Proposal

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 often “relied on Catholic charities to provide them with some Christmas spirit”.

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.