Misunderstanding Myanmar through the lens of democracy
Misunderstanding Myanmar through the lens of democracy
复制标题
从民主的角度误解缅甸
DOI：
10.1093/ia/iiae015
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发表时间：
2024
影响因子：
4.5
通讯作者：
Brenner D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brenner D
本文以2021年缅甸军事政变及其暴力后果为起点，分析西方观察人士通常将缅甸政治描述为一场民主斗争的主导视角。它表明，对政治制度问题的关注如何不足以解释政治进程和冲突动态，以及它如何冒险洗刷国家的过去和民族主义、族裔冲突和种族灭绝的存在。后殖民时代的解读表明，要找到缅甸冲突和威权主义的解决方案，就需要质疑现代民族国家本身所扮演的角色。这一分析有助于最近的一项研究，该研究发现，冲突与和平研究从一些冲突而不是另一些冲突中发展出理论，反映了西方利益如何影响一个旨在为全球政策和实践提供信息的领域的学术选择。这篇文章为这场关于知识生产的辩论做出了贡献，认为这种选择性偏向不仅仅是西方普遍兴趣(或缺乏兴趣)的函数。它还与支配我们对世界各国和地区的兴趣和了解的框架有关。研究全球南方的“被遗忘的冲突”不仅需要转向专业文学，还需要超越以欧洲为中心的参照系。
This article takes the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and its violent aftermath as a starting point for analysing the dominant lens through which western observers commonly narrate the country's politics as a struggle for democracy. It shows how focusing on questions of the political system is insufficient for explaining political processes and conflict dynamics, and how it risks sanitizing the country's past and presence of nationalism, ethnic conflict and genocide. A postcolonial reading suggests that finding solutions to conflict and authoritarianism in Myanmar demands questioning the role of the modern nation-state itself. This analysis contributes to recent research which has found that Conflict and Peace Studies develops theories from some conflicts over others, reflecting how western interests shape academic choices in a field that aims to inform policy and practice worldwide. This article contributes to this debate on knowledge production by arguing that this selectivity bias is not simply a function of general western interest (or lack thereof). It is also linked to the frames that govern our interest in and understanding of countries and regions worldwide. Studying ‘forgotten conflicts’ in the global South not only necessitates a turn to specialist literature, but also demands moving beyond Eurocentric frames of reference.