Burma, Myanmar, 2010-2017, a country in transition?

Presentation

In 2011, when Burma (Myanmar) had been under military rule for more than five decades, the junta stepped down in favor of a "semi-civilian" government. Its president, ex-general Thein Sein, embarked on a series of democratic reforms, and the 2015 general elections saw Aung San Suu Kyi, the emblematic opposition figure, come to power. But what are the real dimensions, meanings and limits of this seemingly spectacular evolution?

Adopting a different angle of approach to the mostly English-language studies devoted to political transition and too often focused on the democratization process alone, this book offers a more general interpretation of the transformations in Burmese society between 2010 and 2017 by French anthropologists, geographers and historians. Long-standing specialists and young researchers have enriched the reflections specific to their disciplinary fields with field analyses, cross-disciplinary approaches and perspective analyses, in order to explain the transition and shed light on the analogies and discontinuities between past and present, between the Burma of yesterday and the Burma of tomorrow. Offering original keys to understanding the Burmese reform process, in the cities as in the countryside, in the center as in the peripheries, from both the Burmese and international points of view, they also bring to light the interweaving of the rise of Buddhist nationalism, inter-community conflicts and the humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya.

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Director

Aurore Candier, historian by training and associate researcher at the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE) and the Institut de recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine (IRASEC), has lived in Burma for over twenty years. At the crossroads of conceptual history, global history and the history of colonization, her research focuses on the evolution of knowledge and concepts among Burmese elites, particularly in contact with other languages and cultures, in modern and contemporary Burma.

150 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 08/10/2020
ISBN: 9782858313648