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Ethnography of Schooling, Religion and Ethno- nationalism in the Kachin State, Myanmar: Dreams and Dilemmas of Change Mart Viirand Social Anthropology PhD School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh 2015 DECLARATION This is to certify that that the work contained within has been composed by me and is enirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. 08.06.2015 Signed, Mart Viirand 2 ABSTRACT For much of its recent history, the Kachin State of northern Myanmar has been wrought with civil warfare that has come to define its image from the outside, as well as being a key signifier in the conceptual life worlds of many of its ethnic nationalities. While Myanmar is currently witnessing significant ± if still uncertain ± political and economic transitions, the Kachin State remains largely marginalized from these processes. Rather than an absence of state power, however, this marginalization had led to competing projects of statecraft vying over resources, military control and popular legitimacy in the highly fragmented territorialities. In this thesis I engage this complex landscape through the nexus of formal schooling, organized religion, and ethno‐ nationalist politics. My primary ethnographic focus is on the emergence of several private schools led by a younger generation of Kachin educators. I am asking why these schools arose at this point in time and what has motivated their leaders to strive for institutional autonomy in settings long characterised by a scarcity of human and material resources. I argue that, in addition to their explicitly stated pedagogical aims, these initiatives are serving particular visions of social and political development, defined by Christian moralities and ethno‐ nationalist ideologies. As such, their practice can be read as a form of critique towards the established systems of schooling and governance led by the central state of Myanmar, as well as that of the Kachin Independence Organization, the main contender for political self‐ determination in the area. Decades of perceived marginalization of the Kachin populace of northern Myanmar are the principal motivator for the leaders of these educational projects. However, important points of tension also exist within the Kachin society itself, both in the fields of schooling and religion. A focus on the institutions of private education thus enables me to ask questions about the nature of local political authority, ethnic identification, and the influence of organized religion more generally. By employing a historical perspective to complement my ethnographic material, I am tracing the emergence of ideas, practices, and institutions of schooling that were born from the missionary encounter and decades of military conflicts. These, together with the more recent cosmopolitan ideas of modernity, lie at the heart of contemporary efforts to provide alternative paths to schooling, and to attain the dreams of social development for the Kachin society that the educators seek. 3 CONTENTS CONTENTS..........................................................................................................................4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.................................................................................................5 LIST OF MAPS......................................................................................................................6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................7 MAPS...................................................................................................................................11 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................15 CHAPTER I Methods and Rapport..................................................................................53 CHAPTER II Private Schooling in Laiza and Myitkyina: Negotiating Domains for Educational Work ............................................................................................................. 77 CHAPTER III Fragmented Territories and Sovereignties: Contextualizing Formal Schooling in the Contemporary Kachin State .............................................................. 111 CHAPTER IV Layered States and Education: Competing Institutions and the consolidation of KIO education apparatus .................................................................. 137 CHAPTER V Obedience and Progress: Status Hierarchies in Kachin Schooling..... 164 CHAPTER VI Brass Buddhas and Leaden Crosses: Religious Plurality & Christian Practice in Contemporary Kachin State ........................................................................ 206 CHAPTER VII Christian Visions of National Development.......................................232 CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................272 REFERENCES...................................................................................................................280 4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Main building of Nawng E Hku Mission School in Laiza ………………………………………..90 2. Bomb shelter for staff and students at the Nawng E Hku Mission School in Laiza ……………...92 3. A Burmese language class in a KIO primary school in Mai Ja Yang ……………………………156 4. KIO officials attending the graduation ceremony of Intensive English Programme (IEP) ……..182 5. Male student dorm at the Teachers Training College (TTC) ……………………………………190 6. Students returning home after a semester at the Teachers Training College (TTC) …………….193 7. Manau square in Mai Ja Yang …………………………………………………………………...211 8. Prayer mountain above Mai Ja Yang …………………………………………………………….214 9. Landscape of religious symbols on the hills surrounding Mai Ja Yang …………………………219 10. “Wild Kachins, Burma”.………………………………………………………………………..242 11. “Kachin School, Bhamo, Burma”……………………………………………………………... 242 12. “The missionaries among the hill tribes expect the gospel to produce such changes” ………...243 13. Myihtoi Ma cover, 1990‐1991 …………………………………………………………………254 14. Myihtoi Ma cover, 1996‐1997………………………………………………………………….262 15. Myihtoi Ma cover 1997‐1998 ………………………………………………………………….263 16. Myihtoi Ma cover 1992‐1993 ………………………………………………………………….264 17. Pahtau cover 1997‐1998 ………………………………………………………………………..265 5 LIST OF MAPS 1. Locations of fieldwork sites in the Kachin State, Myanmar and Yunnan Province, China……….11 2. Administrative divisions of the Union of Myanmar & approximate domains of KIA brigades….12 3. Approximate areas in Myanmar controlled by major armed groups in 2008…..………………...13 4. Election cancellations in the Kachin State 2010 – 2015…………………………………. ……...14 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has come into existence through the invaluable help and support of many people and years of labour. Just as the latter proved a greater challenge than I could ever have imagined when I first set out on this path, the trust, encouragement and aid I have received along the way have proven to be the greatest personal lesson. I am deeply grateful to my supervisors, Jonathan Spencer and Tobias Kelly, whose help through this process has been immense. Their prompt and detailed readings of my drafts never failed to produce insights and much needed guidance. Their literature suggestions provided me with new perspectives on political anthropology and Southeast Asia. The readings also helped me with library research and especially surviving those awkward post‐ fieldwork months, while giving me lessons in style and structure so vital for anthropologists in expressing our subject matter. Perhaps the greatest merit in our working relationship was the face‐‐ to face discussions over my invariably late and patchy drafts. I remember always finding a meagre material distraction for existential worry as I gazed at the sparsely populated, anachronistic glass cabinets outside Jonathan's office. Yet if I entered the room disheartened and lost in my latest attempts at making sense of the Kachin realities, I stepped out encouraged and motivated to pursue the search. It was this profound pedagogic skill, at once edifying, inquisitive and spurring, that I hope to have learned outside the immediate topic of our supervisions for my own eventual use in educational work. If the written work at hand fails to live up to the hopes and expectations bestowed upon me by Toby and Jonathan, it is to no fault of theirs and only by way of my personal shortcomings. Though never my formal supervisor, I remain deeply indebted to another scholar of Southeast Asia who first enticed and introduced