However, the political landscape shift since the 1 February 2021 coup has galvanized young women to the forefront of the pro-democracy movement, finding new and creative ways to demand an end to both the military dictatorship and the patriarchy. This article examines the role of young women within Myanmar's Spring Revolution and how this upends traditional views of women as passive and domestic carers. It draws on postcolonial and intersectional theories that question assumptions of women's uniform (disadvantaged) position and asks how gender intersects with age, race, and class to mediate social status. This article also reflects on some of the broader shifts in gendered and generational roles and identities that have taken place in Myanmar over the last ten years, which provide possibilities for solidarity and positive change in a future federal democratic union.
Violent conflict and state oppression in Myanmar demonstrates the importance of placing conflict ... more Violent conflict and state oppression in Myanmar demonstrates the importance of placing conflict analysis and people-centred approaches at the centre of international programming on climate change and environmental protection.
Between 2011 and 2020 Myanmar experienced significant social and political changes as a result of... more Between 2011 and 2020 Myanmar experienced significant social and political changes as a result of a series of reforms introduced by the former military junta. In this article I examine how the broadening of personal hopes and aspirations through new community-based English educational sites during this period influenced young people’s understandings of eudaimonic wellbeing. Teleological theories of eudaimonia often imply a degree of coherence in conceptions of the self, virtue and human flourishing. Drawing from recent work in anthropology, I argue that conflicting frameworks of virtue ethics provide collective meaning and help to orient everyday life for different people in distinctive ways. Through the lives of young Karen Buddhists in southeastern Myanmar, I show that there are complex and non-linear understandings of virtue that people draw upon in their deliberations about how to pursue possible eudaimonic futures.
In post-dictatorship Myanmar, authority rests uncertainly on a host of proliferating appeals to m... more In post-dictatorship Myanmar, authority rests uncertainly on a host of proliferating appeals to morality. It depends on authorities’ enactment of moral claims. The claims are not uniform. Nor are the authorities that make them self-evident. For both these reasons, this article foregrounds these moral authorities in its discussion of authority. It asks how religious beliefs and cultural norms inform authoritative work in Myanmar today, and what practices people adopt when relating to moral authorities. Pointing to the articles in this special section, it stresses the variability of moral authority, and the diversity of encounters with it in towns, villages and armed groups’ enclaves. The recent ethical turn in anthropology, it suggests, can inform research on moral authorities by drawing out the multiple and seemingly contradictory ways that people come to know and relate to them. In so doing, it invites ethical questions about the study of moral authorities and their relationship to violence in Myanmar, particularly in light of the massive atrocities visited on Muslims in Rakhine State, and widespread anti-Muslim sentiment across the country.
This article considers the role that armed Plong (Pwo) Karen Buddhist strongmen play as moral aut... more This article considers the role that armed Plong (Pwo) Karen Buddhist strongmen play as moral authorities in their home communities, rather than their coercive and extractive qualities. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Hpa-an district, Karen State, it demonstrates that their ability to act as moral authorities in their home communities is embedded in elaborate social notions of interdependency. These are related to the specific formation of Karen personhood and the importance of being ‘faithful’ (in Plong Karen, thout kyar) to each other. In describing how one strongman and his extractive debt relations are configured according to Plong Karen social ethics, the article demonstrates that a core feature of their moral authority is interwoven in a Buddhist cosmological understanding of moral leadership and the public performance of merit-making activities. It argues that the use of public performances of morality through donation ceremonies play a powerful role in mitigating the ways in which illicit economic activities and extractive debt relations are regarded as incommensurate with Plong Karen values.
This report provides an in-depth understanding of customary land dispute
resolution in Kayin Stat... more This report provides an in-depth understanding of customary land dispute resolution in Kayin State, Eastern Bago Region and Shan State and its interaction with the formal statutory Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar system. A participatory community-based research approach was used to understand customary practices concerning land, including how land title is defined, enforced and how land disputes are contested, negotiated and resolved at the community level.
Based on the perceptions of local people and village leaders in the three research sites, the report identifies current practices as well as prior work on this topic in Myanmar and seeks to identify ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms and practices used by communities in ethnic nationality areas with a view to informing policy and programming on restitution. Key to this analysis is the question of what a genuine restitution process might look like in Myanmar and how customary practices might be integrated into it. Furthermore, if a genuine restitution process was established, what realistic capacity is there to integrate customary dispute mechanisms and authorities into it.
