Eudaimonic Wellbeing in Southeastern Myanmar’s Contested Moral Landscape

Abstract

Between 2011 and 2020 Myanmar experienced significant social and political changes as a result of a series of reforms introduced by the former military junta. In this article I examine how the broadening of personal hopes and aspirations through new community-based English educational sites during this period influenced young people’s understandings of eudaimonic wellbeing. Teleological theories of eudaimonia often imply a degree of coherence in conceptions of the self, virtue and human flourishing. Drawing from recent work in anthropology, I argue that conflicting frameworks of virtue ethics provide collective meaning and help to orient everyday life for different people in distinctive ways. Through the lives of young Karen Buddhists in southeastern Myanmar, I show that there are complex and non-linear understandings of virtue that people draw upon in their deliberations about how to pursue possible eudaimonic futures.