In recent years Myanmar has seen great changes in society, politics and economics. The opportunities presented to the people of Myanmar as it emerges to engage with the rest of the world have been extraordinary. Like a chrysalis Myanmar is transitioning from what has been a constrained and tightly controlled society and is now emerging into a new, more expansive world. Such transitions always present challenges and extend opportunities. Education is often a critical element in the success of these transitions.

Education is fundamental and integral to many of the changes which are occurring in Myanmar – both in its capacity to increase knowledge that is relevant to all aspects of life and also to allow Myanmar to engage with the wider world. The individuals experiencing this transformation within the higher education sector need to have access to the principles and research insights from scholarship outside Myanmar to successfully develop policy, science, law, agriculture, library science, health, medicine, economics and other disciplines. Providing open and professionally constructed access to such knowledge underpins the principles which guide the library and information professions around the world.

Library and information studies is a fundamental part of this education revolution and the education and training of qualified library and information professionals has been viewed internationally as a critical element in information access. Education for this discipline was established in Myanmar at the University of Yangon in the 1971 at the height of the development of schools of librarianship worldwide. As with much tertiary education in former British colonies and Commonwealth countries the model adopted was that of British education (see Carroll 2013) with both undergraduate and postgraduate professional entry. This remains the prevailing model. First led by U Thaw Kaung, Chief Librarian of the Universities’ Central Library, until 1997 the courses evolved primarily on a print-based culture (University of Yangon 2018). The University is a leader in library studies in Myanmar, consistent with its role as the premier research university in the country. The Department of Library and Information Studies has expanded in 2019 to include eighteen academics, supporting students studying undergraduate and postgraduate, including Masters and PhD, programs. The Department is the largest library education department in Myanmar.

When Myanmar's first democratically elected officials took their place in the Pyithu (lower) and Amyotha (upper) houses of Parliament in February 2016 it heralded in a new era – one of hope and optimism – for the greater part of Myanmar's population. The National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi held an 86 per cent majority of elected seats. Clad in orange as a mark of their difference from the military's light green, a collective sigh of relief was felt across the country, as the new members of parliament took their seats. After half a century of military rule, the process of installing the new government was by all accounts a triumph for democracy. Fears that the military, who by constitutional rule are reserved 25 per cent of seats in both the lower and upper houses, would agitate and refuse to hand over power to the NLD did not eventuate. While the 2008 Constitution, written by the former military junta, barred Aung San Suu Kyi from taking the position of president, the NLD-led parliament created the new role of State Counselor for her – a role effectively seen by all as the head of state, “above the president” (BBC 2016).

Significant gains in reforming Myanmar had already been made during the term of the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which formed a majority government after the flawed general elections of November 2010. While there remain many questions over the state of Myanmar's “transition”, it marked the starting point for the country's move away from military rule toward a halting process of democratisation (Kyaw Yin Hlaing 2012; Cheesman et al. 2014; Crouch 2017a; Jones 2014). President Thein Sein, a former military general, led these changes, praised as a “champion of democracy” (Hunter 2014). And yet, built on the 2003 commitment to a roadmap to a “discipline flourishing democracy”, efforts to reverse a legacy of isolation also cemented the Tatmadaw's power in the nation's “democratic” future under the guise of liberalisation (Egreteau 2016; Jones 2018; Brooten et al. 2019).

One of the key election promises of the NLD government in 2015 was the enactment of constitutional reform to limit the role of the military in national affairs. Alongside their control of security-related cabinet portfolios, important sections of the constitution entrench the Tatmadaw's influence over the parliament and legislative affairs, marginalising civilian rule (Crouch 2019a).

Representation is widely considered to be an essential role of parliaments (Johnson 2005; Ruedin 2012). The extent to which the composition of a parliament reflects the diversity of political opinion, women or marginalised groups in society is an important indicator of genuine representation (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2008). Exisiting scholarship demonstrates the importance of the role of political institutions, political parties and individual MPs, for evaluating an emerging democracy (Judge & Leston- Bandeira 2017). In Myanmar, the representational performance of both elected and military MPs is yet to be determined.

