Repossessing Shanland - Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred (Hardcover)

Around five million people across Southeast Asia identify as Shan. Though the Shan people were promised an independent state in the 1947 Union of Burma constitution, successive military governments blocked their liberation. From 1958 onward, insurgency movements, including the Shan United Revolution Army, have fought for independence from Myanmar. Refugees numbering in the hundreds of thousands fled to Thailand to escape the conflict, despite struggling against oppressive citizenship laws there. Several decades of continuous rebellion have created a vacuum in which literati and politicians have constructed a virtual Shan state that lives on in popular media, rock music, and Buddhist ritual. Based on close readings of Shan-language media and years of ethnographic research in a community of soldiers and their families, Jane M. Ferguson details the origins of these movements and tells the story of the Shan in their own voices. She shows how the Shan have forged a homeland and identity during great upheaval by using state building as an ongoing project of resistance, resilience, and accommodation within both countries. In avoiding a good/bad moral binary and illuminating cultural complexities, Repossessing Shanland offers a fresh perspective on identity formation, transformation, and how people understand and experience borderlands today.

General

Imprint:	University of Wisconsin Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies
Release date:	August 2021
Authors:	Jane M. Ferguson
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 24mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	256
ISBN-13:	978-0-299-33300-3
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > Social & cultural anthropology > General Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > General Promotions
LSN:	0-299-33300-0
Barcode:	9780299333003

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