Heritage, Power, and Liminality : Culture and the Crisis of Authoritarian Transitions in Myanmar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stevens, Alicia.

Series:

Contemporary Liminality Series

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Taylor & Francis Group, 2026.

Summary:

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

Contents:

Cover

Endorsement Page

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of figures

List of tables

List of abbreviations

Notes on language

Preface

Strategic Ambiguity in Myanmar

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Heritage, power, and liminality

Definitions, meanings, and uses of cultural heritage

Power, legitimacy, and compliance

Hierarchies of uncertainty

Locating transition in heritage studies

Heritage studies, political anthropology, and contemporary liminality

Meanings and uses of sacred heritage amid liminal crisis

The case of Myanmar

Uncertainty foreshadowing a deeper fall

Nuancing binaries and defining 'The Tatmadaw'

Setting the stage

Upcoming chapters

Notes

Works Cited

Chapter 2: Rethinking heritage theory with political anthropology

Origins and evolution of heritage studies

Approaching transition and uncertainty through heritage studies

The search for innovative approaches

Political anthropology and contemporary liminality

Origins and evolution of political anthropology

Contemporary liminality

How it works

Corollary theories

Communitas

Imitation and mimesis

Trickster

Schismogenesis

Permanent liminality

Heritage studies and liminality

Transfer value of contemporary liminality into heritage studies

Ritual performance, public liminality, and heritage stages

Symbolic meaning

Heritage, liminality, and the memory boom

Meanings and uses of heritage: Modelling context, production, and experience

Cultural codes, producers, and consumers

Context as method: Political transition as liminal crisis

Emergent process model for the uses of heritage during transition

Summary: Rethinking heritage critique with contemporary liminality

Works Cited.

Chapter 3: Two centuries of heritage and transition in Myanmar

Introducing the case study: Heritage and transition in Myanmar

Meanings and uses of cultural heritage in Myanmar

Social memory and collective identity

Precolonial foundations: Sacred heritage and the two wheels of power

British conquest and the rupture of sacred order (1824-1885)

Colonial occupation: Heritage preservation and the roots of political division (1885-1948)

Assassination of the national martyrs and postcolonial independence

General Ne Win's coup and military-authoritarian consolidation: 1962-1988

Than Shwe's totalitarian regime: 1992-2011

Democratisation and heritage politics: 2011-2021

2021 coup and Myanmar's Spring Revolution: Bridging resistance for a technological age

Generational trauma and Myanmar's heritage of resistance

Approaching the research

Heritage site studies

Site study 1 (Chapter 4): Shwedagon and Uppātasanti Pagodas

Site study 2 (Chapter 5): Yangon Secretariat Complex

Site study 3 (Chapter 6): 88 Generation Memorial Hall

Approaching the personal interviews

Chapter 4: Political uses of sacred heritage at Shwedagon and Uppātasanti Pagodas

Buddhism and the State in Myanmar

Place biography: Sacred and political power of Shwedagon Pagoda

Precolonial Shwedagon

Shwedagon at war: 1824-1889

Colonial militarisation of Shwedagon

King Mindon's hti power

Shwedagon during British colonial occupation: 1889-1948

Colonial interventions in sacred heritage preservation

The cultural violence of SHOE-Dagon Pagoda

The passive aggression of British-style heritage preservation

Aung San at Shwedagon

Shwedagon and Theravāda Buddhism in the postcolony: 1948-1962

U Nu's Buddhist rehabilitation

Shwedagon under military rule: 1962-2021

U Thant Funeral Crisis.

Aung San Suu Kyi's ascendancy at Shwedagon

SLORC-ing the jewels

The Saffron Revolution

Shwedagon during attempted democratisation: 2011-2021

Heritage frontlines: Bellicose monks, devout soldiers, and Buddhist nationalism

Virtual Shwedagon and the 2021 Tatmadaw coup

Counterpoint: Voids of meaning at Naypyidaw's Uppātasanti Pagoda

The mimetic theatre of Uppātasanti Pagoda

Haunting the void

Fast merit and liminal fools

Conclusion: Towards a sacred-liminal heritage

Emergent process model for heritage, power, and uncertainty

Chapter 5: Fractured memoryscape of the Rangoon Secretariat

Site biography: Fractured memoryscape of the Rangoon Secretariat, 1885-2021

Imperialism made material

The Rangoon Secretariat: 1889-1947

Colonial soft power at the Secretariat

Poets and prophets in the Secretariat's shadow

Colonial hard power at the Secretariat

Aung San's independence movement

Death of the National Martyrs at the Secretariat

Transfer of power at the Secretariat

Postcolonial power vacuum at the Secretariat: 1948-1962

Abdicating memory at the Ministers Building: 1962-2005

Trickster historiography: PSYWAR heritage

Ghosts of the tortured: The Tatmadaw's rumoured shadow legacy at the Secretariat

Abandoning the Ministers Office: 2005-2011

Resurrecting the Secretariat: 2011-2021

Preserving colonial Rangoon

Contestation and cronyism at the Secretariat

Curating the Cabinet Room

Harassing the Martyrs Day

From memorial to marketplace: The Secretariat since 2021

Early warning signs

Trading memory for profit

Conclusion: Liminal heritage at/of the Secretariat

Chapter 6: Trickster makes a democracy museum

1988: Burma's année noire

The Four Eights Uprising

The 88 Generation in their own words

Min Ko Naing.

88 interlocutor I56

88 interlocutor I29

88 interlocutor I54

88 interlocutor I10

88 interlocutor I36

The 88 Generation Memorial Hall

Strange worldmaking at the Tatmadaw's Drug Elimination Museum

Parallel tropes

Suppressing the fighting peacock

Unlocking the fist

The Four Eights Uprising as a communist plot

Interview with U Min Ko Naing

Trickster makes a democracy museum

Covert propaganda for the democratic era

Inverted carnival

Appropriating ambiguity

Revisiting the process model

Chapter 7: The Crucial Schism

Liminality in/of Myanmar

Colonial mimesis and the 'mutation' of British Burma

Modelling the British colonial liminal cycle

Liminal schismogenesis in Myanmar

The crucial schism

Schism becomes a lasting form

Complicating liminal schismogenesis in Myanmar

Deepening schismogenesis

Enter the political tricksters

Parsing political trickster: From cunning survival to necropolitical terror

Copying the colonial copy: Roots of Tatmadawism

Enemy creation and conspiracy theories

Sustaining liminal crisis

Oppression coaxing revolution

Who may live and who must die

Chapter 8: Liminal Heritage

Meanings and uses of heritage, complicated by liminality

Agency

Symbolic meaning: Definition, depth, and voids

Liminal heritage

Naturally occurring liminal heritage

Deliberate liminal heritage

Trickster methods for liminal heritage production

Context, crisis, and the diagnostic power of liminal heritage

Liminal heritage across the Myanmar site studies

Uppātasanti Pagoda (Chapter 4)

The Secretariat (Chapter 5)

88 Generation Memorial Hall (Chapter 6)

Liminal heritage constituting liminal identities

Liminal heritage discourse: From mimicry to necropolitics.

The experience of heritage as rite of passage

Summary and transfer value of the concept of liminal heritage

Chapter 9: Conclusion: The Global Meantime

The sacred doors

Name Index

Subject Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781003583295

OCLC:

1578999958

Publisher Number:

CIPO000345965