Making Merit, Making Civil Society: Free Funeral Service Societies and Merit-Making in Contemporary Myanmar

Hsu, Mu-Lung

doi:10.1353/jbs.2019.0001

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…There is a word in Burmese for such 'capital P' politics: nain ngan ye, "a state-centric, elite-level practice", with which most Burmese do not engage, and which thus poorly reflects everyday political practices (Gyi, 1983;Prasse-Freeman, 2016;Walton, 2016: 65). By extension, nain ngan ye can refer to national party politics and, in the wake of military rule, this form of political action is largely considered a dangerous activity rather than a popular way of engaging the state 6 (Hsu, 2019;McCarthy, 2016;Walton, 2016). Against this background, the actors of ward governance routinely engage in myriads of mundane political performances that reveal ambivalent and 'gray' relationships to nain ngan ye.…”

Section: Politics In the Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, state services are often substituted with lu hmu ye, a form of social work tied to (Theravada Buddhist) notions of merit, deservingness, and reciprocity (Hsu, 2019;McCarthy, 2019). The notion of parahita, which refers to the welfare of others, is particularly central to lu hmu ye (Walton, 2016).…”

Section: Self-governance Merit Politics and Lu Hmu Yementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the wards of Mandalay, lu hmu ye is partly institutionalized in the form of community-based organizations (CBOs), mutual-help associations, or volunteer groups (Hsu, 2019; McCarthy, 2016). Almost every ward has at least one such organization, whose purposes range from the handling of socio-religious ceremonies such as funerals or donations to monasteries, to various welfare activities.…”

Section: Politics In the Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Chatterjee’s words, the goal of the Law is thus not to turn ward governance into a space for ‘civil society’ where ‘citizens’ could exercise universal voting rights and participate in popular sovereignty (Chatterjee, 2004: 27–34). Rather, it constitutes an attempt at increasing the state’s political legitimacy by reinforcing the role of its local representatives in everyday social welfare provision (Hsu, 2019; McCarthy, 2016). So far, however, this attempt is incomplete and everyday ward governance remains a gray zone in which everyday practices defy formal institutions.…”

Section: Ward Governance In Mandalay: a Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we define and discuss three conceptions and practices of politics in this gray zone. We start with the normalized, elite practices of 'civil society' before moving to the eclectic practices of 'political society' (Chatterjee, 2004;McCarthy, 2016;Prasse-Freeman, 2016), to conclude on what we read as situated politics of merit and selfgovernance (Hsu, 2019;McCarthy, 2019;Prasse-Freeman, 2012). Before delving into the case, however, we describe our methodology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Expanding the Southern urban critique: Elite politics, popular politics, and self-governance in the wards of Mandalay

Sanchez

Myat

2021

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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This article explores everyday urban governance and politics in Mandalay, Myanmar. We examine this through a focus on state-society interactions within Mandalay’s ward offices, which are the lowest tier of the administrative backbone of the Myanmar state known as the General Administration Department. This reveals the existence of three intertwined forms of urban ‘politics’ in Mandalay: elite politics, which echo the practices of civil society in the sense of Partha Chatterjee; popular politics, which echo the practices of political society; and self-governance, which is an approach to politics culturally and historically situated in Theravada Buddhism and Myanmar’s authoritarian legacies. The situatedness of the case prompts us to argue in favor of expanding the southern urban critique beyond its conventional focus on liberal democratic metropolises of the global South, in order to enrich our understanding of what constitutes postcolonial urban politics. We suggest this could be achieved, as we attempt here, by adopting collaborative research methodologies and by extensively building on southern area scholarship in ways that mediate epistemic expropriation.

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Section: Politics In the Gray Zonementioning

confidence: 99%