Being and Becoming Kachin

Histories Beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma

Bibliographic Data

ID23399145
AuthorsMandy Sadan (0009-0002-8728-7587, corresponding author)
Year2013
Pages470
Publication date2013-09-26
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Reviewed byBeing and Becoming Kachin: Histories Beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma, Mandy Sadan, 2014
VenueBeing and Becoming Kachin (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBritish Academy (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.5871/bacad/9780197265550.001.0001
OpenAlexW4241674894
Open LibraryOL28507405M
ISBN9780197265550
LanguageEN
Citations received100

Since independence in 1948, Burma has suffered from many internal conflicts. One of the longest of these has been in the Kachin State, in the north of the country where Burma has borders with India to the west and China to the east. This book explores the origins of the armed movement that started in 1961 and considers why it has continued for so long. The book places the problems that have led to hostilities between the political heartland of Burma and one of its most important peripheries in a longer perspective than usual. It explains how the experience of globalisation and international geopolitics from the late eighteenth century onwards produced the local politics of exclusion and resistance. It also uses detailed ethnographic research to explore the social and cultural dynamics of Kachin ethno-nationalism, providing a rich analysis that goes beyond the purely political. This analysis also provides new insights on the work of Edmund Leach and recent representations of Zomia proposed by James C. Scott. The research draws upon an extensive range of sources, including archival materials in Jinghpaw and an extensive study of ritual and ritual language. Making a wide variety of cross-disciplinary observations, it explains in depth and breadth how a region such as the Kachin State came into being. When combined with detailed local insights into how these experiences contributed to the historical development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism, the book encourages new ways of thinking about the Kachin region and its history of armed resistance.

China · Discipline · Ethnography · Geopolitics · Globalization · Independence (probability theory) · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Anthropology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Asian Studies and History · History · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · burma · Ethnic conflict · foreign relations · Kachin (Asian people)

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