My monograph “Rethinking Community in Myanmar. Practices of We-Formation among Muslims and Hindus in Urban Yangon” has just been released as an Open Access version by University of Hawai’i Press.

Usually, I always bring my major publications back to my interlocutors, colleagues and friends in ‘the field’ – to the people who have made my work possible in the first place. With my Myanmar book, however, this is currently not possible, as most people know. The military attempted a coup d’êtat on 1 February 2021 – which is utterly failing – and has installed a terror regime that kills civilians indiscriminately. It is simply not safe for me and my family to return to Yangon at the moment where we have spent such a wonderful and exciting time, beginning in 2012 … Maybe as Western tourists we would be ‘safe’, but I cannot take the risk of getting my interlocutors in danger when visiting them. So we stay in touch online, via emails and social media.

Making my monograph available in an Open Acess version was really important to me for this reason: at least people in Myanmar can read my study now and I really hope that I have portrayed all of my interlocutors not only in an academically rigorous, but also in an ethically responsible way. Most of my key interlocturs have unfortunatelly passed away since I last visited the country (in February and March 2020), but their families will keep their memory alive and I do hope that my book can contribute a little bit to it.

You can download the entire pdf of the book here – please share it widely! Thank you!