Description: "In this first anthropological study of Muslim and Hindu lives in urban Myanmar today, Judith Beyer develops the concept of "we-formation" to demonstrate that individuals are always more than members of wider groups. "We-formation" complements her rich political, legal, and historical analysis of "community," a term used by Beyer's interlocutors themselves, even as it reinforces ethno-religious stereotypes and their own minority status. The book also offers an interpretation of the dynamics of resistance to the attempted military coup of 2021"--
Brief description: Judith Beyer is professor of social and political anthropology at the University of Konstanz.
Review Quotes: Beyer's book and her fascinating fieldwork in the varied groups of Indian descent in Rangoon, reshapes not just how we understand people who have long been dismissively homogenized in Burmese and academic discourse, but it offers insightful reformulations of how people construct identity unlimited by the categories imposed upon them.--Alice Turner, York University