Refiguring Women Colonialism And Modernity In Burma

Author : Chie Ikeya
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082486106X
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma written by Chie Ikeya and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma presents the first study of one of the most prevalent and critical topics of public discourse in colonial Burma: the woman of the khit kala—"the woman of the times"—who burst onto the covers and pages of novels, newspapers, and advertisements in the 1920s. Educated and politicized, earner and consumer, "Burmese" and "Westernized," she embodied the possibilities and challenges of the modern era, as well as the hopes and fears it evoked. In Refiguring Women, Chie Ikeya interrogates what these shifting and competing images of the feminine reveal about the experience of modernity in colonial Burma. She marshals a wide range of hitherto unexamined Burmese language sources to analyze both the discursive figurations of the woman of the khit kala and the choices and actions of actual women who—whether pursuing higher education, becoming political, or adopting new clothes and hairstyles—unsettled existing norms and contributed to making the woman of the khit kala the privileged idiom for debating colonialism, modernization, and nationalism. The first book-length social history of Burma to utilize gender as a category of sustained analysis, Refiguring Women challenges the reigning nationalist and anticolonial historical narratives of a conceptually and institutionally monolithic colonial modernity that made inevitable the rise of ethnonationalism and xenophobia in Burma. The study demonstrates the irreducible heterogeneity of the colonial encounter and draws attention to the conjoined development of cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Ikeya illuminates the important roles that Burmese men and women played as cultural brokers and agents of modernity. She shows how their complex engagements with social reform, feminism, anticolonialism, media, and consumerism rearticulated the boundaries of belonging and foreignness in religious, racial, and ethnic terms. Refiguring Women adds significantly to examinations of gender and race relations, modernization, and nationalism in colonized regions. It will be of interest to a broad audience—not least those working in the fields of Southeast Asian studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and women’s and gender studies.

Author : Tharaphi Than
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134666632
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Women in Modern Burma written by Tharaphi Than and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the popular notion that Burmese women are powerful and are granted equal rights as men by society. Throughout history Burmese women have been represented as powerful and as having equal status to men by western travellers and scholars alike. National history about women also follows this conjecture. This book explains why actually very few powerful Burmese women exist, and how these few women help construct the notion of the high status of Burmese women, thereby inevitably silencing the majority of ‘unequal’ and disempowered women. One of the underlying questions throughout this book is why a few powerful women feel compelled to defend the notion that women hold privileged positions in Burmese society. Combining historical archives with statistical data published by UN agencies, this book highlights the reality of women’s status in modern Burma. Case studies include why the first Burmese women’s army was disbanded a few months after its establishment; how women writers assessed the conditions of Burmese women and represented their contemporaries in their works; the current state of prostitution; how modern-day sex-workers are trying to find their voice; and how women fared vis-à-vis men in education.

Author : Chie Ikeya
Publisher : Southeast Asia Program Publications
ISBN 13 : 9781501777141
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Interasian Intimacies Across Race, Religion, and Colonialism written by Chie Ikeya and published by Southeast Asia Program Publications. This book was released on 2024-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book traces the uncharted history of interAsian marriage, conversion, and collaboration in Burma across British and Japanese colonial rule. Combining multilingual archival research with family history and intergenerational storytelling, it illuminates a history of belonging across boundaries long overshadowed by Eurocentric narratives of colonial encounters"--

Author : Tamara C. Ho
Publisher : Intersections: Asian and Pacif
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Romancing Human Rights written by Tamara C. Ho and published by Intersections: Asian and Pacif. This book was released on 2015-01-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Romancing Human Rights demonstrates how Burmese women break out of prisons, both real and discursive, by writing themselves into being"--Jacket.

Author : Jessica Harriden
Publisher : Gendering Asia
ISBN 13 : 9788776940881
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Authority of Influence written by Jessica Harriden and published by Gendering Asia. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relationship between gender and power in Burmese history from pre-colonial times to the present day and aims to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women's power. The study takes as its starting point the apparent contradiction that, though Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively high social status and economic influence, for the most part they remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority in formal religious, social and political institutions. The book thus examines the concept of 'family' in Burmese political culture, and reveals how some women were able to gain political influence through their familial connections with powerful men, even while cultural models of 'correct' female behaviour prevented most women from attaining official positions of political authority. The study also considers how various influences - Buddhism, colonialism, nationalism, modernisation and militarism - shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, with important implications for how women were able to exercise social, economic and political influence. The book explores how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have constrained opportunities for women to attain power in contemporary Burma, and examines opportunities opened up by the pro-democracy movement and recent focus on women's issues and rights for women to exercise influence both inside Burma and in exile. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws on feminist, anthropological and social science discourses, placing them within an historical framework, the author offers a broad understanding of how power is obtained and exercised in Burma in order to reassess historical representations of Burmese women and so provide a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of power relations in historical and contemporary Burma.