This paper explores student attitudes toward volunteering in the context of university-led buildi... more This paper explores student attitudes toward volunteering in the context of university-led building development programs, raising questions about the practice of volunteering and its contribution to community development. Focusing on students undertaking tertiary education in Western countries, this literature-based study firstly explores the perceptions and motivations behind volunteering, and secondly discusses its developmental impact on lowincome communities.
Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar’s southeast th... more Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar’s southeast through a unique ethnographic focus on Buddhist Plong (Pwo) Karen. Based on extensive in-depth fieldwork in the small city of Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Chambers shines new light on Plong Buddhists' lives and the multiple ways they broker, traverse, enact, cultivate, defend and pursue moral lives.
This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the “moral turn”. Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravāda practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent, in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life will engage readers interested in Myanmar, Buddhism, and moral anthropology, offering a deeply human portrait about an area of the world that remains largely defined by conflict and now military dictatorship.
Myanmar is in a protracted revolutionary situation. State military authority has been greatly wea... more Myanmar is in a protracted revolutionary situation. State military authority has been greatly weakened but has not collapsed in the face of an array of armed and unarmed forces, new and established, which have fought against the junta that seized power in 2021. What forms of solidarity have contributed to the making of a revolutionary situation in Myanmar? How have they been sustained? Where and why has solidarity been hindered or broken? These questions animate the contributions to this Special Issue. To introduce them, this article explains the adoption of “revolution” as a category to describe and interpret events in Myanmar since the military coup. It does this by juxtaposing the period of transition in the 2010s, and interpretations of it, with the post-coup situation. It argues that as the transition paradigm became commonsense, it constrained understanding about happenings in Myanmar. Everything was debated in reference to an anticipated future state. Against that way of proceeding, the article advocates for description and interpretation of the revolutionary situation that turns on its radical contingency and eventfulness.
Myanmar’s Spring Revolution has been built around the actions and voices of what is often referre... more Myanmar’s Spring Revolution has been built around the actions and voices of what is often referred to as “Generation Z.” Beginning with widespread creative acts of protest, the growth of a powerful civil disobedience movement and violent resistance in the form of People’s Defence Forces, Myanmar’s younger generation have galvanised the country-wide revolution against the leaders of the 2021 military coup. Much of the literature theorising revolutions emphasises their rupture-like qualities and treats revolutionary events as the fundamental unit of analysis. Against this way of proceeding, building from anthropological debates this article makes a case for understanding how young people experience and live with revolution. Drawing on the experiences of young revolutionaries in Karen State, the article highlights the importance of understanding revolutions from below
The overall objective of this meta-study is to synthesise and connect lessons and results from de... more The overall objective of this meta-study is to synthesise and connect lessons and results from development research projects (FFU projects) into a more coherent body of knowledge on the intersection between climate change, insecurity, and conflicts. It combines emerging insights from eight Danida-funded projects, which includes research in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Myanmar, Somaliland and Tanzania. As a collective body of work, research from the selected projects shows that climate change is not a causal instigator of conflict, but feeds into existing dynamics and historical tensions. This includes, for example, historical and contemporary land alienation laws, policies and frameworks, which increase tensions over diminishing resources. The meta-study concludes, with a list of key recommendations to support tailored and adaptive climate change programming in conflict affected states.
This policy brief investigates opportunities and challenges for upgrading climate change support ... more This policy brief investigates opportunities and challenges for upgrading climate change support and financing to fragile and conflict-affected states as part of the global ‘climate, peace and security’ agenda. Drawing on desk-based research of academic publications, aid agency reports, media sources, independent research and expert interviews with researchers, analysts and policy makers, we argue that the urgency of the climate crisis necessitates a rethinking of global climate financing in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. We employ a comparative case study approach and focus on Myanmar and Somalia to illustrate the opportunities and challenges for climate programming in fragile and conflict affected states. We analyse how the current model of climate financing has failed to reach vulnerable populations and contexts experiencing the gravest effects of climate change. We argue that a new approach to climate financing is needed to channel funds where they are needed most, through a dedicated funding body which creates clearer pathways for channelling funding to the local level, including in areas controlled by non-state armed groups.
