Description

Since 2011, Myanmar has begun a transition to civilian and democratic rule. The 2015 elections have further confirmed Myanmar’s transition to democracy, with the victory of the National League for Democracy. Yet, peace with ethnic nationalities and new institutional powers for ethnic states remain elusive. Under the 2008 Constitution, very few powers were devolved to ethnic states. How are ethnic states gaining more powers from the central government? How are new powers being negotiated? What are the prospects for greater devolution of power to ethnic states? The panel will focus on the fundamental contradictions between the central government’s historically persistent centralizing approach and its stated objective of devolving power to ethnic states. Since 2012, changes remain primarily cosmetic rather than substantive. Although the government has pledged support for federalism, has negotiated a national cease-fire, and has introduced a new decentralization law in the national parliament, there is little evidence so far of a willingness to amend the 2008 Constitution to give more autonomy and power to ethnic states or, in practice, to provide sufficient powers and resources for ethnic states to exercise any meaningful degree of autonomy. The panel will also discuss the rise of violence against Muslims. These represent important challenges as the National League for Democracy forms a new government, and attempts to find new solutions to the sixty-year civil war with ethnic groups and achieve peaceful democratic change.

Description

In a recent anthology of essays titled, How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist Identities (Silkworm Press 2012), contributors ranging from philologists, anthropologists and area studies specialists of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism have challenged the use of the term Theravāda (Teachings of the Elders) as a legitimate designation of identity by and for the Buddhists of Sri Lanka and the religiously affiliated countries of mainland Southeast Asia. The claim made in these writings is that “Theravāda” emerged as a term of self-reference only during the late colonial era as a product of Orientalist scholarship, and that by accepting this contrived and essentialized identity Buddhists of the region have unwittingly participated in the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of their own multiple and complex Buddhist traditions that collectively go by the name Theravāda today. In this presentation I will challenge that claim along with the methodology and evidence brought to bear in its support. Then, referencing mostly Burmese sources, I will show how in Burma use of the word Theravāda as a term of self-reference pre-dates British conquest and the rise of Orientalism, and further, that contemporary meanings of the word Theravāda in Burma are not incongruous with attested usages in the past.

Patrick Pranke is an Assistant Professor of Religion in the Humanities at the University of Louisville. He is trained in Buddhist Studies and his area of specialization is Burmese Buddhism. Pranke’s interests include Buddhist monastic history and historiography, weikza cult practices, and the interface of Buddhist scholasticism with Burmese popular traditions. Pranke’s recent publications include: “Buddhist Foundation Legends” (co-authored with Donald Stadtner), and “Buddhism in Myanmar” in The Buddhist Art of Myanmar (Asia Society and Yale University Press, 2015); “On Saints and Wizards: Ideals of Human Perfection and Power in Contemporary Burmese Buddhism,” in Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Contemporary Burma (NUS Press 2014); and Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Assistant Editor, (Princeton University Press. 2014).

Description

The current Syrian crisis has alerted us once again to the plight of the tens of millions of displaced people who in recent times have been forced to seek refuge from political persecution, wars, and violence. Yet too often mainstream representations of generic “refugees” have figured them as merely objects of pity and benevolence, or in the worst cases into populations whose diasporic condition is in part a result of their own inability to survive in the modern and contemporary world. This symposium takes last year’s fortieth anniversary of the official end of the Vietnam War as an occasion to question mainstream memories and representations of the wars in Southeast Asia, while also calling attention to the resilience, alternative memories, and self-making of those who have relocated to the United States and Canada.

1:00 PM – 2:45 PM – Dr. David Chu Distinguished Visitor Lecture
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM – Panel Discussion
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM – Reception

The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es): The Production of Memories of the “Generation
After”

Yen Le Espiritu, Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego

Focusing on the multiple recollections of the US War in Vietnam, this talk examines the ways in which the mutually constituted processes of remembering and forgetting work in the production of official discourses about empire, war, and violence as well as in the construction of refugee subjectivities. Challenging conventional ideas about memory as recuperation, this talk analyzes the production of the “postmemories” of the post-1975 generation: the young Vietnamese who were born in Vietnam or in the United States after the official end of the Vietnam War.

Please note that the lecture and panel each require a separate registration.

Description

Climate change is having an impact on the severity and timing of river level fluctuations across Asia (Tanner et al 2009, Xu et al 2009, Palmer et al 2008, Dudgeon 2000). Flooding and flood-related disasters in mainland Southeast Asia make news around the world and are generating increasingly severe economic and political disruptions as they impact an urbanizing region. In Myanmar—a so called “water hotspot”—flooding is considered a crisis for state water management and governance, particularly in urban contexts. Moreover, in work on water and resilience, alongside an emphasis on ‘crisis’, we have seen water continually linked to scarcity and ‘disaster’ (Tanner et. al 2015, Mukheibir 2010). What these debates could better elucidate are the ways that everyday people work to address hydro-social practices in a changing climate, and the implications of this work for water management and social outcomes (Driscoll Derickson and MacKinnon 2015, MacKinnon Derickson 2013, ISET-I 2015).

One way that we can better understand the impacts of climate change on water and river fluctuations and take an approach that highlights the work of everyday people is to examine the impacts or changes to beneficial flooding and to its associated agro-ecological practices in mainland Southeast Asia, where the monsoon climate and regular flooding have been adapted by residents into local cultivation practices. In the places where flood-linked agriculture is practiced, the challenges and transformations posed by climate changes interact with both the current processes of urbanization and with historical and traditional technologies that have been developed to ‘harness’ river fluctuations. Riverbank gardening is one such hydro-social practice in Southeast Asia that produces food for/from both rural and urbanizing environments, and requires cultivators to understand and work around a river’s fluctuating water levels, the rise and fall of which shapes local ecologies, climate and the growing season.

This paper/presentation investigates the practices of riverbank gardeners in urbanizing monsoon landscapes as one way to understand changes to beneficial flooding as related to both climate change and the multifaceted processes and impacts of urbanization. I draw on a framework that emphasizes the historical emergence of such practices, their contemporary challenges, and the role of everyday people in their management. Drawing three examples together, I argue that examination of these gardeners’ practices and strategies of ‘resourcefulness’ reveal the work of individuals and institutions governing overlooked in-between spaces—which might otherwise be described as ‘un-governed’ or ‘ungovernable’—in everyday practice. I argue that these spaces are being adaptively managed and governed by local residents, in connection with municipal (and other) authorities.

Vanessa Lamb is postdoctoral researcher with the Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia (UCRSEA) project and is an affiliated researcher with the York Centre for Asian Research, York University (Toronto, Canada). She has worked and conducted research in Southeast Asia on natural resource access for the past 10 years. Dr. Lamb completed her dissertation, Ecologies of Rule and Resistance, focused on the politics of ecological knowledge and development of the Salween River at York University’s Department of Geography. She was recently awarded an ASEAN-Canada Junior Fellowship for continued Research on water politics and transboundary environmental governance in Southeast Asia. Dr. Lamb is also the lead PI for a new CGIAR WLE Greater Mekong project on water governance titled: Matching policies, institutions and practices of water governance in the Salween-Thanlwin-Nu River Basin: Towards inclusive, informed, and accountable water governance.