Rethinking Land and Property in a “Transitioning” Myanmar: Representations of Isolation, Neglect, and Natural Decline

Rhoads, Elizabeth; Wittekind, Courtney T.

doi:10.1353/jbs.2018.0011

Cited by 36 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In fact, urban change in Myanmar is not simply a matter of sociospatial transformation, but it also plays a crucial role in supporting the challenging and problematic transition from military to semi-constitutional government and in the process of nation-building (Huynh 2018;Roberts 2019). At the same time, as Rhoads and Wittekind (2018) argued, the omnipresent reference to the transition framework when dealing with Myanmar issues is highly problematic and biased. Indeed, it conveys a superficial, linear, and unquestionable conception of the country's recent history, present and future (from isolation and decline to development and modernity), and, more importantly, it silences the contested nature of ongoing transformations, as well as their impact on and ruptures of preexisting social structures and territories.…”

Section: Questioning Urban Change In Southeast Asia and Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday geographies in the changing city: subjective photo-routes in Mandalay, Myanmar

Puttilli

2020

GeoJournal

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This work upholds the importance of questioning young people to find out their point of view on urban transformation and grasp their perception and representation of the changes. Hence, the paper presents the methodology and results of an autophotography activity, and more specifically photo-routing organized in March 2018 with a group of young undergraduates at Mandalay University, Myanmar. In the sphere of this activity, the participants were asked to reflect on their relationship with the urban space and to use a camera to capture significant places and situations in their everyday experience of the city, with the goal of exploring their personal point of view on the changes occurring in it, both from a tangible and intangible perspective, in addition to how they are reflected in the everyday practice of the city. The idea at the basis of the research-intervention is that the focus on everyday life through qualitative and visual investigation techniques enables the emergence of some of the-both conscious and not-more-thanrepresentational ways in which people-a group of young adults in this specific case-perceive and live the processual nature of the city. Results show that the photo-route tool proved to be particularly effective in stimulating a critical gaze on the city and the changes underway, to acquire awareness of the constantly inbecoming nature of the places and reflect in an introspective manner on their own life course in relation to the city. Thus, the paper provides a contribution ''from below'' to the reflections on urban transformations going on in Southeast Asian cities and, more precisely, in Myanmar.Keywords Photo-routes Á Young adults Á Urban change Á MandalayThe intervention was carried out in collaboration with Stefano Bartolini, at the time research fellow at the University of Florence, who took part in devising and conducting the activity and took care of the technical aspects linked to the acquisition of the geo-referenced images on GIS. Thanks also go to Dr. Nyo Nyo, Professor and Head of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Mandalay, for her logistical and organizational support.

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Section: Questioning Urban Change In Southeast Asia and Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday geographies in the changing city: subjective photo-routes in Mandalay, Myanmar

Puttilli

2020

GeoJournal

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“…The policy encouraged foreign investment, which in turn boosted construction industry in Yangon lasting to date. This example is illustrative of what Rhoads and Wittekind (2018) have called recurring and cyclical transition. For them, "understanding transition as recurring serves to highlight historical continuity rather than defining the current moment as wholly differentiated from ruptures of the past.…”

Section: Setting the Scene On The So Called 'Transition' In Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Rhoads and Wittekind (2018) argue for a shift from ideas of transition "premised on isolation and decline and towards those centred on interaction and agency" (p.172). According to them, this shift is necessary to step away from narratives built on 'lack' and focus on how narratives on 'change' are reframing the past.…”

Section: Setting the Scene On The So Called 'Transition' In Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The violence continuum and the sustained employment of evictions and forced resettlement as means toward urban development, expansion and cleansing supported by a well-crafted legal and discursive framework is not new to Burmese scholarship (Kyed 2019;Rhoads and Wittekind, 2018;Marks, 2016;Woods, 2011;Seekins 2014). Our interest is to examine it against an old Benjamin employs the term "Gewalt", which does not mean violence in the same way that it does in English but more something like force or hegemony.…”

Section: On Violence Law and Inoperativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Unintended Cities’ and Inoperative Violence. Housing Resistance in Yangon

Astolfo

Boano

2020

Planning Theory & Practice

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This paper wishes to build two interconnected arguments: the first, that urban development and city expansion in Yangon happened through the forced resettlement of people from the city toward the periphery, and from periphery to periphery; the second, that resettlement was initiated before the British colony, perpetrated during the colonial period, internalised and expanded by the following post-colonial regimes, and has become by now the main form of statesanctioned space production. We argue that this has been possible thank to the development of laws, orders and policies that justified, legitimised and created the need for dispossession and displacement. Building on Benjamin's and Agamben's essays on violence, we claim that it is possible to interrupt the endless cycle of law and violence by locating violence outside the debate around 'means and ends'. Stemming from the authors' experience and repeated encounters with practices of social mobilisation of women in Yangon over the last five years, we have traced the potential for deactivating the 'signature' of violence in the everyday practices of resistance of urban dwellers in the township of Hlaing Thar Yar in Yangon. Through the incremental occupation, trespassing and building up of peripheral 'vacant' land, organised women's groups are challenging the spatial order established by post/colonial regimes.

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“…With this seasonal caricature in place, the years between colonialism and the present were seen as placeholders or “decades of isolation”. The country could even be described by these types of narratives as having been “isolated from the world for 60 years” (Rhoads and Wittekind 2018: 176, 177).…”

Section: Conclusion: Blossoming In the Burmese Spring?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Spitfires Sprouting in the Burmese Spring: The Real-life Quest for Historic Fantasy Aircraft in Contemporary Myanmar

Ferguson

2019

TRaNS

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In 2013, a group of British aviation archaeologists began excavating in Myanmar in search of some 140 mint-condition crated Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfire Mk XIV aircraft. According to their story, at the end of the Second World War, Allied forces in Burma were left with these unassembled aircraft. Without the funds to send them home, but unwilling to let the planes fall into enemy hands, they buried the crated planes in Mingaladon, Meiktila and Myitkyina. Like legends of pirate treasure, the story of these buried Spitfires carries with it fantastic aura and intrigue. For aviation fans, the pirate's gold is an iconic aircraft, meaningful in patriotic narratives for its role in the Battle of Britain. This paper will discuss this story as a form of military history folklore which is stoked by the orientalist perception that Burma/Myanmar's decades of military regimes and purported isolation indirectly ‘“preserved” the crated aircraft in time. As this paper will demonstrate, Burmese and others in Southeast Asia have their own legends of buried war materiel and treasure. This point, though largely lost on British aviation enthusiasts in their quest for their Spitfire ‘holy grail’, nevertheless crucially enabled their quest to manifest itself.

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Rethinking Land and Property in a “Transitioning” Myanmar: Representations of Isolation, Neglect, and Natural Decline

Cited by 36 publications

References 45 publications

Everyday geographies in the changing city: subjective photo-routes in Mandalay, Myanmar

Everyday geographies in the changing city: subjective photo-routes in Mandalay, Myanmar

‘Unintended Cities’ and Inoperative Violence. Housing Resistance in Yangon

Spitfires Sprouting in the Burmese Spring: The Real-life Quest for Historic Fantasy Aircraft in Contemporary Myanmar

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