Essay Proposals
In my paper, I will research feelings of belonging in Myanmar and what has created—or challenged—community-building in a transitional state. I will be examining the “transition” from a military-controlled state to a democracy and the language of ethnicity, religion, and group dynamics that attempted to create the unified state that Myanmar claims to be. I would like to look into the in-group status of taingyintha, or “sons of the soil”, and how it...
In this essay, I plan to explore the role that the SOTUS (Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, Spirit) system, a traditional system of ritualized hazing in Thai universities, plays in reinforcing and instilling of the importance of hierarchy into Thai young adults. The SOTUS system, in Thailand, represents a period of moderate to severe hazing by their seniors in the first weeks or months of a university freshman’s time at school. Through synchronous activities, games, and punishments,...
The Christmas season in the Philippines is the longest in the world, and purportedly the happiest—this happiness, however, can be weaponized. The elites in the Philippines (politicians, warlords, and the like) have engineered a “culture of giving” in Christmas that serves to entrench their position as the “givers” above the masses. However, a CNN profile that extols the jolly times in Filipino Christmas decided to have a somewhat sobering epilogue about how the victims of a recent typhoon...