A01=Jane M. Ferguson
Anthropology
Asia
Asian history
Asian studies
Author_Jane M. Ferguson
borderlands
borders
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
Category=NHF
citizenship
countries
cultural analysis
culture
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
ethnography
government
historical analysis
history
homeland
identity
identity formation
independence
independent state
international politics
laws
military
Myanmar
nation
nation building
nation-state
national conflict
national identity
oppression
political analysis
political science
politics
rebellion
refugee
resistance
self-determination
Shan
Shanland
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asian history
Southeast Asian studies
Thailand
Product details
- ISBN 9780299333041
- Weight: 194g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Sep 2022
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
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.
