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Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This dissertation explores the intersection of gender, violence, and dispossession among Burmese migrants living in precarious circumstances in Thailand, close to the border with Myanmar. In this space, particularly in the town of Mae Sot and surrounding areas, migrants are targets of multiple overlapping technologies of governance, including the Thai state, multinational garment export processing facilities, plantation-style agricultural firms, international humanitarian NGOs, and transnational social and political networks. Through a multi-modal qualitative approach relying on collaborative action research and key informant interviews, I consider how this complex web of discursive and relational power simultaneously renders migrants invisible subjects of global supply chains and yet hyper-visible targets of humanitarian assistance and intervention. Invisible because actors associated with state or market forces performatively enforce upon migrant bodies the violent notion that they are deportable, reiterating the boundaries of sovereignty at each encounter. And visible because as migrants struggle to make ends meet working long hours for illegally low wages, NGOs spotlight their social problems and offer solutions that promote individual biowelfare but not wider transformative change. Despite what appear to be opposing forces, both forms of power contribute to the production of gendered border subjects that are healthy workers; ethical and self-reliant yet docile. Migrants interpret and negotiate these overlapping systems, exerting agency as they rely on their own social and political networks to establish mechanisms of order that are shaped by but not necessarily subordinate to the disciplinary regimes of factories and farms, the juridical frameworks of the state, or the biopolitical gaze of NGOs. This dissertation finds that within these mechanisms, gender becomes a key discursive metaphor both to make sense of the widespread violence of displacement and to maintain collective order. Migrants' own gendered performances of discipline are themselves a product of border precarity and forge pathways of limited agency through which migrants seek to navigate the everyday conditions of that precarity. Throughout, this dissertation reflexively examines its own collaborative action research approach as well as humanitarian intervention on the border to identify ways that both are complicit in gendered border subjectivation. Gender in this analysis manifests itself as a set of discursive resources that NGO staff and migrants make use of as they seek to effect change--albeit in ways that tend to leave unchallenged the larger structural conditions of violence and neoliberal sovereignty that undergird and require the formation of a docile and disposable border population. Thus, in one sense, this dissertation is about how migrants survive in a violent context of dispossession, but it is also just as much about the generative qualities of violent life, the spaces in which agency challenges precarity, and the ways in which performatively reproduced gendered hierarchies are at the center of both precarity and resistance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

In 1988, the military government in Myanmar abandoned the socialist ideology and isolationism that had shaped the state since independence, embarking on a transition to an open economy and engagement of the international community. ¶ Where socialism had failed, economic development and partnerships with former insurgent groups became the new strategy to advance the military’s security agenda. The primary goal of the security agenda is to promote state consolidation based on a unitary state structure, and according to military values and interests. However, the military’s goals are antagonistic to much of the country’s population, especially its ethnic minority groups. Consequently, the military lacks moral authority, and is preoccupied with maintaining its power and seeking legitimacy. The state is oriented to regime maintenance rather than policy implementation, leaving the regime without autonomy to pursue policy goals outside of its security agenda. ¶ The changing nature of the state, and state-society relations during the period of transition is revealed by trends in social development. Specifically, this thesis explores these issues through a case study of the health system. One impact of the economic transition and the military’s new nation-building strategy has been the abandonment of social equity as an ideological goal of the state. Even under socialism, state capacity to promote health was weak. In the transitional state, weak state capacity is now combined with a political incapacity of the regime to make public health a priority. In the quest for performance legitimacy, the military government is pursuing a narrow conception of development that values economic growth. Putting the state’s scarce resources into social development does not fit into this development strategy. Government expenditure on health has declined steadily since 1988, and health bureaucrats struggle to implement government policy. Standards in the public health system are very low, and most people seek health care in the private and informal health sectors. ¶ Therefore, the military regime’s inability to achieve state consolidation, which leaves it preoccupied with its own legitimacy crisis, is a significant factor in the inability of the Myanmar state to promote social development. The process of economic transition from a socialist economy has exacerbated this through the withdrawal of the state from financing and delivery of social services, resulting in increasing inequity of access to these services.

