Papers originally presented at a Conference on Myanmar from the Margins, held in Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 14-15 November 2013.

Issued as part of UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction / Su-Ann Oh -- I. Overview of Myanmar's mountain and maritime borderscapes -- 2. Electoral Sovereignty in Myanmar's borderlands / Nicholas Farrelly -- 3. The maritime frontier of Myanmar : challenges in the early 21st century / Maung Aung Myoe -- II. Territorial claims and imagined boundaries -- 4. Burman territories and borders in the making of a Myanmar nation state / Maxime Boutry -- 5. Ritual and the other in Rakhine spirit cults / Alexandra de Mersan -- 6. Rohingya territoriality in Myanmar and Bangladesh : humanitarian crisis and national disordering / Anders Bjornberg -- III. Social organization and border economies -- 7. The Culture and landscape of the humanitarian economy among the Karen (Kayin) in the borderland of southeast Myanmar and northwest Thailand / Alexander Horstmann -- 8. Navigating learning, employment and economies in the Mae Sot-Myawaddy borderland / Su-Ann Oh -- IV. Mobile practices and moving borders -- 9. The spatiality and borderless-ness of contentious politics : Kachin mobilities as capability / Karin Dean -- 10. The mule caravans as cross-border networks : local bands and their stretch on the frontier between Yunnan and Burma / Jianxiong Ma and Cunzhao Ma -- V. Identity construction and the politics of belonging -- 11. "I want to stay forever in you" / Decha Tangseefa -- 12. Life along the Naf border : identity politics of the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh / Kazi Fahmida Farzana -- 13. Home of the housekeeper : will Shan migrants return after a decade of migration? / Amporn Jirattikorn -- 14. Moving on : spaces of engagement in the Kayah-Mae Hong Son borderland / Carl Grundy-Warr and Chin Wei Jun -- VI. Institutionalized identity and border practices -- 15. The Chin State-Mizoram Border : institutionalized xenophobia for state control / Bianca Son and N. William Singh -- 16. T{breve}ai Buddhist practices on the China-Myanmar border / Takahiro Kojima.

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This edited volume adds to the literature on Myanmar and its borders by drawing attention to the significance of geography, history, politics and society in the construction of the border regions and the country. First, it alerts us to the fact that the border regions are situated in the mountainous and maritime domains of the country, highlighting the commonalities that arise from shared geography. Second, the book foregrounds socio-spatio practices--economic, intimate, spiritual, virtual--of border and boundary-making in their local context. This demonstrates how state-defined notions of territory, borders and identity are enacted or challenged. Third, despite sharing common features, Myanmar's borderscapes also possess unique configurations of ethnic, political and economic attributes, producing social formations and figured worlds that are more cohesive or militant in some border areas than in others. Understanding and comparing these social practices and their corresponding life-worlds allows us to re-examine the connections from the borderlands back to the hinterland and to consider the value of border and boundary studies in problematizing and conceptualizing recent changes in Myanmar.

Description based on print version record.