New Journal Issues: Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal, Journal of Burma Studies, Language Documentation & Conservation + More (July 2020)

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Front cover of Biography 42-4 (2020)
Front cover of Biography 42-4 (2020)

Biography

Academic Freedom, Academic Lives, Guest Edited by Bill V. Mullen and Julie Rak

Volume 42, Issue 4 (2019)

From the guest editors’ introduction:

Academic freedom is currently highly public and highly contested terrain. What academic freedom actually means has become an urgent question, as alt-right activists have turned the tenets of academic freedom to their own ends, whether on college and university campuses, or through the actions of right-wing governments as they move to suppress dissent. We want to reclaim the concept of academic freedom for the left and for academic activism, not through a debate about the concept as an abstraction, but in connection to what we see as the radical potential of academic lives. Thinking of academic lives as interpretation and critique is a way to disrupt the current alt-right control of public discourse about freedom of speech. Read the special issue introduction free here.

Journal of Burma Studies 24-1

The Journal of Burma Studies

Special Issue: Environment and Resources: Burma/Myanmar and the (Un)Natural

Volume 24, Issue 1 (2020)

The editor’s note for this special issue begins:

From touristic impressions to geopolitical analyses, ubiquitous are the tremendous and varied natural resources of Myanmar. Teak forests, oil and gas reserves, precious gemstones, biodiversity, and the list goes on. The very meaning of the concept of resource, however, suggests that the country contains things of tremendous potential human, economic use, and therefore value. With the resources, mapping, and study of them, there is the seemingly boundless potential for greater wealth to be accumulated. On the other hand, discourse regarding natural beauty and wonder can be a purposeful distraction from ongoing issues of war and exploitation. Discussing the country’s abundance of resources, however, is never a neutral proposition: for outsiders looking in, there is frequently a value-laden assumption which guides the observation that the various regimes and economic interests are not responsibly conserving these resources for the greater good (however nebulous that may be). Life itself (before we even label it a natural resource) is already an active zone of economic production, engineering, banking, commodification, and exchange (Palsson 2016:4). The definition, mapping, laws, and social relationships which name and frame resources in Myanmar are of ongoing heuristic, cultural, economic, and inevitably political concern.

With this problematic in mind, in this Special Issue of The Journal of Burma Studies (JBS) we have gathered together an interdisciplinary set of research articles surrounding questions of what nature is and what its resources might be. With the four authors’ varied focus on historical and contemporary Myanmar, this set of papers offers challenging new vistas for the exploration and interrogation of how resources and the environment have been approached and brokered by local and transnational actors. Read the special issue introduction free here.

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