ABSTRACT
After decades of isolation and authoritarian rule, Myanmar embarked on a new phase of democratization in 2011, with the triumph of the National League for Democracy (NLD) government in 2015 heralding, for some, the dawn of a new era. In the years which followed, however, euphoric headlines were replaced with more gloomy ones, and communal violence and a stalling peace process provided a stiff reality check, and a reminder of the profoundly intertwined complexities of contemporary Myanmar society. This chapter seeks firstly to situate the research not only in contemporary Myanmar, but more specifically within the context of rural communities in the central part of Myanmar, the home of Myanmar’s Burmese, Buddhist majority; and secondly to provide an account of the contested narratives of citizenship which provide the background to discussions on the nature of the social capital found in emergent welfare movements.
