The Politics of Love in Myanmar
Award Winner
2019: Gordon Hirabayashi Sociology of Human Rights Book Award
Honorable mention in the 2019 Gordon Hirabayashi Sociology of Human Rights Book Award, sponsored by the American Sociological Association (ASA) - Human Rights Section.2019: ALSA Distinguished Book Award
Winner of the 2019 ALSA Distinguished Book Award, sponsored by the Asian Law & Society Association (ALSA).
The Politics of Love in Myanmar offers an intimate ethnographic account of a group of LGBT activists before, during, and after Myanmar's post-2011 political transition. Lynette J. Chua explores how these activists devoted themselves to, and fell in love with, the practice of human rights and how they were able to empower queer Burmese to accept themselves, gain social belonging, and reform discriminatory legislation and law enforcement. Informed by interviews with activists from all walks of life—city dwellers, villagers, political dissidents, children of military families, wage laborers, shopkeepers, beauticians, spirit mediums, lawyers, students—Chua details the vivid particulars of the LGBT activist experience founding a movement first among exiles and migrants and then in Myanmar's cities, towns, and countryside. A distinct political and emotional culture of activism took shape, fusing shared emotions and cultural bearings with legal and political ideas about human rights. For this network of activists, human rights moved hearts and minds and crafted a transformative web of friendship, fellowship, and affection among queer Burmese. Chua's investigation provides crucial insights into the intersection of emotions and interpersonal relationships with law, rights, and social movements.
"Lynette Chua deftly opens a new window on the empirical investigation of emotions, demonstrating the surprising ways that emotions animate not just relationships and social movements, but the interpretation, assertion, and lived meaning of rights. The lessons drawn from the vivid, human lives of Tun Tun, Tin Hla, and their fellow activists are a revelation."—Kathryn Abrams, University of California, Berkeley
"In addition to being a pioneering and timely study of LGBT mobilization in Myanmar, Chua's book is a valuable contribution to the study of human rights and sociolegal scholarship on rights and social movements."—Wei Wei, American Journal of Sociology