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Acknowledgments This book has been long in the making. It started life as surreptitious glimpses over the Thai-Burma border with my partner, Colin Rieger, in the early 1990s, and then as an extended field trip to Burma with my friend, Lesley Dunstone, in 1994. It grew into a Ph.D. topic, expertly guided by my mentors: Margaret Lock, and Ellen Corin. Margaret has taught me the mechanics of continually making one’s work better, a great skill to teach a young anthropologist. Ellen Corin taught me how to write and how to write powerfully and perhaps even occasionally with a degree of elegance, and I am indebted to her for her patience. Allan Young taught me almost all I know of medical anthropology. I cannot think of a more privileged place than McGill University in the 1990s to have been a student of medical anthropology. In Australia, thanks to Monica Minnegal, Peter Dwyer, Martha Macintyre , and Mandy Thomas who read drafts and made supportive and helpful comments. I acknowledge the support of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne including the provision of fieldwork funding and travel allowances and wish to thank the Burmese community in Melbourne for insight and enthusiasm, especially Angelay (Toe Zaw Latt). In America, I am indebted to the staff and administrators of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and to fellow Rockefeller Visiting Fellows for their companionship , support and intellectual stimulation. I am especially grateful for the personal and intellectual support of Carolyn Nordstrom, Shannon Speed, Victoria Sanford, Cynthia Mahmood, and Patricia Lawrence. The generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Kroc Institute enabled me a quiet space of reflection and writing. A Wenner-Gren Fund for Anthropological Fieldwork doctoral dissertation grant enabled the fieldwork upon which much of this book is based. My editors, Cynthia Mahmood and Peter Agree have been unfailingly supportive and enthusiastic of the project and it has been a delight to join the merry band at the University of Pennsylvania Press. 248 Acknowledgments I acknowledge permission to reprint previously published work as follows . Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 3 appeared in ‘‘Darker Than Midnight: Fear, Vulnerability, and Terror Making in Urban Burma (Myanmar),’’ American Ethnologist 30 (1) (February 2003): 1–17, reprinted by permission of the American Ethnological Society. Earlier versions of portions of Chapter 8 appeared in ‘‘Behind Bamboo Fences: Violence Against Women in Myanmar,’’ in Lenore Manderson and Linda Rae Bennett, eds., Violence Against Women in Asian Societies, 76–92 (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), reprinted by permission of RoutledgeCurzon; and ‘‘Menstrual Madness: Women’s Health and Wellbeing in Urban Burma (Myanmar),’’ in Andrea Whittaker, ed., Women’s Health in Mainland South Asia, Women and Health, Special Issue, 35 (4) (2002): 81–99 (New York: Haworth, 2002), reprinted by permission of Haworth Medical Press. I am indebted to the author of ‘‘Ko Ma,’’ who has given permission for his work to be freely disseminated but who cannot , at this time, be named. My thanks also to SEASPAN: The Northwest Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies and Jennifer Leehey for permission to reprint ‘‘Over the Mountain Ranges’’ and to Dominic Faulder, Ron Gluckman, and Colin Rieger for permission to reproduce their photographic images. It is impossible to repay the debt I owe to hundreds of people who have entrusted me with aspects of their personal lives and inner landscapes . Within Rangoon and Mandalay my circle of women friends have doggedly remained with me despite my best efforts to detach myself from them for fear of possible consequences that being associated with me may bring. They have taught me about how one can be wonderfully happy living in Rangoon, if one just tries continually to ignore ‘‘the situation .’’ In Burmese homes, in those private lives only occasionally touched by the regime, Burmese social life is interesting, robust, and filled with love, hope, irony, and a wickedly dark sense of humor. I thank my Burmese friends for deliberately and unconditionally leading me to these understandings. Finally, a number of aid workers, journalists, and diplomats fed me, sheltered me, plied me with gin and tonic, and were steady friends during the fieldwork period and beyond. Some have become dear friends, and together we share a love of Burma and of adventure, and I value these friendships immensely. Although there were times when we all lost perspective or succumbed to the misery of military occupation and restricted freedoms, I...

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