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Beyond State-Centric Frameworks: Transversal Media and the Stateless in the Burmese Borderlands

In: Global Communication: New Agendas in Communication
Karin Gwinn Wilkins; Joseph D. Straubhaar; Shanti Kumar (eds.)
New York; London: Routledge (2014), pp. 142-162

ISBN 9780415828970 (pbk); 9780203744604 (online)

Signature commbox: 10-International-E 2014

"Transversal dissent by communities whose actions and identities are no longer primarily state centric but, rather, have shifted to cross identity boundaries is one of the most important developments for understanding how politics is being transformed today. Burmese media groups, political activists, migrants, and refugees, while challenging the state of Myanmar and, at times, the sovereign state power of host states, have not yet been openly challenging the state system itself. In fact, they generally desire to rebuild a community within such a sovereign state system. Yet, the work of activists in exile offers insights into "the intrinsically co-Constitutive relation between the 'informal' and the 'formal' political spaces and how they transform each other" (O'Kane 2006)." (Concluding thoughts, page 158-159)