Southeast Asia Program
Imagining a New Myanmar: The Views of Ethnic Minority Groups
April 29, 2024
1:00 pm
Kahin Center
Since the Myanmar military seized power in Burma/Myanmar in a coup d’état in February 2021, People's Defense Forces (PDF) and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (ERO) have been fighting to remove this military regime and restore civilian government. In this context, ethnic minority leaders in the country appear determined to seize the current opportunity to propose a fundamental renegotiation of the political and governance arrangements in Myanmar, addressing the historic grievances of the ethnic minorities – and Bamar political leaders have also expressed their willingness to work with all ethnic groups.
This panel of ethnic minority leaders will discuss the structure of a new Myanmar, with a particular focus on the views and expectations of the ethnic minorities.
This panel discussion will take place at the Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave; and via Zoom. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.
Panelists
1. Evelyn Lyn, Vice-Chairperson, Karenni State Consultative Council (KSCC)
Around 90 percent of Karenni State is no longer under the control of the Military regime. In these areas the KSCC and Karenni armed groups have established a functioning local administration. Evelyn will discuss how the people involved in establishing these new governance structures in Karenni State envisage the new federal, democratic Myanmar.
2. Aung Kyaw Moe, Deputy Minister of Human Rights, National Unity Government
As a prominent, young Rohingya human rights activist, he will discuss how marginalized groups, such as the Rohingya, might fit into the new Myanmar.
3. Naw Hser Hser, a representative of the Women's League of Burma and the Karen Women's Organization.
Naw Say Say will discuss expectations for the future of Myanmar from the perspective of an ERO with a history of governing areas under its control.
4. Zo Tum Hmung, Executive Director, Chin Association of Maryland, and former Executive Director, the Ethnic Nationalities Affairs Center-Union of Burma (ENAC)
Chin armed groups now control a large part of Chin State and are aiming for a similar status to that enjoyed by Mizoram in India. Zo Tum Hmung will discuss the current situation in Chin State and the expectations of the Chin for a new Myanmar.
5. Moon Nay Li, Joint Secretary of the Women's League of Burma
6. Sao Khuen Sai, journalist, and leading advisor to the Chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State, and a former rebel leader
Shan State has the most varied ethnic population and the largest number of EROs of any State or Region in Myanmar. The military recently lost control of large parts of northern Shan State to Kachin, Kokant, Ta’ang, and Wa resistance groups. Sao Khuen Sai will discuss the changing dynamics of ethnic politics in Shan State and how the different ethnic groups in Shan State might envisage the new Myanmar.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Why Kretek–"No Ordinary Cigarette"–Thrives in Indonesia
Marina Welker, SEAP
Though they’re banned in the United States and many other countries, clove-laced tobacco cigarettes called “kretek” (referencing the crackling sound of burning cloves) make up 95% of the Indonesian market.
“Causing harm and death when used as intended, the cigarette is no ordinary commodity,” Welker, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, writes in her new, open-access book, Kretek Capitalism: Making, Marketing, and Consuming Clove Cigarettes in Indonesia. “The kretek, in turn, is no ordinary cigarette.”
Additional Information
"Air-con chao ta already”: Migrant Domesticities, Citizen Futurities and the Sensuous Anxieties of Air-Conditioning in Singapore
April 11, 2024
12:20 pm
Kahin Center
Gatty Lecture Series
Join us for a talk by Xinyu Guan, (PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Cornell University), who will discuss air conditioning in Singapore.
This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.
About the Talk
My talk explores citizenship as a form of landlordship and sensuous policing of noncitizen bodies in Singapore. Singapore’s much-lauded state-constructed housing program, under the Housing & Development Board (HDB), enables homeownership for more than 70% of the city-state’s citizenry. However, more than 360,000 people, mostly working-class migrants from surrounding countries, rent from Singapore citizens who are owners of HDB apartments, with little by way of tenants’ rights or protections. I discuss how these rental situations provide (often much needed) extra income for citizen-landlords, and house the migrants whose labor maintains the social and dietary infrastructures of HDB housing. The promise of egalitarian citizenship through mass homeownership in Singapore belies the vast power differential between citizen-landlords and migrant-tenants. Landlords dictate the daily routines of tenants to maximize rental extraction, reducing tenants’ bodies to abstracted quantities of space and time. I examine air-conditioning as an everyday site of discipline, contestation and “bordering” (de Genova 2017) of bodies and domesticities in these rental situations. I consider how the sensuous, atmospheric interfaces between citizens and noncitizens shift the stakes of citizenship and the right to the city in Singapore.
About the Speaker
Xinyu Guan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University, with graduate minors in the Southeast Asia Program and the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. His work examines the logics of citizenship by which queer and migrant communities are incorporated into state-constructed housing in Singapore. Xinyu’s research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Hu Shih Fellowship, and the Global PhD Grant.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Farmer Innovations and Best Practices by Shifting Cultivators in Asia-Pacific
Featuring Carol J. Colfer
This book, the third of a series, shows how shifting cultivators, from the Himalayan foothills to the Pacific Islands, have devised ways to improve their farming systems. Using case studies collected over many years, it considers the importance of swidden agriculture to food security and livelihoods, and its environmental significance, across multiple cultures, forest and cropping systems. There is a particular focus on soil fertility and climate change challenges. It is a 'must read' for those who realize that if the lives of shifting cultivators are to be improved, then far more attention needs to be directed to the indigenous and often ingenious innovations that shifting cultivators have themselves been able to develop. Many of these innovations and best practices will have strong potential for extrapolation to shifting cultivators elsewhere and to farming systems in general.
