K. Yhome
Myanmar presents a perplexing case of a state that played a prominent role in global and regional affairs soon after its independence from colonial rule, but today it is mired in protracted internal conflicts and struggles to remain visible internationally. There is no dearth of literature elucidating the entrenched nature of Myanmar’s complex conflict dynamics and its ties with the outside world.
Despite the rich body of work on Myanmar’s prolonged conflicts and its external role and engagements, a dimension that has not received much attention in existing literature is: How the emergence of regions impacted Myanmar’s identity and its internal conflict dynamics? This article views Myanmar through the lens of ‘in-between space’ and explores the process of regionalism in the making of ‘in-between space’ and the impacts of ‘in-betweenness.’ The notion of ‘in-between space’ is employed in various disciplines such as in the field of architecture, where ‘in-between spaces’ are viewed as ‘transitional spaces’ (Tzortzi 2024, 6685-6686) that lie on the boundary of two spaces, where the edge blurs the boundary between spaces. Similarly, in anthropology, the term ‘liminality’ describes an ‘in-between state’ of an entity that transforms into a new entity. In International Relations, the notion of ‘in-between space’ is used in the context of borderlands and frontiers between nation-states where sovereignty is contested and the line dividing role and responsibility blurs (Meier 2019, 3-4).
No comments:
Post a Comment