Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma

Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis

“…Indeed, they tended to read junta development projects as nothing more Myanmar's Citizenship Crisis 411 than another Bamar attempt to civilise and control the margins of a fractious state (Lambrecht 2004). Perhaps the only significant exception was a quixotic attempt by Robert H. Taylor, in 2005, to float the possibility that ethnic categories, identified in an earlier article as central to national politics (Taylor 1982), might now be a thing of the past. "In fact, the question needs to be asked whether 50 years of civil war has created a nation from the fragments that previously fought over what kind of nation to conceive" (Taylor 2005, 265).…”

“…Ethnicity became the primary marker of difference in the colonial era (Taylor 1982), and ever since has generated the most intractable political issues facing the country. Religious tension has long characterised the society.…”

Comparing Models of Non-state Ethnic Education in Myanmar: The Mon and Karen National Education Regimes

“…However, much of the literature has been rather simplistic and unhelpful, often framing ethnicity as a given, essentialised category. This, despite the clear warning provided by one of the foundational texts - Taylor's (1982) use of historical evidence to analyse how categories of ethnic identity are framed, and often assumed as relatively unproblematic, in much of the (particularly non-academic) literature. Taylor shows how concepts of ethnic identity are in part at least a product of British colonial administration.…”

“…During the British period, elites from "hill-tribe" ethnic nationality communities, such as the Karen, were the objects of patronage from missionaries, and later state administrators, resulting in the promotion of indigenous language use and related processes of identity consolidation and, indeed, reification (Taylor 1982). For Mon society, however, the colonial period was one of benign neglect, during which a few wealthy merchants continued to make merit by sponsoring religious works (including translations of Buddhist scripture into and from Mon).…”

Political Legitimacy in Myanmar: The Ethnic Minority Dimension

“…Consequently, to the "hill" people (the Kachin, Chins, Shan, and Karen), "the colonial state remained as remote and largely irrelevant as the precolonial state has been." 28 One of the outcomes of the Second World War was that it "brought the consequences of the modern European state system to the hill peoples, causing the development of forms of nationalism among those peoples." 29 It was, however, not a very developed form of nationalism as loyalties were still towards kinship ties and patronage.…”