With the Myanmar military junta excluded from COP28, the UN needs to explore alternatives to stat... more With the Myanmar military junta excluded from COP28, the UN needs to explore alternatives to state attendance – or risk sidelining and underfunding vulnerable, conflict-affected countries
Since the early days of the 2021 Spring Revolution, young women have been at the center of many o... more Since the early days of the 2021 Spring Revolution, young women have been at the center of many of the protests against Myanmar's military coup. Women in Myanmar are traditionally viewed as mothers, carers, and wives whose roles mostly belong to the domestic sphere. However, the political landscape shift since the 1 February 2021 coup has galvanized young women to the forefront of the pro-democracy movement, finding new and creative ways to demand an end to both the military dictatorship and the patriarchy. This article examines the role of young women within Myanmar's Spring Revolution and how this upends traditional views of women as passive and domestic carers. It draws on postcolonial and intersectional theories that question assumptions of women's uniform (disadvantaged) position and asks how gender intersects with age, race, and class to mediate social status. This article also reflects on some of the broader shifts in gendered and generational roles and identities that have taken place in Myanmar over the last ten years, which provide possibilities for solidarity and positive change in a future federal democratic union.
Violent conflict and state oppression in Myanmar demonstrates the importance of placing conflict ... more Violent conflict and state oppression in Myanmar demonstrates the importance of placing conflict analysis and people-centred approaches at the centre of international programming on climate change and environmental protection.
Between 2011 and 2020 Myanmar experienced significant social and political changes as a result of... more Between 2011 and 2020 Myanmar experienced significant social and political changes as a result of a series of reforms introduced by the former military junta. In this article I examine how the broadening of personal hopes and aspirations through new community-based English educational sites during this period influenced young people’s understandings of eudaimonic wellbeing. Teleological theories of eudaimonia often imply a degree of coherence in conceptions of the self, virtue and human flourishing. Drawing from recent work in anthropology, I argue that conflicting frameworks of virtue ethics provide collective meaning and help to orient everyday life for different people in distinctive ways. Through the lives of young Karen Buddhists in southeastern Myanmar, I show that there are complex and non-linear understandings of virtue that people draw upon in their deliberations about how to pursue possible eudaimonic futures.
In post-dictatorship Myanmar, authority rests uncertainly on a host of proliferating appeals to m... more In post-dictatorship Myanmar, authority rests uncertainly on a host of proliferating appeals to morality. It depends on authorities’ enactment of moral claims. The claims are not uniform. Nor are the authorities that make them self-evident. For both these reasons, this article foregrounds these moral authorities in its discussion of authority. It asks how religious beliefs and cultural norms inform authoritative work in Myanmar today, and what practices people adopt when relating to moral authorities. Pointing to the articles in this special section, it stresses the variability of moral authority, and the diversity of encounters with it in towns, villages and armed groups’ enclaves. The recent ethical turn in anthropology, it suggests, can inform research on moral authorities by drawing out the multiple and seemingly contradictory ways that people come to know and relate to them. In so doing, it invites ethical questions about the study of moral authorities and their relationship to violence in Myanmar, particularly in light of the massive atrocities visited on Muslims in Rakhine State, and widespread anti-Muslim sentiment across the country.
This article considers the role that armed Plong (Pwo) Karen Buddhist strongmen play as moral aut... more This article considers the role that armed Plong (Pwo) Karen Buddhist strongmen play as moral authorities in their home communities, rather than their coercive and extractive qualities. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Hpa-an district, Karen State, it demonstrates that their ability to act as moral authorities in their home communities is embedded in elaborate social notions of interdependency. These are related to the specific formation of Karen personhood and the importance of being ‘faithful’ (in Plong Karen, thout kyar) to each other. In describing how one strongman and his extractive debt relations are configured according to Plong Karen social ethics, the article demonstrates that a core feature of their moral authority is interwoven in a Buddhist cosmological understanding of moral leadership and the public performance of merit-making activities. It argues that the use of public performances of morality through donation ceremonies play a powerful role in mitigating the ways in which illicit economic activities and extractive debt relations are regarded as incommensurate with Plong Karen values.
