Power, Civil Society, and an Inchoate Politics of the Daily in Burma/Myanmar

Bibliographic Data

ID3668879
AuthorsElliott Prasse-Freeman (0000-0003-3078-0530, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume71
Issue2
Pages371-397
Publication date2012-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911812000083
OpenAlexW2101668181
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited35

Burma/Myanmar's postcolonial elites have established a military-state with hybrid-imperial structures, characterized by high despotic but low infrastructural modes of power, and fueled by rent-extraction. Given the resulting evisceration of opposition political groups, citizens understand explicit politics as dangerous. That said, cleavages between state and the polity afford vast space for "civil society" groups (CS) to form and operate. CS stabilize the political economy by managing citizen needs; conversely, CS stand as a wedge between state and masses, (potentially) constructing spaces to coordinate and magnify potential demands. Yet CS currently err toward managing needs. Opposition must politicize Burmese masses and CS through idioms that interface with CS's material tasks-a "politics of the daily"-encouraging them to make, collectively, a multiplicity of non-adversarial demands. This may compel the state to pivot and seek new bargains, at which point elite advocacy-oriented CS can provide progressive policy reforms. The paper will examine recent inchoate social-political movements in Burma for models of this politics

Civil society · Elite · Frontier · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · Law · Political Conflict and Governance