Table of Contents

Eric Tagliacozzo and Wen-Chin Chang
Introduction: Burmese Lives in a Divided State

I. The Specter of Hardship
1. Mandy Sadan
The Extra-ordinariness of Ordinary Lives

2. Pascal Khoo-Thwe
The Kayan Padaung Community in Phekhon

II. Negotiating with the State
3. Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière
A Woman of Mediation

4. Eric Tagliacozzo
Burmese and Muslim: Islam and the Hajj in the Sangha State

III. Ways of Escape
5. Hsin-chun Tasaw Lu
Recounting, Resistance, and Reflection: An Analysis of a Burmese Classical Musician's Narrative

6. James C. Scott
Dr. U Tin Win, Escape Artist

IV. At Burma's Margins
7. Maxime Boutry
The Maung Aye's Legacy: Burmese and Moken Encounters in the Southern Borderlands of Myanmar, 1987-2007

8. Wen-Chin Chang
By Sea and by Land: Stories of Two Chinese Traders

V. Ethnicity and the Self
9. Ma Thida
A Mixed Identity, a Mixed Career

10. Karin Eberhardt
A Life in Service of Change

11. Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
From the "Loyal" to the "Revolutionary" Karen: Looking at Burma's Post-Independent Eras

About the Author

Wen-Chin Chang is Associate Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. She is a native of Tainan, Taiwan and a PhD graduate of the University of Leuven Belgium.


Eric Tagliacozzo is Professor of History at Cornell University, and a PhD graduate of Yale University.

Both have been working in Southeast Asian Studies for some two decades.

Reviews

Burmese Lives succeeds in adopting personal narrative -- a rarely used methodology -- in the study of contemporary Myanmar, examining the interactions between the narrators and the contexts in which the narrators live, and leading readers to know more about the multifaceted realities of Myanmar history.
*Kai Chen, Political Studies Review*