This is the first book to provide a broad overview of the ways in which Buddhist ideas have influenced political thinking and politics in Myanmar. Matthew Walton draws extensively on Burmese language…
Buddhism has existed for around two and half millennia, and is practiced by over 500 million people in the world today. The anthropology of Buddhism spans the breadth of the Buddhist world and…
Political Science Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs
2019
The plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar has drawn considerable international attention in recent years but a solution to the crisis remains elusive. This article gathers pertinent research from key…
ABSTRACT Narrative analysis has been widely employed in the social sciences. Yet there has been no systematic application of narrative theory to the study of how the word “democracy” is given meaning…
After decades of military rule in Myanmar, civil society organizations and the National League for Democracy (NLD) have used the opening public space to mount inter-religious dialogue and to raise…
Abstract In recent years, international campaigns to promote religious freedom have come under sustained scholarly scrutiny. At the core of much of this scrutiny are concerns about a pernicious…
The Introduction offers a broad historical overview of Buddhist–Muslim relations in Buddhist majority states in South and Southeast Asia, showing in important ways the historical fluctuations of…
Political Science, Sociology The Review of Faith & International Affairs
2019
The military-led reform of the Myanmar state that began in approximately 2011, constituted by partial democratic reform, economic liberalization, and a newly invigorated peace process with more than…
History, Political Science Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
2021
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…
It is argued that this model provides support for a two-dimensional distinction between great and little traditions, shedding light on decades-old theoretical debates, and suggests that research on religiosity may be blinded to a crucial dimension of religious life.
ABSTRACT Violence against Muslim minority communities in Myanmar has brought the issue of human rights to international and domestic attention. Burmese democratic leaders, activists and Buddhist…
Weber's claim that Buddhism is an otherworldly religion is only partially true. Early sources indicate that the Buddha was sometimes diverted from supramundane interests to dwell on a variety of…
For centuries, Burmese have looked to the authority of their religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, to negotiate social and political hierarchies. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar examines…
This book provides a significant and unique contribution to the emerging literature of comparative political thought. Michaelle L. Browers offers compelling evidence, with extensive analysis and…
A concern with unity has been a consistent theme in modern Burmese politics. This article examines a particularly problematic conception of unity that I argue draws strength from its resonance with…
Buddhism and politics in Asia - the textual and historical roots, Ian Harris the legacy of tradition and authority -Buddhism and the nation in Myanmar, Bruce Matthews Buddhism in extremis - the case…
Despite its rich religious culture, scholarship on Burmese Buddhism has been given little attention by historians of religion. Most of the scholarship on Burma has been predominantly conducted by…
In this article, I explore the notion of charisma and moral power in contemporary Myanmar and focus on the qualities of charismatic monks who have become the object of public worship in recent…
Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power describes a transformation in Buddhist practice in contemporary Burma. This revitalization movement has had real…
Introduction In the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia, that is Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and, to some extent, Vietnam, the articulation of secular and religious authority developed in…
This overview looks at the field of religion in Burmese studies from the perspective of practices that are relatively neglected, such as spirit cults. It argues that the overwhelming bias toward…