Buddhism is an integral part of Burmese culture. While Buddhism has been practiced in Burma for around 1500 years and evidence of the religion is found throughout the country, nothing surpasses the concentration of Buddhist monuments found at Bagan. Bagan represents not only the beginnings of a unified Burmese country, but also symbolises Burmese 'ownership' of Theravada Buddhism. ¶ While there is an abundance of artistic material throughout Burma, the study of Burmese Buddhist art by western scholars remains in it infancy due to historical events. In recent years, opportunities for further research have increased, and Bagan, as the region of Buddhism's principal flowering in Burma, is the starting point for the study of Burmese Buddhist art. To date, there has been no systematic review of the stylistic or iconographic characteristics of the Buddhist images of this period. This thesis proposes, for the first time, a chronological framework for sculptural depictions of the Buddha, and identifies the characteristics of Buddha images for each identified phase. The framework and features identified should provide a valuable resource for the dating of future discoveries of Buddhist sculpture at Bagan. ¶ As epigraphic material from this period is very scant, the reconstruction of Bagan's history has relied heavily to this point in time on non-contemporaneous accounts from Burma, and foreign chronicles. The usefulness of Bagan's visual material in broadening our understanding of the early Bagan period has been largely overlooked. This is addressed by relating the identified stylistic trends with purported historical events and it is demonstrated that, in the absence of other contemporaneous material, visual imagery is a valid and valuable resource for both supporting and refuting historical events. ¶ Buddhist imagery of Bagan widely regarded to represent the beginnings of 'pure' Theravada practice that King Anawrahta, the first Burman ruler, actively encouraged. This simplistic view has limited the potential of the imagery to provide a greater understanding of Buddhist practice at Bagan, and subsequently, the cross-cultural interactions that may have been occurring. In this light the narrative sculptural imagery of the period is interrogated against the principal Mahayana and Theravada texts relating to the life of Gotama Buddha. This review, along with the discussion regarding potential agencies for stylistic change, reveals that during the early Bagan period, Buddhism was an eclectic mix of both Theravada and Mahayana, which integrated with pre-existing spiritual traditions. Towards the end of the early Bagan period, trends were emerging which would lead to a distinctly Burmese form of Buddhist practice and visual expression.

Thesis ( M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-264).

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This thesis examines the relationship between women and power in Burmese history, from the third century CE to the present day (2008), in order to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women’s power. In particular, the thesis aims to resolve the apparent contradiction that Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively ‘high’ social status and economic influence, yet for the most part remained conspicuously absent from the public political arena. The author demonstrates that, while some women exercised significant political influence through their familial connections with powerful men, cultural models of ‘correct’ female behaviour prevented most women from seeking official positions of political authority. The thesis considers how cultural and political influences – Buddhism, colonialism, nationalism and militarism – shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, which relegated women to ‘traditional’ subordinate, supporting political roles. The thesis also explores how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have limited women’s ability to exercise power in military-ruled Burma. The author considers whether the pro-democracy movement and the recent focus on women’s issues and rights have opened up any new opportunities for women to exercise power both inside Burma and in exile. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that there is a need to critically re-examine traditional historical representations of Burmese women as passive objects with no political agency, both to highlight women’s use of informal power and to explain why so few women gained access to formal power.

This thesis examines the relationship between women and power in Burmese history, from the third century CE to the present day (2008), in order to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women’s power. In particular, the thesis aims to resolve the apparent contradiction that Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively ‘high’ social status and economic influence, yet for the most part remained conspicuously absent from the public political arena. The author demonstrates that, while some women exercised significant political influence through their familial connections with powerful men, cultural models of ‘correct’ female behaviour prevented most women from seeking official positions of political authority. The thesis considers how cultural and political influences – Buddhism, colonialism, nationalism and militarism – shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, which relegated women to ‘traditional’ subordinate, supporting political roles. The thesis also explores how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have limited women’s ability to exercise power in military-ruled Burma. The author considers whether the pro-democracy movement and the recent focus on women’s issues and rights have opened up any new opportunities for women to exercise power both inside Burma and in exile. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that there is a need to critically re-examine traditional historical representations of Burmese women as passive objects with no political agency, both to highlight women’s use of informal power and to explain why so few women gained access to formal power.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 92-100).