CHAIRPERSON
Assoc Prof Maitrii Aung Thwin, Department of History, National University of Singapore
ABSTRACT
Interdisciplinary in scope, this presentation will take up the 1950 short story “Ko Danga,” by Burmese author Kyay Ni, as a critical lens through which to approach the contemporary political economy of Myanmar’s inland fisheries. Due to its level of ethnographic detail, Kyay Ni’s account of the inland fisheries regime in early postcolonial Burma provides an effective historic baseline against which to assess more recent developments in this sector—developments outlined herein based on interviews and research trips to fishery locations in Ayeyarwady and Yangon regions. Yet Kyay Ni’s writing also offers, I suggest, some heterodox insights into contemporary political economic concerns, of relevance in Myanmar and more broadly. I therefore make the broader case that social science research could benefit by returning to the writings of Myanmar’s early postcolonial intellectuals.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Stephen Campbell is an assistant professor in the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University. Most broadly, his research examines the relationship between workers’ struggles and state formation, which he has pursued through fieldwork in Myanmar and Thailand. His book, Border Capitalism, Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone, was published by Cornell University Press in April 2018.
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