This paper explores the representation of both military and elected MPs in sub-national parliaments in Myanmar and how MPs themselves believe their representative performance contributes to the wider understanding of democratic norms in the public eye. We draw on scholars who apply performativity theory to the study of political institutions (Judge and Leston-Bandeira 2017; Lavi 2016). Performativity allows us to understand the constructed nature of politics and to see the ways in which MPs perform or “act” their role (Loxley 2007). As Judge and Leston-Bandeira (2017, 156) point out, “the ‘picturing’, ‘aesthetic’ or ‘performative’ aspects of representation are central” to assessing representational performance. In applying performativity theory to democracy and democratic institutions, Lavi (2016, 1) suggests that “democracy is not the source of acts and procedures but rather their ‘performative effect,’ a social fiction, perpetually constructed through social enactments, performances, and imagination.” Following from Lavi's work, we explore the way that MPs in Myanmar construct and enact their roles in sub-national parliaments and how that influences their modes of representative performance.

In drawing on this work, we are particularly interested in exploring what constraints MPs face in their representative performance. We build off qualitative research which the authors conducted in three sub-national parliaments: in the Mon and Karen State parliaments and Tanintharyi region parliament in 2018. The rationale for the selection of these smaller parliaments for this study was that since they are among the smallest in the country, they provide a unique insight into the structural issues that impact the representative performance of MPs.

The NLD-led government has faced many challenges since it assumed power in April 2016. This has included the need for constitutional, education, legal and land reform, the demand for capacity building in many sectors, further economic reforms, and an unfinished peace process. During the first 100 days of its administration, the NLD government completed a number of projects and policies initiated by the previous government, offering – contrary to expectations – more continuity than change. Continuity across the reform process has been a good thing when it came to the policy work that had been completed earlier, allowing the ministerial administration to continue with their work. However, over the past two years there has been a gradual slowing of the reforms. As the NLD ends its fourth year in power the overall mood across Myanmar has changed from hope to stagnation. The list of challenges confronting the government seem almost unchanged from when the NLD took power. In many ways, the country appears to have stopped moving forward, stuck in quagmires that don't have easy solutions.

The transition from a military dictatorship to a more participatory democratic system was never going to be smooth – as could be seen for example in the Eastern European and former Soviet states (Turk 2014). Education plays a key role as countries move on from crisis and conflict, with the concept of “transition” capturing the change, reforms, innovation and development that occurs (Mitter 2002). In Myanmar issues pertaining to education reform are also deeply embedded in the peace process (Lall and South 2018) and questions of belonging and citizenship (South and Lall 2017).

A key issue for The NLD government has therefore been how to link the wider reforms with the peace process, since without a lasting and just peace, the reforms are unlikely to be sustainable. The lack of decentralisation means that ethnic states still do not have the required mandate to engage with issues specific to their state or their ethnic groups. This is underpinned by the lack of ethnic voices in parliament and in wider politics. Whilst the NLD did put up ethnic candidates in certain areas, they have not been able to speak up specifically for local and ethnic issues, as ethnic parties have done in the past.

Vietnamese Catholicism has a rich store of myths and miracles and its own heretics and gnostics. Indeed, the story of Catholicism's reception and interaction with local religious culture, and the history of its intersection with the Vietnamese state — from dynastic to recent times, over the last 400 years — is as complex as it is long. Underpinning this heritage is the influence of the myth, as widely expressed in French colonial, post-independence Vietnamese and Western scholarship, of Catholicism's essential foreignness. Introduced by Western missionaries from the late 1500s and more forcefully imposed by French priests during the colonial era — the myth proposes — the religion was anathema to local tradition. Because missionaries sought to impose the religion in absolute terms, placing obedience to God above loyalty to the temporal authority, Christianity could not but be rejected by the Confucian order (Buttinger 1958). With only a small and marginal following, the religion was rejected by the mainstream, and hence the faith never attained harmony with local ways (Lê 1975). Vietnamese Catholics, who subsequently became surrogates of their imperial masters, turned their backs on traditional culture, creating a rift within mainstream society (Kiệm 2001).

