Senior Research Seminar with Dr Michael Edwards (University of Cambridge)
Real Change: Converting Politics in Burma/Myanmar
“Real change”: This was the National League for Democracyʼs offer to voters in Myanmarʼs 2015 general election, the first since the apparent end of military rule. A vote for the party was a vote for a radical break with the past—or so the slogan implied in a familiar rhetorical move. At the same time, the offer of “real change” was at the heart of local Pentecostal efforts to evangelise to Buddhists: the promise that Jesus would fundamentally transform their lives. Entering a tentatively more open public sphere, these Christians were sharing the gospel in the hope of sparking a rupture in a largely Buddhist nation. This paper tracks the work of “real change” across these interpenetrating scales. Doing so suggests that ethnographic attention to religious conversion might offer insight into the work of the real in the political life of Myanmar and elsewhere.