Additional Information
Learning About Labor Relations in Cambodia
By Alyssa Brundage '24
Einaudi's Southeast Asia Program sponsored a unique winter break study abroad opportunity. A participant describes the experience.
This past January, Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) collaborated with the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Center for Khmer Studies in Cambodia to host a unique study abroad opportunity. Students were brought to Cambodia for a two week in-country learning experience. Designed by Professor Vida Vanchan, Director of the Global Studies Institute and Professor of Geosciences at SUNY Buffalo State University, and co-taught by Scheinman Instructor and Institute Advisory Board member Richard Fincher, the course offered a comprehensive understanding of Cambodia, from past to present, focusing on labor, development, and society. This comprehensiveness is drawn from a prior version of the course, envisioned, designed, and co-taught by Professor Vanchan and ILR Professor Sarosh Kuruvilla in January of 2020.
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This Mega-city Is Running Out of Water. What Will 22 Million People Do When the Taps Run Dry?
Victoria Beard, SEAP/GPV
Victoria Beard, professor of city and regional planning, says “Water sources are depleted around the world. Every year, more cities will face ‘Day Zero,’ with no water in their piped systems.”
Additional Information
Kathleen Bahian Fallon
Graduate Student
Degree Pursued: PhD
Anticipated Degree Year: 2027
Committee Chair/Advisor: Tom Pepinsky
Discipline: Government
Primary Language: Filipino/Tagalog, French
Research Countries: Philippines, Singapore
Additional Information
Wa Communities in the China-Myanmar Borderlands
By Magnus Fiskesjö
The Wa is an ethnicity in the borderlands of China and Myanmar (Burma). In the 1950s and 1960s, their ancient land was divided for the first time by these two modern states. Before this watershed moment in Wa history, the Wa were famous as independent, practically invincible warrior-farmers, much feared in their region despite having no kings and no regular army. These Wa farmer-warriors were deeply engaged in their regional economy through trade in mining products, as well as in opium, and, as a result, the British colonial officers who tried but failed to incorporate them into their empire could not but marvel at the wealth of the Wa. Since the division, the formerly independent Wa communities have been transformed on both sides of the border: on the Chinese side, into drastically impoverished regular peasants under Chinese rule; and, on Burmese territory, since 1989, into peasants under a new type of Wa elite in the Wa state—a semi-state governed by the United Wa State Army (UWSA). Both in China and in Myanmar, the Wa are officially listed as an indigenous ethnic minority. In China, there is local autonomy in name only. In Myanmar, the UWSA is an ethnonationalistic Wa elite with an army of considerable power and occupies a fraught position in the geopolitics of the fragmented state of Myanmar, which the UWSA recognizes even as it seeks even greater autonomy. Both contemporary Wa societies are dramatically different from the past, although many cultural traditions continue.
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Across the Archives: Thai Anti-Communist Posters
April 26, 2024
3:00 pm
A SEADL webinar featuring: Dr. Tamara Loos, Professor of History, Cornell University.
Hosted by Emily Zinger, Southeast Asia Digital Librarian, Cornell University.
How to be an Anti-Communist: Information, Expertise, and Culture in Cold War Thailand
To be anti-communist in Thailand during the Cold War meant more than simply rejecting participation in a political ideology called communism—an ideology with which so few Thais were familiar that Bill Donovan, former head of the OSS and ambassador to Thailand, had the Communist Manifesto translated into Thai in 1952. US officials repeatedly worried that Thai leaders were not sufficiently concerned about the dangers of communism, so they helped construct an image of the communist enemy that would resonate with Thais. How to be an anti-communist meant learning to recognize and love the monarchy, to worship Buddhism, to participate in the heteronormative family, to appreciate private property even if one could not afford it, and to celebrate selected (reinvented) Thai traditions. All these meanings were heightened above other cultural traditions to become “the” norm during the Cold War era. And it was created by particular Thai and American “experts.” Tracing the development of this expertise and its unpredictable impacts reveals the limits of US funding and knowledge, on the one hand, and the empowerment of paternalistic cultural authority among Thai leaders, on the other. Despite the asymmetrical power relationship between the US and Thailand and the massive economic, military and police funding provided to Thailand, elite Thais fully participated in and led the shaping knowledge production, unlike rural Thais who became objects of USIS surveys and American anthropological studies. The talk will focus on the anti-communist posters that led me to this project.
About the Speaker
Tamara Loos is Professor of Southeast Asian history at Cornell University, is currently Chair of the History Department, and has served as Director of the Southeast Asia Program. Her first book, Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand, explores the implications of Siam's position as both a colonized and colonizing power in Southeast Asia. It is the first study that integrates the Malay Muslim south and the gendered core of law into Thai history. Her most recent book, Bones Around My Neck offers a critical history of Siam during the era of high colonialism through the dramatic and tragic life of a pariah prince, Prisdang Chumsai (1852–1935). Her teaching and articles focus on an array of topics including sex and politics, subversion and foreign policy, sexology, transnational sexualities, comparative law, sodomy, and gender in Asia. She has been interviewed by the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and other global media outlets about political protests in Thailand. In this talk she will discuss her current book project, tentatively titled How to be an Anti-Communist: Information, Expertise, and Culture in Cold War Thailand.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
Indonesia’s Corrupted Democracy
A review from the New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books has recently published a lovely review of "The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and Its Limits in Democratic Indonesia" by Marcus Mietzner, from SEAP Publications.