Yet, as powerful as this shorthand overview of Catholic history is, like all myths and cursory interpretations of social conflict it clouds a complex reality. Certainly mission successes in converting tens of thousands of Vietnamese from the seventeenth century can be attributed to Catholicism's absolutist spiritualism. But we cannot assume all converts were attracted to the religion simply on this basis alone, or that, having converted, Catholics could not accommodate loyalty to local political authority with their beliefs. Buddhism is also an imported belief systems, but in contrast to Catholicism is regarded in popular discourse as essential to Vietnamese tradition. It would be unthinkable to consider personal identification with Buddhist beliefs as anathema to one's position within the political order.

For all the violence generated by Catholicism's integration, the religion has become arguably just as much a Vietnamese faith as Buddhism and for that matter, Confucianism.

Introduction: Zen at the Core

While conducting research on contemporary Buddhist practice in Hanoi from 1997 to 1998, people frequently brought up the subject of Zen [Thiển] mummies. These mummies were said to have been exceptional Zen masters whose level of spiritual attainment was so high that when they died sitting in meditation, their bodies naturally preserved. The mummies would be lacquered and worshipped as holy relics. Their mummified remains were evidence of the mastery of these monks over meditative techniques. At the same time, a nationalist sentiment was vicariously given support by their remains, with people proudly pointing to them to show the achievements of Buddhism in Vietnam. Viewing these mummies from time to time at famous pagodas in the vicinity of Hanoi, however, would prove the closest I would come to Zen Buddhism in Vietnam during that period. My observations were reflected in Cuong Tu Nguyen's description:

While Cuong Tu Nguyen's statement agrees with my own experience, he goes contrary to the few available descriptions of Vietnamese Buddhism. Since at least the early twentieth century, Zen has been taken by academics and practitioners alike as the core of Vietnamese Buddhism, though there has clearly been a tendency since as early as the fourteenth century to favour Zen in written accounts of Buddhism in Vietnam. A text called the Thiển Uyển Tập Anh (Outstanding Figures in the Zen Community [of Vietnam]), discovered by Trần Văn Giáp, was central to this construction. It was intended to be a narrative history of Vietnamese Zen Buddhism and aims to show that it is a continuation, or development, of the Chinese Zen tradition.

Introduction

When news of the disaster in Tân Cảnh village reached the office of “Protestant Aid”, the project officer, Mr Ðỗ, left immediately with his assistant and driver in their white Land Cruiser. It was early in the morning, yet there were already many people on the road. When Mr Ðỗ stopped by the side of the road to ask for directions to Tân Cảnh, another car went by with several white faces inside and an unfamiliar logo on the side door. Mr Ðỗ did not recognize them, and the car passed on. Less than a minute later, a second car pulled up alongside the Land Cruiser. In the back seat were two monks in orange robes. Mr Ðỗ did not recognize them either, and the car passed on. Following them, a third car with tinted windows and blue license plates travelled down the road. Mr Ðỗ could not see inside the car, and it too passed on.

Having found the correct way to Tân Cảnh, Mr Ðỗ stopped in a field near the village gate. To his amazement, not only were the three cars that passed him on the road parked nearby, but several other vehicles and dozens of motorbikes as well. Some of these were marked with organizational names and symbols; others were unmarked. “Who are all these people?” he asked himself. From one of the unmarked cars, a well-dressed Asian stepped out carrying two large suitcases. Mr Ðỗ had brought nothing but his notebook. At this point, he wondered if he should go on.

Mr Ðỗ's fictional predicament is becoming increasingly common in Vietnam. Of course, not all communities in need attract as many good Samaritans as the one in this retold parable. However, hundreds of foreign religious organizations are currently operating in different ways, alongside greater numbers of secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs), larger multilateral and bilateral development programmes, and existing programmes of the Vietnamese state. This expansion of development and charitable activity has occurred quietly since the mid-1990s, paralleling rapid growth in domestic religion.

