{"id":7031339,"date":"2026-08-07T04:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/general-ne-win-burmanization-and-the-problem-of-peace-in-modern-myanmar\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:06:16","slug":"general-ne-win-burmanization-and-the-problem-of-peace-in-modern-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7031339","title":{"rendered":"General Ne Win, Burmanization, and the Problem of Peace in Modern Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I have been remiss in posting to Ethnography.com.\u00a0 For about ten years, this ws a forum I really enjoyed.\u00a0 There was a community of bloggers, and the quality of ethnography posted was unusual in both its geographic spread, and the vigor of its writings about places as diverse as Dominica in the Caribbean, Tunisia, Madagascar, Tanznia, Myanmar, Romania, and other places around the world.\u00a0 I think I am one of the few people in the world who actually enjoys editing ethnograhpic writing.\u00a0 Writing that is 1200-2000 words or so, and preferable illustrated with photos.\u00a0 The latter part, i.e. photos and layout has been done the last five years ago by Christina Quigley who has an aesthetic sense for such things that I do not have.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it has been well over a year since I last posted, and during this time, I had a new book come out.\u00a0 The book is co-authored with Saw Eh Htoo, my PhD. students when I worked in Thailand from 2016-2022.\u00a0 The book is General Ne Win\u2019s Legacy of Burmanization in Myanmar: The Challenge to Peace in the Twenty-First Century<\/em><\/a>. The publisher is Palgrave MacMillan (Springer), which is a huge corporation but which has also doen a lot to get the book on-line quickly.\u00a0 Those of you with university library accounts should be able to get a PDF soon.<\/p>\n

The authorship story is the most important part of the book.\u00a0 Saw Eh Htoo was a very energetic and passionate advociate for peace in Myanmar.\u00a0 But, he had also grown up with the government of the authoritarian General Ne Win, whose culture of \u201cBurmanization\u201d permeated the schools. popular culture, and much else during his boyhood which started in the Karen-speaking areas of the Irrawaddy Delta, and later in Rangoon\/Yangon.\u00a0 As a boy he was witness to the 1988 mass demonstrations against General Ne Win\u2019s government, and witnessed the emergence of the mass demonstrations which were harshly suppressed by the military in 1988, and indeed until roughly 2010.\u00a0 During this time, he developed a passion for reading, both in the Karen and Burmese languages.\u00a0 An interest in philosophy and sociology brought him to English as a university student.<\/p>\n

With the loosening of restrictions after 2012 of restrictions on free speech, interactions with foreigners, and the arrival of foreign aid, Saw Eh Htoo was able to found a NGO, and began traveling and working areas of Myanmar which were previously inaccessible.\u00a0 Among them were the Rohingya aras of Rakhine State, Chin State, and across the lines in the \u201cKawthoolei\u201d portions of Karen State.<\/p>\n

This experience brought him to Payap University in Thailand where I taught in 2017.\u00a0 When he arrived, Saw Eh Htoo was an enthusiastic reader, and thinker, seeking to figure out why two peoples that created him, both the Karen and the Burmese, could not produce peace in the way others had.\u00a0 He was convinced that the answer lay in the nature of military rule, as it had emerged after the 1962 coup conducted by General Ne Win. This coup had led, he said, to harsh ethnocentric policies of military rule which are irreconcilable with the multi-ethnic nature of Myanmar. The dissertation he wrote is the basis for the book we published together in May 2024.<\/p>\n

Saw Eh Htoo cmpleted his dissertation,and submitted the first draft to me in March, 2022.\u00a0 But it was never to be completed as a dissertation.\u00a0 Saw Eh Htoo had terrible bouts with COVID in 2021, and then stomach cancer.\u00a0 He passed away in Yangon on May 31, 2024. Left with the manuscript, I asked him family if I could complete his work in a manner suitable for publication.\u00a0 This permission was graciously granted. This is the book which has now been published by Palgrave Macmiillan.\u00a0 The book is deeply rooted in Saw Eh Htoo\u2019s emic sense of himself as a Karen Christian living in Burmese-speaking Yangon.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this blog post is just a first effort at telling the story of Burmanization and peace in memory of Saw Eh Htoo and his dreams.\u00a0 I trust it will not be my last effort.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Tony<\/div>\n
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Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages\u2013and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been remiss in posting to Ethnography.com.\u00a0 For about ten years, this ws a forum I really enjoyed.\u00a0 There was a community of bloggers, and the quality of ethnography posted was unusual in both its geographic spread, and the vigor of its writings about places as diverse as Dominica in the Caribbean, Tunisia, Madagascar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":356867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[15186,10961,1434,15187,4261,4106,4666],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7031339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-burmanization","tag-general","tag-modern","tag-myanmar","tag-peace","tag-problem","tag-win"],"yoast_head":"\nGeneral Ne Win, Burmanization, and the Problem of Peace in Modern Myanmar - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7031339\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"General Ne Win, Burmanization, and the Problem of Peace in Modern Myanmar - 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