This report provides an in-depth understanding of customary land dispute
resolution in Kayin Stat... more This report provides an in-depth understanding of customary land dispute resolution in Kayin State, Eastern Bago Region and Shan State and its interaction with the formal statutory Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar system. A participatory community-based research approach was used to understand customary practices concerning land, including how land title is defined, enforced and how land disputes are contested, negotiated and resolved at the community level.
Based on the perceptions of local people and village leaders in the three research sites, the report identifies current practices as well as prior work on this topic in Myanmar and seeks to identify ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms and practices used by communities in ethnic nationality areas with a view to informing policy and programming on restitution. Key to this analysis is the question of what a genuine restitution process might look like in Myanmar and how customary practices might be integrated into it. Furthermore, if a genuine restitution process was established, what realistic capacity is there to integrate customary dispute mechanisms and authorities into it.
This paper explores student attitudes toward volunteering in the context of university-led buildi... more This paper explores student attitudes toward volunteering in the context of university-led building development programs, raising questions about the practice of volunteering and its contribution to community development. Focusing on students undertaking tertiary education in Western countries, this literature-based study firstly explores the perceptions and motivations behind volunteering, and secondly discusses its developmental impact on lowincome communities.
Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar’s southeast th... more Pursuing Morality is an in-depth and fascinating study of ordinary life in Myanmar’s southeast through a unique ethnographic focus on Buddhist Plong (Pwo) Karen. Based on extensive in-depth fieldwork in the small city of Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Chambers shines new light on Plong Buddhists' lives and the multiple ways they broker, traverse, enact, cultivate, defend and pursue moral lives.
This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the “moral turn”. Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravāda practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent, in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life will engage readers interested in Myanmar, Buddhism, and moral anthropology, offering a deeply human portrait about an area of the world that remains largely defined by conflict and now military dictatorship.
Myanmar in Crisis: Living with the Pandemic and the Coup, 2023
Myanmar in Crisis brings together scholars from across the social sciences to analyse the dual cr... more Myanmar in Crisis brings together scholars from across the social sciences to analyse the dual crises of COVID-19 and the 2021 military coup. All of the essays address one of four themes around the concept of crisis: society in crisis, a state in crisis, an economy in crisis, and international relations in crisis. Several authors examine the contested nature of state authority in the post-coup revolutionary context, including the emergence of new governance dynamics; others discuss heterogenous forms of resistance and the potential for building a more inclusive, just, and tolerant society in the future of Myanmar. The volume also explores the economic crisis caused by the pandemic and the coup and its devastating effects on people's lives and livelihoods: the authors provide a deep dive into the impacts of restrictive COVID-19 prevention measures on local communities, the growing livelihoods crisis since the coup, and the impacts of both crises on foreign trade and investment. Scaling up from that local perspective, the book also looks at Myanmar’s history of foreign relations, the response of the international community to the coup and the challenges faced by foreign governments and regional bodies in navigating the deteriorating political situation. Held together, the volume highlights the ongoing state of crisis in Myanmar, its impact on society and the possibilities for recovery and reform, amidst a powerful new revolutionary movement. Beyond providing crucial insights to Southeast Asian area specialists, the book offers deep insights into the way that multiple crises interact, amplify one another, and open up possibilities for hope amidst tragedy.
Since 2011 Myanmar has experienced many changes to its social, political and economic landscape. ... more Since 2011 Myanmar has experienced many changes to its social, political and economic landscape. The formation of a new government in 2016, led by the National League for Democracy, was a crucially important milestone in the country’s transition to a more inclusive form of governance. And yet, for many people everyday struggles remain unchanged, and have often worsened in recent years. Key economic, social and political reforms are stalled, conflict persists and longstanding issues of citizenship and belonging remain.
The wide-ranging, myriad and multiple challenges of Living with Myanmar is the subject of this volume. Following the Myanmar Update series tradition, each of the authors offers a different perspective on the sociopolitical and economic mutations occurring in the country and the challenges that still remain. The book is divided into six sections and covers critical issues ranging from gender equality and identity politics, to agrarian reform and the representative role of parliament. Collectively, these voices raise key questions concerning the institutional legacies of military rule and their ongoing role in subverting the country’s reform process. However, they also offer insights into the creative and productive ways that Myanmar’s activists, civil society, parliamentarians, bureaucrats and everyday people attempt to engage with and reform those legacies.
