30 March 2023

Ester Boserup Prize Lecture

Special Issue: Covid–19 and Civil Societies in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Edited by Peter Birkelund Andersen, Amit Prakash and Meghna Guhathakurta.

NAVEIÑ REET: Nordic Journal of Law and Social Research, No. 12, 2022

When we opened the call for this thematic issue on ‘Civil Society in the Time of Covid–19’ in Autumn 2020, the world was still suffering under the impact of then-still-new waves of Covid–19 and the question of how Covid–19 would change the world seemed pertinent. It still does. We chose to pose our question about Covid–19’s impact on civil society broadly, including social and governmental regulations that organise civil society and the public sphere. […] It is not yet possible to estimate how far the Covid–19-pandemic has led to lasting changes in civil society in South Asia and, if so, if the changes will yield civil societies that are more inclusive or more restricted. This issue presents the situation after two years of spread, lockdown and regulation. In some cases, governments have joined hands with civil society organisations; in others, governments have restricted the unfolding of activities in the civil society and the public sphere. As CSOs and the public sphere mediate relationships between governments and citizens, we can only hope that the respective governments, in collaboration with civil society, will formulate policies that work toward the inclusion of all citizens on equal terms.

Contributions from Sanjukta Das Gupta, Sujit Kumar Paul, Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, Matiur Rahman, Pradeep Peiris, HasinsheLecamwasam, Syeda Rozana Rashid, ChitrakshsheJain, Zeba, Sukanya Bhardwaj and MalinsheBalamayuran, Peter Birkelund Andersen, Amit Prakash and Meghna Guhathakurta.

Rethinking Community in Myanmar. Practices of We-Formation among Muslims and Hindus in Urban Yangon

Judith Beyer
NIAS Press, 2023

“This is the first anthropological monograph of Muslim and Hindu lives in contemporary Myanmar. In it, Judith Beyer introduces the concept of “we-formation” as a fundamental yet underexplored capacity of humans to relate to one another outside of and apart from demarcated ethno-religious lines and corporate groups. We-formation complements the established sociological concept of community, which suggests shared origins, beliefs, values, and belonging. Community is not only a key term in academic debates; it is also a hot topic among Beyer’s interlocutors in urban Yangon, who draw on it to make claims about themselves and others. Invoking “community” is a conscious and strategic act, even as it asserts and reinforces stereotypes of Hindus and Muslims as minorities. In Myanmar, this understanding of community keeps self-identified members of these groups in a subaltern position vis-à-vis the Buddhist majority population. Beyer demonstrates the concept’s enduring political and legal role since being imposed on “Burmese Indians” under colonial British rule.”

Judith Beyer is Professor of Social and Political Anthropology at the University of Konstanz. She specializes in legal and political anthropology and has long-term ethnographic field experience in both Southeast Asia and Central Asia. In Myanmar, her research focuses on ethno-religious minorities, community, activism, statelessness and the state.

Wage returns to workplace training in Myanmar

Henrik Hansen, S. Kanay De, John Rand, Neda Trifković

Development Policy Review, Volume 41, Issue 2, https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12658

Professor in development economics, John Rand recently published a paper on wages and work in Myanmar that was highlighted by the ODSHE (Overseas Development Institute). Development Policy Review March 2023 round-up | ODI: Think change.

Using linked employer–worker panel data from micro, small, and medium manufacturing enterprises in Myanmar, this article examines workplace training provision and private returns to training in Myanmar, a country with a severely constrained formal educational system and underperforming private sector. Among other findings, the study reveals that the wage returns to training are particularly high for women and among the least educated workers. The results suggest that government support of workplace training programmes in private enterprises could help increase performance of the manufacturing sector in Myanmar.

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The Ukraine Question: How should the South Respond?

Ravinder Kaur
International Politics. 60, 264–268 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00416-6

"The global south appears to be moving, this time from the margins of history to the centerstage where the future is being rehearsed. Take a look at the new color-coded world map–green, red, and yellow–that has begun taking shape since Putin launched his "special military operation" in Ukraine. In this palette of geopolitics, green stands for nations that voted in favor of the UN resolutions against Russian aggression, red for those who opposed, and yellow for abstentions. To no one’s surprise, the areas marked red include Russia and a handful of allies whereas the green covers “the West” and allies. In contrast, the sizeable yellow mostly signals nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These colors by no means neatly coincide with the mid-twentieth century taxonomies of the old first, second, and third worlds. And nor have they developed fixed positions on the Ukraine question."

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Crisis futures: COVID-19 and the speculative turning point of history

Ravinder Kaur

Global Discourse. Volume 12, Issue 3-4 (2022)

Covid-19 was widely pitched as a potential turning point of history, a rare crisis-as-opportunity by political leaders and policymakers. This claim of being at a revolutionary threshold, an exceptional time in history, and capitalising upon that claim to reshape the political-economic landscape is at the core of the speculative politics of crisis, or what I call crisis futures. Critical in this future-oriented discourse, I argue, is how time is invoked as a good in short supply, a precious opportunity, albeit one that can only be availed within a restricted period. This temporal limitation is what accrues speculative value to the crisis: the urgency to accelerate the desired change and to suspend any opposition to that change.