Description:
"It is with great pride that we present this, the first issue of the
Journal of Burmese Scholarship (Thi saq myin hnan) to public
intellectuals and scholars of Burma. We hope, with this and the
issues to come, to make a significant contribution to the many
admirable efforts now underway in Myanmar to create a vibrant,
daring, and critical public sphere of the highest standards.
The formula that we begin with is designed to foster a long-
lasting intellectual community and civil debate around critical
themes of central concern to Myanmar’s public life and future
development. Each issue of the Journal is the culmination of one
or more thematic workshops bringing together scholars,
journalists, novelists, poets, scientists, and public intellectuals
who have had something original and important to say on the
topic. At a workshop, these participants present their work to one another, absorb what the other participants have to say
through discussion and debate and then revise their own work
accordingly. The result, in Burmese and in English, is then edited
and published, both digitally and physically. It is especially
fitting, then, that our first thematic issue is devoted to poverty in
Myanmar, its sources, its extent and, above all, the lived
experience of poverty among ordinary citizens.
It is our intention to let the light come in from any and all
intellectual windows: the arts, fiction, verse, lyrics, social science,
economics, anthropology, history, memoirs. Our premise is that
no discipline or specialty has a monopoly on truth or insight and
that the more carefully crafted perspectives we can
accommodate the more light we will shed.
Among the other themes/workshops either underway or
contemplated are:
1. Intellectuals, Technocrats and Rulers
2. Military Memoirs and Burmese History
3. Popular History from Below and Marginality
4. The Development of Burmese Arts and Letters 1930-2010
5.Student Activism: Aspirations, Representation and
Prospects from Colonialism to the ”Opening.”
6. Federalism, Ethnic Identity, and Nationalism
7. History of Prisons and Prison Literature from the Colonial
Period to Today.
In some respects we see ourselves as reviving, under a new
name, the precious tradition of the Journal of the Burma Research
Society, founded in 1910 and abolished in 1979 by the military regime. For the better part of a century, that journal was an open
forum for scholars, professional and amateur, Burmese and non-
Burmese, historians, social scientists, literary critiques,
archeologists and we value the opportunity to recreate, for a new
era, the open bazaar of quality work that its journal represented.
The idea for such a journal arose in October 2011 at a meeting of
seven Burmese scholars in the diaspora and three Western
scholars of Burma, before the “opening.” Once it became clear
that political conditions might allow us to operate in Myanmar
with open participation, we added six members to the organizing
committee and now plan to publish a physical journal based in
Yangon.
We have all observed, first-hand, the tremendous intellectual
energy and organizational initiatives (little societies, discussion
groups, NGO’s, charities, etc.) that have burst into the open over
the past several years. We hope that out small initiative will
contribute in a small way to this hopeful and energetic public
culture....."
Source/publisher:
Pansodan Books (Volume 1 Number 1)
Date of Publication:
2016-07-00
Date of entry:
2021-10-10
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Countries:
Myanmar
Language:
English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
4.18 MB
Resource Type:
text
Text quality:
- Good