Decolonizing methods: Akha articulations of indigeneity in the Upper Mekong Region

The concept of indigeneity is highly problematic in Asia, where a heightened degree of spatial mobility and ethnic fluidity challenge conventional understandings of Indigenous peoples (IPs) as rooted, stable, and unchanging from time immemorial. As some scholars have argued, however, this conception of indigeneity ignores the fact that many IPs have had multiple experiences of displacement due to their colonization by outsiders. Here, the authors discuss one such group – the Akha minority residing throughout the Upper Mekong Region – that in spite of multiple historical experiences of displacement, marginalization, and, more recently, colonization has maintained an intimate connection with their ancestral homeland. Akha have maintained this connection by way of their ‘intimate place-making cosmographies’, whereby non-Akha space is reconfigured as a microcosmic totality of the larger Akha cosmos. These practices have allowed for Akha to sustain and vitalize their distinct identity as Akha in the face of various external pressures from non-Akha others.     

The politics of counting and reporting conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence: the case of Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Scholars, states and international organizations have begun to systematically count, document and compare sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in conflict-affected countries. Qualitative and quantitative studies point to a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon, where there is a high prevalence but low level of actual reporting of SGBV. We investigate the conditions in which SGBV is reported or, more significantly, is not reported to discover the trends of reporting in politically oppressive environments where SGBV is thought to be occurring. We ask how the power to report in local conflict-affected areas is affected by national political tensions and pervasive gender discrimination. Reporting of SGBV in Myanmar, a country that has experienced multiple, protracted conflicts since independence, is examined. Analysis of open-access reports over a fifteen-year period reveals a pattern of silence that we argue is rooted in pervasive discriminatory civil and physical practices against women. Engaging with the deeply politicized and gender discriminatory context of conflict-affected societies enables us to see the anomalies of SGBV data and to highlight significant gaps in our knowledge about SGBV.     

The Rohingya of Myanmar: theoretical significance of the minority status

The Rohingya of Myanmar have been experiencing a range of human rights violations including state-sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing. Many argue that the genesis of the crisis lies in the denial of their legal status and granting citizenship would offer a solution. This article argues that apart from such legal dynamics, significant theoretical aspects of this crisis require analysis. From a theoretical perspective, the Rohingya’s identity as a minority is important as it leads to their persecution. This article demonstrates that their minority identity has been (re)constructed over time. Four factors such as (i) development of Burmese nationalism; (ii) politicisation of identity for Burmese majority; (iii) taking away of the citizenship of Rohingya; and (iv) ethnic divisions in Myanmar society have played significant roles in (re)constructing their identity as a minority. They give rise to a type of citizenship in Myanmar, which fails to include the religious minority within its ambit.     

The elites’ collective subjectivities of the history of ethnic politics in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia is one of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious countries in Southeast Asia. Due to the pluralistic nature of Malaysia, it has a political structure based on ethnic politics. The ethnic preferential policies affected most domains of this country. The objective of this article is to examine the origin and background of ethnic politics in Malaysia. Findings of this study indicate that, ethnic politics originated during the British colonial period, it became a tool used by the Barisan Nasional for the legitimacy of regime. Moreover, ethnic politics in Malaysia today is intertwined with religion. Besides, there is the dilemma of the choice between the interest of certain ethnic group and national interests. However, with the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan won the election in 9th May, UMNO-led BN lost power and interrupted its 61 years control, which leaves us an interesting topic to think about the future of Malaysian ethnic politics.     

Reinvigorating resilience: violence against women,land rights,and the women's peace movement in Myanmar

In Myanmar, movements for gender justice strive to foster personal and collective security, vibrant livelihoods, and political engagement during a period of rapid and uncertain transition. This article draws from the experience of the Gender Equality Network (GEN), a coalition of over 100 organisations in Myanmar. It examines three cases in which GEN sought to document existing forms of resilience and expand these mechanisms through national-level advocacy. The first describes current attempts to publicise, and eventually eliminate, violence against women (VAW). VAW is a fundamental threat to personal safety, but also to the principle of societal accountability – that is, the extent to which society upholds the interests and rights of women and girls. The second focuses on women's (lack of) access to natural resources and economic decision-making, drawing on gender-focused input into the National Land Use Policy. Finally, we examine the impacts of conflict on women's resilience, and women's increasing participation in the peace process. In all three cases, effective mobilisation and networking not only increased female political voice, but also enabled creation of a more resilient democracy by modelling effective policy, research, advocacy, and communication strategies.     

Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture

This paper explores the potential for the formation of political solidarities across the spatial divisions being intensified by dominant responses to the European crisis. In doing so, it takes inspiration from Doreen Massey’s thinking around the contested terms on which space and politics are articulated and her engagement with the 2008 crisis through projects such as the Kilburn manifesto. We argue that her book World city powerfully articulates a way of thinking about the spatial politics of a particular conjuncture. The paper traces the ways in which various political interventions in post-crisis politics have been shaped by distinctive ‘nationed’ geographical imaginaries. In particular, we explore how left-wing nationed narratives impact on the discursive horizon and unpack their implications for the articulation of solidarities and emancipatory politics in the context of the ‘European Crisis’. Building on this, we reflect on how trans-local solidarities and alliances might be articulated across socio-spatial divisions and contest the decidedly uneven, racialized, gendered and classed impacts of dominant European politics. We argue that such solidarities and alliances can form a crucial intervention in challenging the dominant spatial politics of crisis and articulating left political strategies on different terms.     

Burmese Indians in contemporary Burma: heritage,influence, and perceptions since 1988

This article seeks to explore the current role, significance and influence of Burmese Indian minorities in post-1988 Burma as well as the perceptions the Burmese indigenous society and elite have developed on them since the colonial era. British Burma (1826–1948) witnessed a massive immigration of Indian communities that disproportionately dominated Burma's colonial enterprise. A strong resentment thus arose among the Burman Buddhist majority, illustrated by the rise of a popular ‘indophobia’ phenomenon. Paroxysmal expressions of the colonial original trauma were observed through recurrent pre-independence anti-Indian riots as well as a specific and enduring linguistic patronizing classification of the ‘Kalas’ by the Burmese language. Nationalistic administrative laws, enacted by the Burmese post-independence parliamentarian and military governments, furthered the downgrading and discrimination of Burmese Indians who remain however a visible minority today, with a manifest economic weight and a strong socio-cultural presence throughout Burma. In this paper, it will, however, be argued that after years of ‘Burmanization’ processes, Burmese old-age ‘indophobic’ sentiments have turned towards more ‘islamophobic’ tendencies, now explicitly targeting the Muslim communities of Indian origin, but that it remains difficult to evaluate their impact on Burma's current policymaking.     

Insider-allies: The precarious politics of men in identity-fluid feminism

Academic and activist conversations about the position of men in feminism often operate under the assumption that women are the movement's key beneficiaries and men are privileged outsiders lending their support. I use 59 interviews from a broader project on feminist and LGBTQ+ activism in the United States to illustrate how men's orientation to feminism is shaped by whether social movement organizations adopt what I call woman-centered or identity-fluid politics. While woman-centered politics treat men as allies whose intentions must be vetted by women, identity-fluid feminism imagines men as insiders with their own independent investment in the movement. I argue that the tension between these two models of identity politics gives men a liminal “insider-ally” position within feminism. Although feminist men are given a tentative authority to speak for the movement, the persistence of woman-centered understandings of feminism means men's insider status is contested, especially when they dominate feminist spaces, compromise women's sense of safety, and seek leadership.     

Life politics,nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change

Anthony Giddens' The Politics of Climate Change represents a significant shift in the way in which he addresses ecological politics. In this book, he rejects the relevance of environmentalism and demarcates climate‐change policy from life politics. Giddens addresses climate change in the technocratic mode of simple rather than reflexive modernization. However, Giddens' earlier sociological theory provides the basis for a more reflexive understanding of climate change. Climate change instantiates how, in high modernity, the existential contradiction of the human relationship with nature returns in new form, expressed in life politics and entangled with the structural contradictions of the capitalist state. The interlinking of existential and structural contradiction is manifested in the tension between life politics and the capitalist nation‐state. This tension is key for understanding the failures so far of policy responses to climate change.     