Introductory chapter of "Myanmar Transformed? People, Places and Politics", Justine Chambers, Ger... more Introductory chapter of "Myanmar Transformed? People, Places and Politics", Justine Chambers, Gerard McCarthy, Nicholas Farrelly and Chit Win eds (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018), 3-22.
Edited by Justine Chambers, Gerard McCarthy, Nicholas Farrelly and Chit Win.
The triumph of Au... more Edited by Justine Chambers, Gerard McCarthy, Nicholas Farrelly and Chit Win.
The triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the 2015 election was supposed to mark the consolidation of a reformist trajectory for Myanmar society. What has followed has not proved so straightforward. This book takes stock of the mutations, continuities and fractures at the heart of today’s political and economic transformations. We ask: What has changed under a democratically elected government? Where are the obstacles to reform? And is there scope to foster a more prosperous and inclusive Myanmar? With the peace process faltering, over 1 million people displaced by recent violence, and ongoing army dominance in key areas of decision-making, the chapters in this volume identify areas of possible reform within the constraints of Myanmar’s hybrid civil–military governance arrangements.
This latest volume in the Myanmar Update Series from the Australian National University continues a long tradition of intense, critical engagement with political, economic and social questions in one of Southeast Asia’s most complicated countries. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, the 13 chapters of Myanmar Transformed? offer new and alternative ways to understand Myanmar and its people.
As Myanmar moves towards economic collapse, analysts are speculating on the possibilities of a ci... more As Myanmar moves towards economic collapse, analysts are speculating on the possibilities of a civil war and state failure, prompting comparisons that Myanmar could be facing a humanitarian crisis not unlike Syria’s. While these comparisons do not match the facts on the ground, the situation now facing Myanmar demands a more critical response from the international community.
How ordinary citizens stepped into the breach and responded to the Myanmar's worst disaster since... more How ordinary citizens stepped into the breach and responded to the Myanmar's worst disaster since Cyclone Nargis.
After decades of ethno-national conflict, military rule and economic stagnation, Karen people in ... more After decades of ethno-national conflict, military rule and economic stagnation, Karen people in south-eastern Myanmar are experiencing momentous social, political and cultural change. My thesis contends with questions of morality and goodness at the forefront of this experience. Drawing on sixteen months of participant observation in Hpa-an and its surrounding towns and villages, my thesis offers an insight into the complex and modernising worlds of Plong Karen people and the multiple ways they understand and pursue good or moral lives. In this seminar I discuss the meanings, myths, and embodied performance of Buddhist Plong Karen morality and the ways these shape personhood and subjectivity in contemporary Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Myanmar. My research adds to the growing anthropological literature on ethics and morality, especially the relationship between what what Durkheim calls “moral facts” and the human capacity for creativity, freedom or moral agency (Keane 2015; Laidlaw 2002, 2014; Lambek 2015, 2010). I focus particularly on contradictions and disjuncture in moral frameworks in order to expose the creative and often paradoxical ways that people navigate everyday life. As I highlight, the increasingly ambiguous and fragmented socio-moral worlds within which Karen people now find themselves are producing new cultural movements, moral subjectivitities and imaginings of a moral future.
Domains of ethics and morality are deeply embedded in a complex array of norms, values, historica... more Domains of ethics and morality are deeply embedded in a complex array of norms, values, historical experiences and social institutions. In discussing the recent interest in these subjects, Sherry Ortner calls for anthropologists to position their work as being “in active interaction” with “larger contexts” of power and inequality rather than in opposition to those aspects of social life (2016: 65). This paper examines local systems and hierarchies of morality in and around Hpa-an, Karen state, Myanmar and how these come to shape and inform local values and the boundaries around what is ‘good’ and moral within a Buddhist cosmological framework and social reproduction at large. Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2015-2016, this paper demonstrates the significant degree of moral flexibility and contingency within Karen Buddhist peoples’ lives as they navigate Hpa-an's numerous overlapping and competing social, moral and political authorities. The paper concludes with observations about the socially-situated nature of morality and wider debates within anthropology surrounding the question of ‘ethics’ in what is an increasingly globalised and changing world.
