Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century

Contributors

287 Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière is a senior research scholar and professor of anthropology at Laboratoire Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Austronésien, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (LASEMA-CNRS), Paris, France. She trained in anthropology at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and in Burmese language at the Institut National des Langues et Civilizations Orientales. She has been working in Burma since 1981 when she was a student at the Association for Foreign Languages and conducted her doctoral fieldwork on urbanization in Rangoon (Une communauté urbaine de Basse Birmaine, 1984). She has continued to conduct fieldwork and publish more than forty articles on issues of urbanization and the nat spirit cult in Burma. She is the author of Les rituals de possession en Birmanie: du culte d’Etat aux ceremonies privées (1989). Gavin Douglas is an assistant professor in the School of Music at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He holds a BMUS degree (performance classical guitar) and a BA degree (philosophy) from Queen’s University (Canada), an MMUS (ethnomusicology) from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD (ethnomusicology) from the University of Washington, Seattle. He joined the School of Music in 2002 and his ongoing fieldwork in Burma focuses on state patronage of traditional music and the role it plays in the political processes of the ruling dictatorship. He has presented his findings to the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Canadian University Music Society, the Society for Popular Music, and the Burma Studies Group. He has published in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, World of Music, and the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Gustaaf Houtman is the editor of Anthropology Today and deputy director of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. After completing his undergraduate degree in Burmese language, literature, and anthropology in 1980, he Contributors received his PhD in 1990, also from the School of Oriental and African Studies , on the anthropology of Burmese meditation practices. He was visiting professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, the University of Münster and Gothenburg University. He is a Burma Studies Foundation trustee. He is the author of Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (1999), as well as more than ten articles on aspects of Burmese Buddhist culture, history, religion, and politics. Houtman has several edited volumes, historical chronologies, and dictionaries of Burma in preparation. Ingrid Jordt is an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received a PhD from Harvard University in 2001 for a thesis entitled “The Mass Lay Meditation Movement and State-Society Relations in Post-Independence Burma.” She has spent many years in Burma as a Buddhist nun and has published articles and book chapters about the processes of political legitimation, lay-monastic relations, and Buddhist meditation movements. She is currently working on a book entitled “Political Legitimacy in Post-Independence Burma.” Ward Keeler is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Keeler received his PhD in 1982 from the University of Chicago and specializes in the anthropology, language, and expressive culture of Burma and Indonesia. He is the author of Mahagita: Songs from Burma’s Royal Courts (2003), four books and translations regarding aspects of the Javanese language, four articles about Burmese culture, and a number of articles about Indonesia. He has been conducting research in Burma since 1987, is a Burma Studies Foundation trustee, and has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards for his research in Burma. Jennifer Leehey is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, and lectures in the Seattle area. She has been conducting research in Rangoon since 1994. She has published on literary censorship and cartoons and is the recipient of Ford and Open Society Institute fieldwork grants. Guillaume Rozenberg, a member of Laboratoire Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Austronésien (Paris), has been working on Burmese Buddhism since 1997. In 2001 he defended a doctoral thesis entitled“Thamanya: Investigation on Sainthood in Contemporary Burma (1980–2000),” at École des Hautes Etudes en 288 Contributors Sciences Sociales (Paris). The thesis explores the biographies of some living Buddhist forest monks, their work, activities, and the ways they are worshipped . Rozenberg has published several papers, in French and English, concerning the practice...