Myanmar. Reconfiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma. By Chie Ikeya. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011. Pp 239. Illustrations, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

Reconfiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma By CHIE IKEYA Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011. Pp 239. Illustrations, Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000702 This is one of the most important books on colonial Burma to have emerged in the last century. It addresses aspects of modernity originating with certain categories of local women, thus altering the male-dominated past; furthermore, it is derived from indigenous sources as well as colonial records, going beyond the archives of British Burma to reinstate a sense of agency and dynamism with which to counter notions of colonial passivity. Ikeya states in the beginning that her study will 'broaden the understanding of colonialism and modernity in Burma beyond the level of politics and enable a fundamental revision of the reigning nationalist and anticolonial master narratives of political culture and society in colonial Burma' (p. 4), and she does not disappoint the reader. This is the first in a triumvirate of scholarly works on in Burma to emerge more or less simultaneously (the others are Jessica Harriden, The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history [Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2012] and Tharaphi Than, Women of modern Burma [London: Routledge, 2013]). One is a longue duree perspective (unsettling to North American-trained historians who are encouraged to direct their focus narrowly but with depth) that necessarily has a broader purview than the current work under review, and the other has not been released; yet their existence shows that there has been a momentum building over the past decade to augment the history of in Burma from 'a footnote in the official nationalist Burmese history' (p. 4). Ikeya has achieved exactly that with Reconfiguring women. Those of us who engage with themes of gender in Southeast Asian and world history more broadly in our teaching have been hard-pressed for material for Burma with which to oppose the dominant trope of male nationalist heroism. For this reason, Ikeya has carried out a great service to the profession in conceiving of and writing this book. Throughout the carefully researched and engagingly written monograph, the roles that played in consuming and performing modernity--as 'khit kala, women of the times' (p. 2), known by various names, not all of them complimentary--are located, examined, explained, and restored to history. In so doing, the idea of the Burmese incompatibility with 'foreignness' is exposed as a fallacy and Furnivall's 'plural society' becomes too simplistic (p. 5). Chapter 1 provides the historical context for the British takeover of Burma whilst stressing the precolonial cosmopolitan nature of the coastal areas and regional economic integration already in place. A key emphasis is the demographic breakdown for immigration into urban areas and where the migrants came from. This provides an excellent overview of a diverse population that was predominantly composed of male immigrants--and the local whose partners they became. There is also a taste of the consumption of foreign products by Burmese as a consequence. Chapter 2 tackles the question of 'high status' versus autonomy and analyses the degree to which in colonial Burma could access education and political agency. …