Mandy Sadan. Being and Becoming Kachin

Mandy Sadan's new study examines the emergence of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism in the borderworlds where northern Burma, northeast India, and southern China meet. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the predominant Kachin political organizations were at war with the postcolonial Burmese state. In the midst of recent political reforms in Burma, the cease-fire established at the end of the last millennium has unraveled and violence has returned to the troubled Kachin State. Sadan's book places this conflict into a broader analytical framework in three ways: geographically, sociologically, and historically. Geographically, Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma is not limited to the modern borders of Burma, but explores the networks that existed across nation-state boundaries, linking Singpho, Jingpo, and Kachin peoples (the majority-cognate ethnic identities of the area) to the rest of the world. Sociologically, Sadan situates the rise of a militarized Kachin ethno-nationalism in social and cultural processes and practices, not limiting herself to an analysis of political negotiations and decision-making. And historically, she works across a long timeframe that begins in the late eighteenth century and runs through to the present day. On the level of historiography, Sadan's book makes the case for the importance of a close engagement with the complexity and contingency of societies in borderworlds beyond the direct purview of the state. This is a persuasive counterpoint to James C. Scott's recent and much-discussed study, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009), which reduces them to abstract paragons of non-state communities.

Burmese · Counterpoint · Historiography · Militarization · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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