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

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3668879
AutoresElliott Prasse-Freeman (0000-0003-3078-0530, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen71
Número2
Páginas371-397
Fecha de publicación2012-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911812000083
OpenAlexW2101668181
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas35

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