The Micro‐politics of Gendering in Networking

Networking processes contribute to the perpetuation of gender inequalities in everyday practices in organizations. This article examines the implications of the conceptualization of gender as practice for social network theory. The three central elements of this critical feminist approach to networking are the study of agency, identity construction and the micro‐political processes of networking and gendering. To illustrate that networking practices are gendering practices, that there are various manifestations of those practices, and the way in which networking and gendering are intertwined, the networking practices of four white, Dutch female and male account managers are discussed. This micro‐political analysis suggests that networking does not necessarily reinforce gender inequality, which opens up the possibility of examining which combinations of networking and gendering contribute to changing the gender order.     

The politics of neoliberalism in Latin America: dynamics of resilience and contestation

Over the last two decades, academic debates around neoliberalism in Latin America have shifted from evaluations of the drawbacks and virtues of the application of neoliberal policies for achieving socioeconomic development, towards discussions imagining and implementing alternatives. After thirty years of neoliberal reform, even neoliberal advocates have increasingly recognised the pernicious effects that the process of neoliberalization have had on people's lives. The fleeting left and centre-left moment brought renewed hopes and expectations of a post-neoliberal future. However, post-neoliberal states could not solve the contradictions of neoliberalism and told us much about its resilience and adaptability. This article offers an overview of the dynamics of neoliberalism's resilience and contestation in Latin America as treated by extant literature as a way to account for the politics of neoliberalism in the region, its rise and its current status.     

Developing the new socialist Czechoslovak state: abortion,eugenics, and the politics of choice between 1945 and 1962

ABSTRACT

The author analyzes the political and medical discourses surrounding the legalization of abortion in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and the establishment of the institution of abortion commissions to approve women’s demands. Through a genealogical intersectional lens, she explores the continuity of this rationality, which started to fear the degeneration of the collective more than its depopulation. As the Cold War commenced, for the first time in history Czechoslovak women obtained reproductive rights, particularly when a pregnancy was recognized as a threat to women’s and children’s health. Drawing on biopolitical theories and other critical feminist scholarship that have problematized the liberal underpinnings of choice and autonomy, the author demonstrates how eugenics trespassed from expert circles into politics, and, with the help of planned parenthood, recreated a complex system of socio-biological classes, determining who should reproduce and whose life was worth living, and worth protecting. The text defies the classic totalitarian thesis that divides peoples and society into two types, the totalitarian subject and its liberal counterpart. The author argues that, regardless of the political system, abortion rights operate as a regulatory strategy of power aimed at maintaining a certain population optimum by re-defining women’s responsibilities to deliver a healthy child into a healthy environment.     

The politics of identity: from potential to pitfalls,and symbols to substance

In this public lecture to mark the 25th anniversary of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, award-winning Guardian journalist and author Gary Younge reflects on the potentialities, ambivalences and challenges of ‘identity’ as a basis for political action in the contemporary climate.     

Contesting Isan‐ness: discourses of politics and identity in Northeast Thailand

This paper discusses the idea of Isan (Northeastern Thai) ethnoregional identity, and its relationship with two major alternative ideas: Thai identity and Lao identity. Drawing on ethnolinguistic research, the paper argues that Isan identity is a problematic political construct, reflecting ambiguous self‐understandings and self‐representations on the part of Northeasterners. Northeasterners are engaged in a negotiation process about their relationships with Thai and Lao identities, relationships fraught with cultural, social and political ramifications. The study suggests a more nuanced appreciation of the ambiguities of Isan identity than has yet been proposed.     

