Revisiting the Wages of Burman-Ness: Contradictions of Privilege in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Myanmar’s much lauded but short-lived transition to a liberal capitalist order was marked by an upsurge in Islamophobia, anti-Muslim riots and the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya into Bangladesh. Amid this conflagration, debates over ethnic inclusion, privilege and nationalism were prominent. Yet within these debates, even seemingly antagonistic positions incorporated the class-blindness characteristic of US liberal white privilege theory. In this article, we engage these debates by recalling an earlier radical theorisation of racial privilege that later liberal conceptions went on to displace. Taking capitalist class relations seriously, we argue that, for the poor Burman, ethnic privilege has been deeply ambiguous and ultimately harmful. Burman supremacy, in short, has served as ideological-material scaffolding for the enduring subjugation of the Burman proletariat itself. In order to elaborate our argument, we tell a critical history of Burman chauvinism in Myanmar – a history that reveals “Burman-ness” as a sign not simply of ethnic/racial privilege, but of class privilege as well.

KEY WORDS:

• Ethnicity
• inequality
• Myanmar
• racial capitalism
• white privilege

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Izzy Rhoads, Matt Schissler, Michael Edwards and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. And we would especially like to thank Matt Walton for his willingness to discuss our engagement with his work and for the graciousness with which he did so. Stephen Campbell would also like to thank the Frontlines of Value project, based at the University of Bergen, with which he is an associated researcher.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For this approach, see https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1613529738807362&set=a.150343515125999&type=3&theater.

2 Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s June 2020 announcement that it would revise its definition of racism to reflect the centrality of systemic power imbalances demonstrates a noteworthy assimilation of this perspective into mainstream American life (BBC News, June 10, 2020).

3 Folkloric representations of backwardness were not only common in vernacular sayings and proverbs, but persist in Myanmar institutional life today: a classic epic poem on benighted uplanders is even included in the current university textbook (mwe nun ya kan) for second-year Burmese majors.

4 For years, a billboard declaring the hopeful promise “To a more modern and developed nation” has greeted visitors entering downtown Yangon from Myinigon Airport.

5 Taylor (2005, 280–281), for instance, understands military-state policies and projects – in particular its quasi-ethnological University for the Development of National Races – as evincing good faith pursuits, through which “policies that were intended to play down ethnicity and religion in politics and society [would have] an integrating effect over time.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bergens Forskningsstiftelse.