Introduction

In recent years, lên đổng spirit mediumship has been drawing an ever- growing number of devoted believers and initiates. Temples dedicated to the pantheon of the Four Palaces [Tứ Phủ] receive a constant stream of visitors seeking to transact with the spirit world for existential needs and economic benefits, and prominent master mediums attract large and diverse clienteles of mediumship initiates who believe they cannot succeed in this life unless they repay their debt with the Four Palaces from a previous incarnation by entering into the spirits’ service and becoming a medium (see Fjelstad and Nguyen 2006). From the bubbly liveliness of Hanoi's overflowing markets (Schütte 2005), a veritable “spirit industry” has emerged: shops that specialize in wholesale and retail of ritual robes and frills, family enterprises producing intricate votive paper objects, musicians and assistants organizing their busy schedules over their cellphones in the midst of an ongoing ritual, and — last but not least — master mediums [đổng thầy] who cater to the needs of their followers and followers-to-be, prepare and perform initiations and other rituals, organize pilgrimages to remote temples, and keep the incense in their private temples burning.

The upsurge of religious and ritual activity that has become apparent in Vietnam since the onset of the economic reforms known as Ðổi Mới is by no means unique in the region, nor is it peripheral. The resilience of Max Weber's paradigm of an inexorable Entzauberung (disenchantment, de-mystification) of the world in the towline of “modernity” has in fact been undermined by a thriving religious fervour that has accompanied the (re)emergence of capitalist market relations in different parts of the world, including Asia (see Keyes; Hardacre, and Kendall 1994; Comaroff 1994; Taylor 2004a). Observers note that the dynamic interrelation between religion and economic development even brings forth “the growth of new forms of religiosity in the context of economic activity and wealth creation itself” (Roberts 1995, p. 2). The rise of “prosperity religions” (Roberts 1995; Jackson 1999), “amoral cults” (Weller 1994) and “occult economies” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000) also indicates that salvation is often enough sought in wealth acquisition and the pursuit of worldly goods rather than in fostering ethical values.

There has been no shortage of attempts to overview religions in southern Vietnam. Obtaining a coherent picture however, is another story. In what follows, taking a path deviating somewhat from the usual classifying routes, I will examine instead two apparently unconnected features in “folk religion” [tín ngưỡng dân gian] as points of departure. They are among the more conspicuous if not striking ones by their non-rational nature, namely, the deification of those who met with untimely, violent, or unjust death [chết oan], and the burning of votive objects as offerings in commemorative rituals [đốt vàng mã]. As practices, they appear as illogical as can be, perhaps a reason why they readily fall into the category of “superstition”. However, they are not totally irrational, for the probable logic running through each also brings together several inter-related themes besides the collective attention given to mortality and metempsychosis. In focussing on these practices as nodal points in a web of connections, my exploration of an integrative view of southern popular religion has by no means led to a final conclusion, but I hope it is cogent enough at this stage to stimulate further discussion.

Unjust Death

It would not be saying much to state that the family is the foundation of Vietnamese society, with the cult of ancestors being the prevalent ritual model. It is not accurate, however, to assert that ancestral worship is the overarching form of Vietnamese religious practice. As Cadière points out, the ancestors are but one part of a vast army of spirits, and their cult is only one varied aspect of Vietnamese religion. The great heroes, or those who have in their life gained merit from eminent service to the kingdom, or to the local community, are honoured among the supernatural protectors by the king's decree or simply by the decision of village notables. These spirits enjoy regular offerings, and festive celebrations are organized around their significant dates (Cadière 1958, pp. 6–23).

Religion in Vietnam has been thriving in recent years. Churches, pagodas and pilgrimage sites are crowded with devotees, offering signs of fervent faith and unmistakable religious vitality. Religion commands a large share of the material resources of this increasingly prosperous society. Temples are everywhere being renovated, altars are piled with magnificent sacrifices to the gods and the fees paid by individuals for a commissioned religious ceremony may exceed several times the average per capita annual income. Even as a new generation embraces a globalized cosmopolitan lifestyle, the route to the past passes through the otherworld. National leaders make incense offerings to acquit their debts to the nation's founding ancestors, soul callers establish contact with the war dead and mediums possessed by famed historical personages are patronized by the nouveau riche. Doors opened wide to encourage foreign investment and trade also facilitate the passage of foreign missionaries and the dissemination of new currents in Islam, Buddhism and Christianity to the remotest regions of the country. In early 2005, the renowned Buddhist monk Thích Nhẩt Hạnh made his first return to his homeland in thirty-nine years, speaking to huge audiences in many locations and holding dharma talks attended by Communist Party officials. Later that year, the Vatican's envoy met with state leaders, ordained a new generation of clerics and opened a new diocese. While overseas critics dispute the trend of increasing religious liberalism, religion also attracts its share of domestic critics and controversies erupt around excessive ritual expenditures, the proliferation of faith healers and conversions to evangelical Christianity among ethnic minority peoples.

