The Violent Legacies in Myanmar of Colonial Knowledge and Area Studies

Main author: Charney, Michael W.
Format: Opinion Pieces / Media / Blogs           
Online access: Click here to view record


Summary: A major problem standing in the way of progress of what should be a joint front is that academics have clung to the myth that academics are observers, not participants, and that they should stand beyond politics. Unfortunately, in the Area Studies of the American and the British Academies, the ‘discipline IS political’. Our disciplines have emerged from the colonial period as tools of empire and were preserved after the retreat of Europe because they had utility in the Cold War.