People’s understandings of themselves and the future always contain a dimension of hope. This pap... more People’s understandings of themselves and the future always contain a dimension of hope. This paper seeks to theorise how young Karen people perceive and imagine their futures but also to unravel the potentialities of what is made possible for young people in this particular ‘moment’ of Myanmar’s history (Moore 2011: 22). In doing so, I unveil how some of the changes in Myanmar have impacted youth hopes and identity in a way that views them as participating in and perhaps accelerating technical adaptation to the changing economic, social and political context. Further to this, I extend Miyazaki’s (2004) concern with hope as a "method of knowledge production" and examine how the latest social and environmental transformations are changing young people’s aspirations for the future, specifically focusing on the increasing migration to Hpa-an for educational opportunities, new forms of knowledge and, generally, an improvement in living conditions.
After decades of ethno-national conflict, military rule and economic stagnation, Karen people in ... more After decades of ethno-national conflict, military rule and economic stagnation, Karen people in south-eastern Myanmar are experiencing momentous social and cultural change. Some of the most significant of these changes affect young people. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Hpa-an, the capital of eastern Karen State and former site of one of the most enduring civil conflicts in the world, this paper offers an introduction to the lives of young Plong Karen people and the multiple moral worlds they attempt to navigate as they come of age.In this seminar, I explore individual experiences of being a rural Karen youth in Hpa-an, and examine the different moral spaces young Karen people traverse in the constitution of selfhood and moral subjectivity.
Coming of age in a historical moment mediated by increasingly sophisticated media, economic change, and also deepening social inequalities, young people in Hpa-an are subject to a number of competing visions. On the one hand their identity is intertwined in strong rural social norms, customs and a celebration of ‘traditional’ notions of Karen identity. On the other hand, they are drawn into urban, transnational and mediatised global spheres where value aspirations that emphasize individuality and personal transformation are tinged with an aura of possibility and danger. In Hpa-an, as in Myanmar more broadly, a Buddhist religious cosmological imaginary also heavily frames local culture and subject formation, colouring most aspects of quotidian social life.
In documenting the life choices, actions, and socio-moral evaluations of one Karen university student, I draw on the burgeoning literature from the anthropology of moralities (eg Laidlaw 2002, Robbins 2004, Heintz 2009) to demonstrate how young people are embracing new practices and tropes of identity formation, in a way that recognizes the “plurality and creativity of moral discourses” (Heintz 2009: 2). By exploring these questions, I seek an insight into the complex moral terrain contemporary Karen navigate in south-eastern Myanmar and the everyday moral paradoxes young Karen people confront as they come of age. I show how youth serves as an arena in which the contradictions between conflicting visions of moral selfhood may be engaged, ideally promising reconciliation and transcendence but also inviting experiences of internal conflict and contradiction.
Popular conceptions of Buddhism in Myanmar are largely based on religious practices of the ethnic... more Popular conceptions of Buddhism in Myanmar are largely based on religious practices of the ethnic Bamar majority. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in south-east Myanmar, this paper examines the multiplicity of Buddhist religious practice at the base of Mt Zwegabin, in Hpa-an, Karen State. Employing an anthropological approach which sees religious beliefs and ritual practices as a symbolic medium through which social identity is imagined and constructed, this paper highlights the interaction between traditional Karen customs and more orthodox forms of Buddhism by exploring the religious Karen gaing formed by PhuTaki in the 1990s. Research on Karen esoteric cults has often positioned them as a reaction of a minority ethnic group, or resistance to, the politically centralised lowland state (Gravers 2001, 2015; Hayami 1996; Stern 1968). However, taking the emphasis away from the ‘millenial’ aspects of their beliefs, I instead draw on literature from Vietnam on spirit and deity possession (Endres & Lauser 2012; Taylor 2004, 2007), which emphasizes the hybridity and interwovenness of differentiated religious practice in the search for ‘alternative modernities’ (Gaonkar 2001, Knauft 2002). By examining the hybrid religious beliefs and practices of PhuTaki followers, I highlight how the synchronised tempo of socio-economic and religious life assures the reproduction of Buddhism and Karen traditions as a stable reference point, an ‘alternative modernity,’ in an ever changing world, regional and national context.