Author : Ward Keeler
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824865979
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Traffic in Hierarchy written by Ward Keeler and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-09-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until its recent political thaw, Burma was closed to most foreign researchers, and fieldwork-based research was rare. In The Traffic in Hierarchy, one of the few such works to appear in recent years, author Ward Keeler combines close ethnographic attention to life in a Buddhist monastery with a broad analysis of Burman gender ideology. The result is a thought-provoking analysis of Burmese social relations both within and beyond a monastery’s walls. Keeler shows that the roles individuals choose in Burman society entail inevitable trade-offs in privileges and prestige. A man who becomes a monk gives up some social opportunities but takes on others and gains great respect. Alternatively, a man can become a head of household. Or he can choose to take on a feminine gender identity—to the derision of many but not necessarily his social exclusion. A woman, by contrast, is expected to concern herself with her relations with family and kin. Any interest she might show in becoming a nun arouses ambivalent reactions: although it fulfills Buddhist teachings, it contravenes assumptions about a woman’s proper role. In Burma, hierarchical understandings condition all relationships, but hierarchy implies relations of exchange, not simply inequality, and everyone takes on subordinate roles in their bonds with some, and superordinate ones with others. Knowing where power lies and how to relate to it appropriately is key. It may mean choosing at times to resist power, but more often it involves exercising care as to whom one wishes to subordinate oneself, in what ways, and on what terms. Melding reflections on the work of theorists such as Dumont, Anderson, Warner, and Kapferer with close attention to the details of Burman social interaction, Keeler balances theoretical insights and ethnographic observation to produce a rich and challenging read. The conundrum at the heart of this book—whether to opt for autonomy, the Buddhist seeking of detachment, or for attachment, the desire for close bonds with others—is one that all humans, not just Burmans, must confront, and it is one that admits of no final resolution.

Author : Michael W. Charney
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316342492
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of Modern Burma written by Michael W. Charney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-22 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burma has lived under military rule for nearly half a century. The results of its 1990 elections were never recognized by the ruling junta and Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma's pro-democracy movement, was denied her victory. She has been under house-arrest ever since. Now an economic satellite and political dependent of the People's Republic of China, Burma is at a crossroads. Will it become another North Korea, will it succumb to China's political embrace or will the people prevail? Michael Charney's book- the first general history of modern Burma in over five decades - traces the highs and lows of Burma's history from its colonial past to the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. By exploring key themes such as the political division between lowland and highland Burma and monastic opposition to state control, the author explains the forces that have made the country what it is today.

Author : Kristin Celello
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199986738
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties written by Kristin Celello and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late nineteenth century, fears that marriage is in crisis have reverberated around the world. This volume explores this phenomenon, asking why people of various races, classes, and nations frequently seem to be fretting about marriage. Each of the chapters analyzes a specific time and place during which proclamations of marriage crisis have dominated public discourse, whether in late imperial Russia, 1920s India, mid-century France, or present-day Iran. Collectively, the chapters reveal how diverse individuals have deployed the institution of marriage to talk not only about intimate relationships, but also to understand the nation, its problems, and various socioeconomic and political transformations.

Author : Iselin Frydenlund
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9813298847
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buddhist-Muslim Relations in a Theravada World written by Iselin Frydenlund and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to critically analyze Buddhist-Muslim relations in Theravada Buddhist majority states in South and Southeast Asia. Asia is home to the largest population of Buddhists and Muslims. In recent years, this interfaith communal living has incurred conflicts, such as the ethnic-religious conflicts in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Experts from around the world collaborate to provide a comprehensive look into religious pluralism and religious violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first section provides historical background to the three countries with the largest Buddhist-Muslim relations. The second section has chapters that focus on specific encounters between Buddhists and Muslims, which includes anti-Buddhist sentiments in Bangladesh, the role of gender in Muslim-Buddhist relations and the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiments in Myanmar. By exploring historical fluctuations over time—paying particular attention to how state-formations condition Muslim-Buddhist entanglements—the book shows the processual and relational aspects of religious identity constructions and Buddhist-Muslim interactions in Theravada Buddhist majority states.

Author : Michael Aung-Thwin
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1861899394
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times written by Michael Aung-Thwin and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times, Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung-Thwin take us from the sacred stupas of the plains of Pagan to grand, colonial-era British mansions, revealing the storied past and rich culture of this country. The book traces the traditions and transformations of Myanmar’s communities over nearly three millennia, from the relics of its Neolithic civilization to the splendors of its pre-colonial kingdoms, its encounters with British colonialism and the struggles for the republic that followed the end of World War II. The authors also consider the complexities of present-day life in Myanmar and examine the key political events and debates of the last twenty-five years that have brought the world’s attention to the country. By exploring current developments within the broader patterns of Myanmar's history, culture and society, they provide a nuanced perspective on the issues and questions surrounding Myanmar’s future. This updated edition considers the changes that have taken place since the elections of 2010, the reforms that the civilian government introduced, and the ramifications of the country's new international status. It also assesses the implications of the 2012 by-elections, the ensuing political dynamics among various stakeholders, and the continuing socio-economic challenges facing Myanmar in the twenty-first century. The most comprehensive history of Myanmar ever published in the English language, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Southeast Asian history and will surprise, challenge, and inform in equal measure.