Urbanisation in precarious times: Critiquing development in “transitional” Myanmar

This webinar facilitates a presentation by the researcher and author Stephen Campbell. The subject is based on research conducted in Myanmar between 2016-2019, discussing and criticising the nations pre-coup political economy.

The February 2021 coup in Myanmar has exposed a deep divide in the country’s oppositional politics. On the one hand, ardent supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy call for a restoration of pre-coup politics. On the other hand, radical students, ethnic minority populations, and other domestic critics maintain strong opposition to the pre-coup arrangement—the so-called “transition” spanning 2011 to 2021. Given this divergence, Stephen Campbell stresses the enduring need, in the current post-coup moment, for a sober critique of the country’s pre-coup political economy. 

About the speaker
Stephen Campbell is an assistant professor in the School of Social Science at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a research fellow in the Frontlines of Value project, based out of the Department of Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. His research focuses on labour, migration, and development in Myanmar and Thailand.

His first book, Border Capitalism, Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone, was published by Cornell University Press in 2018. His second book, Along the Integral Margin: Uneven Capitalism in a Myanmar Squatter Settlement, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press.

Note! This event requires registration