Heritage, Politics and Liminality

Culture and the Crisis of Authoritarian Transitions in Myanmar
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-95122-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Contemporary Liminality

This book delivers a fresh approach to understanding cultural heritage amid an underexplored yet dynamic global force: the uncertainty of political transition.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, transition has defined geopolitics across the globe – from a sharp rise in hybrid authoritarian-democratic regimes to the advent of post-truth politics and the accelerating threat of technological warfare. As the past is constantly renegotiated to suit the ever-changing needs of the present, cultural heritage emerges as both beacon and battleground. Employing the versatile concept of contemporary liminality from political anthropology, this book provides critical heritage studies with a new lexicon for understanding how different political groups wield cultural heritage as a tool for navigating the uncertainty of transitional crisis in their quests to legitimate power. Drawing on a synthesis of two centuries of overlapping political transitions in Burma, and interviews from military commanders, anti-military civilian opposition leaders, and everyday Burmese people, an innovative critique which ventures into the shadows and liminal backstage spaces of cultural production emerges.

As such, the book makes a truly unique contribution by providing critical heritage studies with a new lexicon for understanding the intricate relationships between heritage, power, and uncertainty amid extreme forms of political transition. It will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in sociology, political anthropology, critical heritage studies, museum studies, and Asian studies.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stevens, Alicia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Heritage, Power, and Liminality 2. Rethinking Heritage Theory with Political Anthropology 3. Two Centuries of Heritage and Transition in Myanmar 4. Political Uses of Sacred Heritage at Shwedagon and Uppatasanti Pagodas 5. Fractured Memoryscape of the Rangoon Secretariat 6. Trickster Makes a Democracy Museum 7. Crucial Schism 8. Liminal Heritage 9. The Global Meantime

Über Autor(innen)

Alicia Stevens is a Gates Cambridge Scholar with PhD and MPhil from the University of Cambridge (Dept of Archaeology) and a postdoctoral member of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. She also coordinates the Heritage, Memory, and Identity Pillar for MIT’s Global Humanities Initiative.