The UBC Myanmar Initiative and the Centre for Southeast Asia Research at SPPGA\, in collaboration with UBC Anthropolo gy\, invite you to join us for a seminar and book talk with Dr. Elliott Pra sse-Freeman from National University of Singapore. This is a hybrid event w hich will be held in-person and online simultaneously.
This seminar i s a component of the UBC Myanmar Discussion Series and the 2013 Knowledge M arketplace\, which is organized by the Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar (K4D M) initiative. Learn more about the 2013 Knowledge Marketplace here.
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About the Tal
k
For decades\, the outside world mostly knew Myanmar as the
site of a valiant human rights struggle against an oppressive military regi
me\, predominantly through the figure of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San
Suu Kyi. Yet\, a closer look at Burmese grassroots sentiments reveals a sig
nificant schism between elite human rights cosmopolitans and subaltern Burm
ese subjects maneuvering under brutal and negligent governance. While elite
s have endorsed human rights logics\, subalterns are ambivalent\, often goi
ng so far as to refuse rights themselves\, seeing in them no more than empt
y promises. Such alternative perspectives became apparent during Burma’s mu
ch-lauded decade-long “transition” from military rule that began in 2011\,
a period of massive change that saw an explosion of political and social ac
tivism. How then do people conduct politics when they lack the legally and
symbolically stabilizing force of “rights” to guarantee their incursions ag
ainst injustice?
In this presentation\, Elliott Prasse-Freeman descri bes his recent book on the topic\, in which he documents grassroots politic al activists who advocate for workers and peasants across Burma\, covering not only the so-called “democratic transition” from 2011-2021\, but it also the February 2021 military coup that ended that experiment and the ongoing mass uprising against it. Taking the reader from protest camps\, to flop h ouses\, to prisons\, and presenting practices as varied as courtroom immola tion\, occult cursing ceremonies\, and land reoccupations\, the talk shows how Burmese subaltern politics compel us to reconsider how rights framework s operate everywhere.
About the Speaker
Elliott
Prasse-Freeman is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology an
d Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD
from the Department of Anthropology at Yale University.
LOCATION:Room 351\, C.K. Choi Building GEO:49.267258;-123.257967 URL;VALUE=URI:https://sppga.ubc.ca/events/event/exploring-activism-in-myanm ar-by-dr-elliott-prasse-freeman/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://sppga.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/10/Exploring-Activism-in-Myanmar_UBC-Myanmar-Inititative.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20231105T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR