Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia - Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia

Myanmar’s Transition Stalled: From Opening to Coup

The year 2020, when this project was initiated, provided a unique opportunity for reflection on critical milestones in Myanmar’s recent history: it marked a decade since the initiation of political, economic, and peace transitions, as well as five years since the National League for Democracy (NLD) took control of the civilian government in an ad hoc power-sharing arrangement with the military. The November 2020 election would [...]

Federalism at the Forefront of Myanmar’s Revolution

Since independence, Myanmar has been in search of a political system to accommodate its rich cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious identities. Ethnic minorities have called for federalism as a way to ensure the equality and rights of all groups. However, under the highly centralized system imposed by the military dictatorships that controlled Myanmar from 1962 to 2010, any discussion of federalism was impossible. The political transition under the 2008 Constitution created a centralized form of federalism, but even under the National League for Democracy [...]
Federalisme di Garis Depan Revolusi Myanmar
ระบอบสหพันธรัฐในฐานะธงนำการปฏิวัติของเมียนมา
ミャンマーの革命の焦点、連邦主義
Chủ nghĩa liên bang đi đầu trong cuộc Cách mạng Myanmar
Ang Pederalismo sa Unahan ng Rebolusyon ng Myanmar
မြန်မာ့တော်လှန်ရေး ရှေ့တန်းက ဖက်ဒရယ်လစ်ဇင်

Identity and Social Inclusion

Issues surrounding identity and social inclusion are a longstanding point of contention within Myanmar society. Myanmar is one of the world’s most ethnolinguistically diverse countries, with 135 officially recognized ethnic groups and approximately 107 languages. Numerous religious communities coexist within its borders, including Buddhist (87.9%), Christian (6.2%), Islam (4.3%), Hindu (0.5%), and Animist (0.8%). Amidst this backdrop, a divisive colonial legacy and a history of ethnic Bamar majority dominance has produced ethnic and religious fault lines that continue to divide [...]
Identitas dan Inklusi Sosial
อัตลักษณ์และความครอบคลุมทุกกลุ่มคนในสังคม
アイデンティティと社会的包摂
Bản sắc và sự hòa nhập xã hội
Identidad at Panlipunang Inklusyon
သရုပ်သကန် (identity) နှင့် လူမှုပါဝင်ရေး (social inclusion)

Myanmar’s Pro-Democracy Movement

Myanmar (then known as Burma) had a brief democratic period from independence in 1948 until a 1962 coup, following which the military (known locally as the Tatmadaw) held near absolute power for almost five decades. An unanticipated political and economic opening began in 2010 and led to a decade of power-sharing between the military and successive civilian governments, first with the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) from 2011 to 2015, and then the National League for Democracy (NLD). While the pace of democratic reform was at best modest, the decade of relative openness profoundly reshaped political norms and [...]
Gerakan Pro-Demokrasi Myanmar
ขบวนการฝ่ายประชาธิปไตยของเมียนมา
ミャンマーの民主化運動
Phong trào ủng hộ dân chủ của Myanmar
Ang Kilusang Demokrasya ng Myanmar
မြန်မာ့ဒီမိုကရေစီရေး လှုပ်ရှားမှု

From the Editor– Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching Continuity in Times of Global Disruption

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has caused an unprecedented disruption of the foundational institutions in the public health and economic sectors. Given that 190 countries have mandated the complete or partial closure of schools – a measure that has affected more than 1.7 billion students worldwide (World Bank 2020) – it is important to underscore that the pandemic should also be considered a global educational crisis. Audrey Azouley, the Director-General of UNESCO, has declared that COVID-19 has caused “the most unprecedented disruption in the history of education.“ (UNESCO 2020: iii). Educational institutions around the world have responded by implementing measures with the intent of maintaining the continuity and inclusiveness of their programs while safeguarding the interests [...]

