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  • Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar by Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
  • Nursyazwani Jamaludin
Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar. By Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. xxxii+276 pp.

The story of Myanmar is often told through a state-centric and conflict-based lens, neglecting the participation of ordinary people. While scholars like James C. Scott have looked at the everyday politics of subjects, these are largely limited to their everyday resistance. Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung’s Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar fills this gap through its focus on ordinary people’s coping strategies, particularly in surviving precarious economic conditions. She argues that these everyday acts, or what she prefers to call “coping strategies” (p. xvi), not only destabilize Myanmar’s politics, but also have the potential to bolster its authoritarian structures and slow down the country’s reform efforts.

Through narrating her own experiences in the preface, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung explains the significance of studying the coping strategies of the non-elite population to understand the larger socio-political and economic forces in Myanmar. Her positionality and experiences offer readers a brief background of the seemingly unchanging economic situation in Myanmar since the 1960s. This is followed by a brief sketch of the history of independent Myanmar in the introductory chapter. Based on her extensive data, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung then outlines the ‘LPVE’ (Loyalty-Passive Resistance-Voice-Exit) framework—an adaptation of Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970)—as the theoretical framework that guides her interpretation and analysis of people’s everyday economic survival strategies in response to their economic circumstances. First, these responses accommodate structures of power (Loyalty); second, they are indirect and uncoordinated, and occur frequently (Passive Resistance); third, they serve as an escape from “oppressive actions and policies” (p. 11), or temporary/permanent emigration (Exit); fourth, they resist or address injustice (Voice). She refined the LPVE framework further by adding three subcategories—self-enhancing, [End Page 174] self-defeating, and promoting resilience—as the outcome of these strategies on society. The LPVE framework, as such, is helpful in order to understand how people’s social, psychological, political and economic responses to their economic conditions may have an impact on individuals and the larger structure.

Chapter 1 then outlines the different intersections of identity that may shape one’s coping strategy; namely, gender, ethnic and religious orientations, regional differences, and class status. With these set in the reader’s mind, the author goes on to explore the various strategies in chapters 2 to 6, with each chapter detailing specific strategies by means of ‘thick description’. Chapters 2 (“Living Frugally”) and 3 (“Working on the Side”) outline mainly self-defeating strategies that many ordinary people undertake in order to survive the everyday. Chapter 2 is particularly refreshing as it offers a novel take on strategies such as selling assets, pawning, and borrowing (pp. 59–63), and the implications they have on one’s economic circumstances.

In detailing the everyday strategies of individuals, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung also looks at collective approaches—both internal and external—as a means of coping with their precarious living conditions. By highlighting these social coping strategies, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung also highlights the moral economy embedded in many Myanmar communities. At the same time, she situates the professionalization of humanitarian work and the involvement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that may further rupture local networks and ties. The social coping strategy is also partly explained by the psychological coping strategies addressed in chapter 5 (“Boosting Morale”), where the author looks at the role of religion, illegal lottery, palm reading, astrology and fortune-telling in “changing one’s moods or perspectives on life” (p. 144). Finally, chapter 6 (“Accommodating, Resisting and Exiting”) addresses these coping strategies as not only acts that resist the status quo but also as ones that accommodate and support the political regime.

The strength of this book lies in its comprehensive approach to understanding various forms of coping strategies among the non-elite [End Page 175] population in Myanmar. As a product of extensive research including over 300 interviews conducted with various groups between 2008 and 2015, the LPVE framework successfully encapsulates the social, political, economic and psychological...

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