Within anthropological scholarship studies on the Karen have for many years been defined by the c... more Within anthropological scholarship studies on the Karen have for many years been defined by the contrasting tautology between lowland and highland peoples, and indeed the ‘everyday forms of resistance’ at the heart of local lifestyles and cultures of Southeast Asian highlanders (Scott 2009). The opening up of Myanmar and Karen state to long-term fieldwork enables us to reconsider these taken for granted categories against the background of a constant flow of peoples, goods, ideas and systems.
Drawing on preliminary observations from my fieldwork in Hpa-an, the capital of eastern Karen State, this paper seeks to raise questions about the Karen and provoke new understandings of the shifting locations of identity across time and space in a way that crosscuts the axis of hills and plains. Following on from Andrew Walker’s view that we live in world characterised by “connections and flows – of goods, information and people” (1999: 12) in this paper I will provide a snapshot into the socially and spatially connected lives of Plong Karen living in Hpa-an and its surrounding districts, and what I suggest is a ‘culture of migration’ (Cohen and Ibrahim 2011). In a life that has always been intrinsically connected with the outside world through trade, education, religious networks and employment, this paper focuses on how the Plong Karen see themselves in ways which challenge proximal categorisations of identity, ethnicity and citizenship. It also adds to debates on globalisation, hybridity and cosmopolitanism, by drawing attention to the inexorable linkage of the local and the global that characterise Southeast Asia’s borderlands (Jonsson 2014; Sadan 2013; Walker 1999).
After ten years of ushering through a period of significant social and political reforms, in Febu... more After ten years of ushering through a period of significant social and political reforms, in Feburary 2021, Myanmar’s military Tatmadaw launched a coup d’etat, taking control of the country’s civilian admin- istrative and governance wings. Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung’s 2019 work, Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar is vital reading for any- one trying to come to grips with what is happening in Myanmar and the diverse and multifarious survival tactics of ordinary people in the context of the state’s looming economic collapse. Moving away from traditional macroindicators of poverty and inequality, Thawnghmung offers readers deep insights into the everyday trials and tribulations of people in Myanmar and the way that their coping strategies have served to reinforce both inequality and authoritarian modes of power.
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resolution in Kayin State, Eastern Bago Region and Shan State and its
interaction with the formal statutory Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar system. A participatory community-based research approach was used to understand customary practices concerning land, including how land title is defined, enforced and how land disputes are contested, negotiated and resolved at the community level.
Based on the perceptions of local people and village leaders in the three research sites, the report identifies current practices as well as prior work on this topic in Myanmar and seeks to identify ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms and practices used by communities in ethnic nationality areas with a view to informing policy and programming on restitution. Key to this analysis is the question of what a genuine restitution process might look like in Myanmar and how customary practices might be integrated into it.
Furthermore, if a genuine restitution process was established, what realistic capacity is there to integrate customary dispute mechanisms and authorities into it.
This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the “moral turn”. Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravāda practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent, in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life will engage readers interested in Myanmar, Buddhism, and moral anthropology, offering a deeply human portrait about an area of the world that remains largely defined by conflict and now military dictatorship.
resolution in Kayin State, Eastern Bago Region and Shan State and its
interaction with the formal statutory Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar system. A participatory community-based research approach was used to understand customary practices concerning land, including how land title is defined, enforced and how land disputes are contested, negotiated and resolved at the community level.
Based on the perceptions of local people and village leaders in the three research sites, the report identifies current practices as well as prior work on this topic in Myanmar and seeks to identify ongoing dispute resolution mechanisms and practices used by communities in ethnic nationality areas with a view to informing policy and programming on restitution. Key to this analysis is the question of what a genuine restitution process might look like in Myanmar and how customary practices might be integrated into it.
Furthermore, if a genuine restitution process was established, what realistic capacity is there to integrate customary dispute mechanisms and authorities into it.