Vietnam's burgeoning religious sphere challenges a number of predictions that have been made about the relevance of religion in the modern world. The religious efflorescence — occurring as it does in the context of the country's two decade-old experiment with market economics and re-integration within the global capitalist system — is at odds with predictions that religion will lose vitality with the ascendency of modern forms of capitalist rationality.

It is widely accepted that language plays a vital role in the formation of nation as well as the sense of unity among its people (Anderson 2006; Gellner 1983). In a multilinguistic society such as Myanmar’s, language use has significant political implications at all levels of society. With over 135 officially designated ethnic groups, language is often seen as a marker to identify and differentiate one's individual identity. In Myanmar, Burmese has been the dominant language of power and instruction since the country's independence in 1948 in ways which have marginalised other ethnic nationality groups. Successive governments sought unification through the Burmanisation of ethnic nationality areas, including through the standardisation of the Burmese language in schools and bans on publications in non-Burmese languages (Callahan 2003).

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between national identity, ethnicity and language. Language is not only a cultural resource which crafts a shared sense of unity amongst a group of people, but also has an instrumental function embedded in the process of nationbuilding. Benedict Anderson famously demonstrates the principal role that print capitalism has played in the formation of nations (Anderson 2006, 36). He argues that the mass distribution of information vis a vis the popular press helped to lay the foundation for a national consciousness in many parts of the world: “an imagined community among a specific assemble of fellow-readers” (ibid., 62).

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the development of the idea of nation in Burmese or the conceptual role of religion and nation in the formation of identity in Myanmar (eg. Candier 2019; Turner 2014). While there has been significant work written on Myanmar's multiple ethnic nationality movements, less attention has been paid to the semantics of how a sense of national consciousness emerged among non-Burmese or non-Buddhists. This chapter adds to this literature by providing a historical perspective on how the concept of nation came to be expressed in colonial Burma amongst the ethnic Sgaw Karen.

In recent years Myanmar has seen dramatic social and economic changes. Following nearly sixty years of military rule (1962–2010), the election of the National League for Democracy in November 2015 heralded a new era for democracy and human rights. For those who had led a long campaign for women's rights in Myanmar, seeing Daw Aung San Su Kyi take the helm as State Counselor was a symbolic step forward. In the context of these political changes, a nascent women's movement is making strides toward greater gender equality in the country and to improve the representation and rights of women. Local manifestations of the global #Me Too movement are similarly building new spaces and opportunities for dialogue around women's rights, including the right to be free from violence and exposure to sexual harassment and assault.

In this paper we examine women's activism in Myanmar and how the #Me Too movement has galvanised a discussion around the prevalence of sexual harassment and violence. There is limited data available on women's rights and violence against women in Myanmar, particularly with respect to the #Me Too movement. We do not purport to provide a comprehensive, data-driven evaluation of changes in gender norms around women's rights and discussions of sexual violence in Myanmar. Rather, we draw on discussions in the media and non-for-profit organisations, alongside our collective experiences conducting research and advocacy on women's rights in Myanmar.

Both authors of this chapter are involved in Myanmar's women's rights movement. Aye Thiri Kyaw is a Myanmar national who has been active in the women rights’ field in Myanmar since 2013. She has served as a gender analyst to the United Nations and other international organisations and has been at the forefront of public debate and discussion on sexual violence and women's rights in Myanmar. For example, in 2018, the author delivered a TEDxYangon speech, “#Me Too Myanmar: Men of Quality for Women's Equality,” in which she openly talked about incidents of sexual harassment that women face in their everyday lives. The content of the talk was informed by the author's personal experiences of sexual harassment in her native town, Sittwe (Rakhine State, Myanmar), where she worked as an aid worker.