Reconfiguring women, colonialism, and modernity in Burma

摘要

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.