Forging the nation: Land struggles in Myanmar's transition period

VENUE

The dialogues in the series will be held in hybrid mode, i.e. in-person on the ANU Campus, and virtually on zoom.

IN-PERSON: Institutes Boardroom, HC Coombs Extension Building, 9 Fellows Road, ANU, Acton, ACT, 2601.

ONLINE: Zoom. Please select the relevant ticket, in-person or online, according to your preferred attendance mode.

Forging the nation: Land struggles in Myanmar's transition period 

As Myanmar is an agriculture-based economy involving two-thirds of the population, land is the ideal lens through which to understand the dynamics of a country that underwent a three-part transition from 2011 to 2020: toward democracy, toward peace, and toward open markets. Against a fraught democratisation process, Forging the Nation looks at how state and societal actors in Myanmar’s multiethnic society, recovering from over seven decades of civil war, negotiated land politics to shape democratic land institutions. By exploring the interaction of the democratic transition, ethnic politics, and global capital pressures on land across national, regional, and local scales, Mark provides an overarching frame pulling together these three facets that are usually treated separately in the literature. Emphasising the co-constituent relationship between democratisation and land politics, Forging the Nation makes a unique contribution to understanding the role of land in political-economic transitions.

Speaker 

SiuSue Mark is a Salzburg Global Seminar fellow, political economist, and development practitioner with over twenty years of professional experience. She worked on Myanmar's democratisation process during a stay in the country from 2008 to 2019.

Chair

David Hopkins, ANU, david.hopkins@anu.edu.au

The ANU Myanmar Research Centre Dialogue Series is a conversation concerning current research on Myanmar aimed at providing scholars with an opportunity to present their work, try out an idea, advance an argument and critically engage with other researchers. International and Myanmar researchers from any discipline are invited to contribute. The Dialogue Series is particularly seeking to provide a space for early career researchers wishing to receive constructive feedback. Each dialogue is one hour long, including a 30-minute presentation followed by a 30-minute Q&A. As a hybrid series, the Dialogues are presented in both virtual and in-person format, hosted by the ANU Myanmar Research Centre.