Three new research-based publications are now available from RCSD, focused on a range of issues from local governance in post-coup Myanmar, the lives of CDM students in exile both internal and abroad, and the continuing work of Burma’s professional class of journalists, teachers, health workers, and others who have left their positions in protest of the military coup of 2021 and have now been working outside of central state control for five years.
Reimagining Community, the work of the Htanaung Collective and edited by Aung Naing examines how “new islands of citizenship” are growing in new, community-based, decentralized, emergent ways outside of the reach of the state.
“Fugitive Profeesionalism,” edited by Gustaaf Houtman, is a collection of papers originally presented at the ICBMS4 conference in 2024, examining how communities have come together to plug the holes of state failure or active state antagonism, collectively coming together in networks of skills, practices, and professions to continue to provide the services for which many “fugitive professionals” were trained and now continue to practice beyond the scope of state oversight and control, as the “center falls away” from their continued work.
“When Leaving Becomes Resistance: Student Displacement in Contemporary Myanmar” by Amelia Jane, and the newest addition to the Understanding Myanmar’s Development research series, draws on interviews with over two dozen Myanmar students who have displaced into Thailand and throughout Myanmar. The author explores how, post-coup, Myanmar students have taken divergent pathways in trying to continue their educations and have built a shared identity around their refusal to lend legitimacy to military rule, utilizing and adapting to their conditions of displacement.
