Although Myanmar Studies has gained noteworthy momentum since 2011, the difficulty of conducting grounded research between the 1960s and 2010s, the near absence of verified and longitudinal datasets, as well as the paucity of scholarly sources have engendered knowledge production that tends to elide the centrality of time, context, and positionality. Everyday Economic Survival in Myanmar by Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung counters this trend by investigating the quotidian tactics of everyday Myanmar people between 2008 and 2015, an unusually long period in the study of contemporary Myanmar, and by covering an admirable spectrum of religious and ethnic groups including the majority Buddhist Burmans as well as minority Christian, Muslim, and Hindu populations belonging to the Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen, and Rohingya ethnic nationalities. This inclusion is significant because identity politics based on ethnicity and religion have been flash points in the history of independent Myanmar, which has become glaringly evident in the ongoing Rohingya crisis. By focusing on the grassroots coping activities of these different peoples, Thawnghmung manages to weave together a coherent analysis that reveals common economic tactics without sacrificing ethnographic richness or uncritically celebrating resilience and resistance. In full disclosure, Thawnghmung reveals her position as a Karen scholar from a family of modest means who managed to pursue higher education in the United States. This declaration of positionality from a political scientist rather than an anthropologist is refreshing and lends more authority to her work. The everyday tactics employed by Myanmar people are subtle if not hidden. Accessing and appropriately interpreting these tactics requires advanced fluency in at least one of the country’s many languages as well as intimacy and trust. As discussed by Thawnghmung and others, trust between non-intimates has yet to develop in Myanmar. Given this context, Thawnghmung studies Myanmar people’s grassroots coping activities as more than piecemeal reactions but as potentially political practices that have “emerged and evolved in response to constraints and opportunities imposed by specific political and economic conditions”(176, emphasis in original). However, she is quick to point out that informal adaptive strategies interpreted as political resistance fail to recognize the shadow side of these practices wherein local initiative have producedboth “self-governing spaces” aswell as propped up authoritarian regimes that support the status quo (7). This contradiction is important because discussions about post-2011 Myanmar inevitably circle back to the aspiration of democracy but “the manner in which most people are currently going about surviving rarely aligns with the norms and practices considered integral to democratic culture” (176). As convincingly argued by Thawnghmung, “[c]onceptualizing different categories of grassroots activity and understanding the dynamic nature of coping strategies... is necessary for developing amore comprehensive and accurate assessment of democratic values and practices in Myanmar society” (176). To assess Myanmar society, Thawnghmung proposes an analytical framework that categorizes coping strategies into four types which she labels L (loyalty or accommodation), P (passive resistance), V (voice), and E (exit) with three consequences (self-enhancing, self-defeating and resilience promoting). The resulting LPVE matrix produces fourteen categories that hold some

中文翻译：

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缅甸的日常经济生存

尽管缅甸研究自 2011 年以来取得了显着的发展势头，但在 1960 年代至 2010 年代之间进行扎根研究的困难、经过验证的纵向数据集几乎缺乏，以及缺乏学术资源，导致知识生产往往会忽略时间、背景和位置。Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung 的《缅甸的日常经济生存》通过调查 2008 年至 2015 年（当代缅甸研究中异常漫长的时期）每天缅甸人的日常策略，并涵盖令人钦佩的宗教和民族群体，包括主要是佛教缅甸人，以及属于钦族、克钦族、掸族、克伦族和罗兴亚族的少数基督教、穆斯林和印度教人口。这种包容很重要，因为基于种族和宗教的身份政治一直是缅甸独立历史上的闪光点，这在持续的罗兴亚危机中变得尤为明显。通过关注这些不同民族的基层应对活动，Thawnghmung 设法将一个连贯的分析编织在一起，揭示了共同的经济策略，同时又不牺牲民族志的丰富性或不加批判地庆祝韧性和抵抗力。在全面披露中，Thawnghmung 揭示了她作为一名来自一个富裕家庭的克伦学者的身份，她设法在美国接受了高等教育。这种来自政治科学家而非人类学家的立场声明令人耳目一新，并为她的工作赋予了更多权威。缅甸人的日常策略即使没有隐藏也很微妙。访问和适当解释这些策略需要熟练掌握该国多种语言中的至少一种，以及亲密和信任。正如 Thawnghmung 和其他人所讨论的那样，缅甸尚未建立非亲密关系之间的信任。在这种背景下，Thawnghmung 将缅甸人民的草根应对活动研究为不仅仅是零碎的反应，而是作为“为应对特定政治和经济条件所施加的限制和机会而出现和演变”的潜在政治实践（176，原文强调）。然而，她很快指出，被解释为政治抵抗的非正式适应性策略未能认识到这些做法的阴暗面，其中地方倡议产生了“自治空间”以及支持现状的专制政权 (7)。这一矛盾很重要，因为关于 2011 年后缅甸的讨论不可避免地回到了民主的愿望，但“大多数人目前的生存方式很少与被认为是民主文化不可或缺的规范和实践相一致”（176）。正如 Thawnghmung 令人信服地论证的那样，“[c] 对不同类别的草根活动进行概念化并理解应对策略的动态性质...... 对缅甸社会的民主价值观和实践进行更全面和准确的评估是必要的”（176）。为了评估缅甸社会，Thawnghmung 提出了一个分析框架，将应对策略分为四种类型，她将其标记为 L（忠诚或适应）、P（被动抵抗）、V（声音）和 E（退出），并具有三种后果（自我增强） ，自我挫败和促进恢复力）。得到的 LPVE 矩阵产生十四个类别，其中包含一些