This is the first ethnographic study of Myanmar to add to a growing body of anthropological scholarship that is referred to as the “moral turn”. Each chapter examines the lives of Plong Buddhists from different vantage points, calling into question many assumptions about Southeast Asian values and the nature of Buddhist Theravāda practice. Critiquing the notion that moral coherence is necessary for ethical selfhood, Chambers demonstrates how the pursuit of morality is varied, performative and embedded in an affective notion of the self as a moral agent, in a relationship with wider structural political forces. This vivid account of everyday life will engage readers interested in Myanmar, Buddhism, and moral anthropology, offering a deeply human portrait about an area of the world that remains largely defined by conflict and now military dictatorship.
The wide-ranging, myriad and multiple challenges of Living with Myanmar is the subject of this volume. Following the Myanmar Update series tradition, each of the authors offers a different perspective on the sociopolitical and economic mutations occurring in the country and the challenges that still remain. The book is divided into six sections and covers critical issues ranging from gender equality and identity politics, to agrarian reform and the representative role of parliament. Collectively, these voices raise key questions concerning the institutional legacies of military rule and their ongoing role in subverting the country’s reform process. However, they also offer insights into the creative and productive ways that Myanmar’s activists, civil society, parliamentarians, bureaucrats and everyday people attempt to engage with and reform those legacies.
The triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the 2015 election was supposed to mark the consolidation of a reformist trajectory for Myanmar society. What has followed has not proved so straightforward. This book takes stock of the mutations, continuities and fractures at the heart of today’s political and economic transformations. We ask: What has changed under a democratically elected government? Where are the obstacles to reform? And is there scope to foster a more prosperous and inclusive Myanmar? With the peace process faltering, over 1 million people displaced by recent violence, and ongoing army dominance in key areas of decision-making, the chapters in this volume identify areas of possible reform within the constraints of Myanmar’s hybrid civil–military governance arrangements.
This latest volume in the Myanmar Update Series from the Australian National University continues a long tradition of intense, critical engagement with political, economic and social questions in one of Southeast Asia’s most complicated countries. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, the 13 chapters of Myanmar Transformed? offer new and alternative ways to understand Myanmar and its people.
Coming of age in a historical moment mediated by increasingly sophisticated media, economic change, and also deepening social inequalities, young people in Hpa-an are subject to a number of competing visions. On the one hand their identity is intertwined in strong rural social norms, customs and a celebration of ‘traditional’ notions of Karen identity. On the other hand, they are drawn into urban, transnational and mediatised global spheres where value aspirations that emphasize individuality and personal transformation are tinged with an aura of possibility and danger. In Hpa-an, as in Myanmar more broadly, a Buddhist religious cosmological imaginary also heavily frames local culture and subject formation, colouring most aspects of quotidian social life.
In documenting the life choices, actions, and socio-moral evaluations of one Karen university student, I draw on the burgeoning literature from the anthropology of moralities (eg Laidlaw 2002, Robbins 2004, Heintz 2009) to demonstrate how young people are embracing new practices and tropes of identity formation, in a way that recognizes the “plurality and creativity of moral discourses” (Heintz 2009: 2). By exploring these questions, I seek an insight into the complex moral terrain contemporary Karen navigate in south-eastern Myanmar and the everyday moral paradoxes young Karen people confront as they come of age. I show how youth serves as an arena in which the contradictions between conflicting visions of moral selfhood may be engaged, ideally promising reconciliation and transcendence but also inviting experiences of internal conflict and contradiction.
Drawing on preliminary observations from my fieldwork in Hpa-an, the capital of eastern Karen State, this paper seeks to raise questions about the Karen and provoke new understandings of the shifting locations of identity across time and space in a way that crosscuts the axis of hills and plains. Following on from Andrew Walker’s view that we live in world characterised by “connections and flows – of goods, information and people” (1999: 12) in this paper I will provide a snapshot into the socially and spatially connected lives of Plong Karen living in Hpa-an and its surrounding districts, and what I suggest is a ‘culture of migration’ (Cohen and Ibrahim 2011). In a life that has always been intrinsically connected with the outside world through trade, education, religious networks and employment, this paper focuses on how the Plong Karen see themselves in ways which challenge proximal categorisations of identity, ethnicity and citizenship. It also adds to debates on globalisation, hybridity and cosmopolitanism, by drawing attention to the inexorable linkage of the local and the global that characterise Southeast Asia’s borderlands (Jonsson 2014; Sadan 2013; Walker 1999).