Uncovering a politics of livelihoods: analysing displacement and contention in contemporary India

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use livelihoods as an organizing concept which brings together questions of production, social reproduction, and the conditions for these, to describe and reflect upon three ‘moments’ of displacement and contention in India. Our first moment, a massive flash strike by workers in the export garments industry in Bangalore, is located in the present neo-liberal context of jobless growth, increasingly unregulated and precarious forms of employment, and market-based forms of service provision. Our second moment concerns popular struggles in defence of the commons in settled rural fishing communities in south India, and the third, the tenacious efforts of pavement dwellers in Bombay to make place, the political condition for production and social reproduction. The originary context for these last two moments was the state-led, technology-driven, capitalist modernization of agriculture and fisheries of the early post-‘independence’ decades, tied to projects of state-building, self-reliance, and sovereignty. The three moments chart the long history of processes of precarization under postcolonial capitalism but, equally, a constant politics of livelihood, grounded in claims to rights earned through labour, and addressing itself to both state and capital as complicit in structuring access to livelihoods under capitalism.     

The retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state: theory and policy

This article discusses a recent retreat of multiculturalism in the liberal state. This retreat has occurred both at the level of theory and policy. With the help of some recent liberal critiques of multiculturalism, the first part maps out some shortcomings of the notion of minority integration through cultural recognition, particularly with respect to immigrants. The second part discusses a retreat from multiculturalism policies in three states that had been prominently committed to them: Australia, the Netherlands, and Britain. This practical retreat of multiculturalism is due to a variety of factors, their importance differing across cases: the chronic lack of public support for multiculturalism policies; inherent deficits and failures of multiculturalism policies, especially in socio-economic respect; and a new assertiveness of the liberal state to impose liberal principles.     

The manifestations of politics in evaluation: An exploratory study across the evaluation process

Evaluation has been described as a political act. Programs and policies are generated from a political process, and the decision to evaluate and how to use the evaluation are manifestations of the political dynamic. This exploratory study was conducted with practicing evaluators to understand what they view as political situations in the evaluation process and how they responded to these situations. Findings suggest that, in relation to the potential evaluation phases in which each respondent has been involved, evaluations are susceptible to politics when initially attempting to identify stakeholders and when it’s time to report the evaluation findings. Evaluators have also developed multiple strategies for dealing with these situations, including finding allies for the evaluation and working to explain the evaluation process and its implications. We hope that this study will help to inform novice and expert evaluators about the various political situations they may encounter in their practice.     

Time to go home? The conflictual politics of diaspora return in the Burmese women’s movement

ABSTRACT

The initiation of political reforms and a peace process in Myanmar has fundamentally altered the conditions for Burmese diasporic politics, and diaspora groups that have mobilized in Myanmar’s neighbouring countries are beginning to return. This article explores how return to Myanmar is debated within the Burmese women’s movement, a significant and internationally renowned segment of the Burmese diaspora. Does return represent the fulfilment of diasporic dreams; a pragmatic choice in response to less than ideal circumstances; or a threat to the very identity and the feminist politics of the women’s movement? Contrasting these competing perspectives, the analysis offers insights into the ongoing negotiations and difficult choices involved in return, and reveals the process of return as highly conflictual and contentious. In particular, the analysis sheds light on the gendered dimensions of diaspora activism and return, demonstrating how opportunities for women's activism are challenged, debated and reshaped in relation to return.     

The transnational sphere of justice: disability praxis and the politics of impairment

In this paper, my aim is to elaborate disability movement praxis so that transnational struggles for justice over the production of impairment emerging from the Global South can be represented within the transnational frame of disability politics. The paper seeks to explore the potential of deepening socio-political understandings of impairment as a means to radically democratize disability movement politics at the transnational scale to encompass pluralist, yet subaltern, collective claims for justice. I am guided by the question: if impairment is the place that makes visible invisible debts, can the global disability rights movement begin a process of re-identification to open the boundaries of disability justice claims and develop a strategic orientation which recognizes those collective justice claims for geopolitically produced impairments?     

The state of social capital: Bringing back in power,politics, and history

Theory and Society -