Message from the Editor:

KRSEA has achieved its new milestone both in terms of greater global reach and its continued promotion of indigenous languages of Southeast Asia. It is now time to celebrate our achievement with the launch of this book. At the Crossroads unravels a critical juncture in Southeast Asia, from 2017 to 2021, a juncture replete with changes, contestations and challenges facing the region, from different viewpoints: political, economic, social, and cultural. This time, we bring together all the English articles published from January 2017 to December 2020 into one volume.

DOWNLOAD AT THE CROSSROADS (pdf – 57 MB)

ရပ်တန့်သွားသော မြန်မာ့အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေး – စတင်ချိန်မှ အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်အထိ

ဤစီမံချက်ကို စတင်ချိန် ၂၀၂၀ ပြည့်နှစ်သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ မကြာသေးသော သမိုင်းတွင် ဖြတ်သန်း ခဲ့သော မိုင်တိုင်များကို ပြန်လည်ဆန်းစစ်ရန် တမူထူးခြားသော အခွင့်အလမ်းရှိချိန် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ၂၀၂၀ ပြည့်နှစ်သည် နိုင်ငံရေး၊ စီးပွားရေး၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းမှု စတင်ချိန်မှ စရေတွက်လျှင် ဆယ်နှစ် ပြည့်မြောက်ချိန် ဖြစ်ပြီး အမျိုးသားဒီိမုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် NLD က စစ်တပ်နှင့် အလျဥ်းသင့်သလို [...]

A question of agency: Southeast Asia and AUKUS – Being ‘stuck in the middle’ does not mean ‘ASEAN Centrality’

by Christopher Ankersen in Issue 31

“ASEAN Centrality” is the rallying cry of those in Southeast Asia who wish to portray themselves as having agency; that is, that they are in control of their own affairs. One can be forgiven for thinking that this slogan represents the essential nature of Southeast Asia as a region, one where the common ties of each of its constituents naturally places ASEAN at the focal point of its individual national policy. Upon closer inspection, however, we can see that this is far from the case. Despite protestations to the contrary, [...]

Review– A Natural History of Empire: Stories

A Natural History of Empire: Stories Dominic Sy Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019 Dominic [...]
Review– Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia and ASEAN – National and Regional Approaches

Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia and ASEAN – National and Regional Approaches Ronald Hohlzacker and Dafri Agussalim [...]
Review– Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party

Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party Duncan McCargo, Anyarat Chattharakul NIAS Press, [...]
Review– Cambodia’s Muslims and the Malay World: Malay Language, Jawi Script, and Islamic Factionalism from the 19th Century to the Present

Cambodia’s Muslims and the Malay World: Malay Language, Jawi Script, and Islamic Factionalism from the 19th Century [...]
Review– Read till it Shatters: Nationalism and Identity in Modern Thai Literature

Read till it Shatters: Nationalism and Identity in Modern Thai Literature Thak Chaloemtiarana Australian National University Press [...]

UA-21469080-8

Myanmar’s Transition Stalled: From Opening to Coup

Htet Min Lwin

Federalism at the Forefront of Myanmar’s Revolution

Htet Paing Oo

Identity and Social Inclusion

Claudine Haenni

Myanmar’s Peace Process: 2010-2021

Moe Thuzar

Post-2020 Myanmar in the World: Contesting Legitimacy and Change

Kai Ostwald & Kyaw Yin Hlaing

Myanmar’s Pro-Democracy Movement

Julius Bautista

From the Editor– Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching Continuity in Times of Global Disruption

A Publication | AT THE CROSSROADS

ရပ်တန့်သွားသော မြန်မာ့အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေး – စတင်ချိန်မှ အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်အထိ

A question of agency: Southeast Asia and AUKUS – Being ‘stuck in the middle’ does not mean ‘ASEAN Centrality’

Book Reviews

Review– A Natural History of Empire: Stories

Review– Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia and ASEAN – National and Regional Approaches

Review– Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party

Review– Cambodia’s Muslims and the Malay World: Malay Language, Jawi Script, and Islamic Factionalism from the 19th Century to the Present

Review– Read till it Shatters: Nationalism and Identity in Modern Thai Literature

A Publication | The Blooming Years