Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand, and a Nation-State Deferred

Around five million people across Southeast Asia identify as Shan. Though the Shan people were promised an independent state in the 1947 Union of Burma constitution, successive military governments blocked their liberation. From 1958 onward, insurgency movements, including the Shan United Revolution Army, have fought for independence from Myanmar. Refugees numbering in the hundreds of thousands fled to Thailand to escape the conflict, despite struggling against oppressive citizenship laws there. Several decades of continuous rebellion have created a vacuum in which literati and politicians have constructed a virtual Shan state that lives on in popular media, rock music, and Buddhist ritual.

Based on close readings of Shan-language media and years of ethnographic research in a community of soldiers and their families, Jane M. Ferguson details the origins of these movements and tells the story of the Shan in their own voices. She shows how the Shan have forged a homeland and identity during great upheaval by using state building as an ongoing project of resistance, resilience, and accommodation within both countries. In avoiding a good/bad moral binary and illuminating cultural complexities, Repossessing Shanland offers a fresh perspective on identity formation, transformation, and how people understand and experience borderlands today.

Author: Jane M. Ferguson
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 09/06/2022
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.98w x 0.79d
ISBN13: 9780299333041
ISBN10: 0299333043
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- History | Asia | Southeast Asia
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | Asian Studies

About the Author
Jane M. Ferguson is a lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.