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UTENRIKS-Internasjonale forhold - utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitikk og norske interesser

Pop Culture, Art and Ideas of Legitimacy in Struggles over Democratization and Peace (POPAGANDA)

Alternative title: Populærkultur, kunst og forestillinger om legitimitet i kamper for demokratisering og fred (POPAGANDA)

Awarded: NOK 9.0 mill.

Several countries face difficult challenges in achieving political transitions from an authoritarian to a more democratic system. In what ways are political processes in these countries formed by indigenous belief systems and cosmologies? How is political legitimacy and authority understood, and how do various opposition groups make use of popular culture and art to propagate their messages and generate support in the population? Myanmar and Thailand are both examples of countries that are caught up in long-standing conflicts and disagreements where minorities and opposition groups have built strong political visions and systems of ideology that are incompatible with the current political order of the ruling elites. In these countries, we find that cultural, religious and spiritual belief systems are not irrelevant relics of the past. They are phenomena with direct influence on today's political and territorial conflicts. The POPAGANDA research team therefore aims to unpack the role played by myths, cosmology, religion, spirituality, and magic in both generating and challenging political legitimacy. The research team investigates how such opposition groups and their supporters among artists reinvent narratives rooted in these ancient belief systems. We examine how popular culture and art are used to both generate the legitimacy of political opposition groups and contest that of the state. We then explore how this practice of contestation affects political processes and power structures. The research team does not only aim to generate important insights into the dynamics of politics and violence in Myanmar and Thailand. We also seek to provide the necessary building blocks to develop theory on how to understand unresolved violent and political struggles in other transitioning states. The project is led by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in collaboration with researchers at the partner organizations Ubon Ratchathani University in Thailand and Naushawng Development Institute (NDI) in Myanmar. The start-up meeting for the project was held on 21 December 2021. All the partner organizations attended the meeting, carved out a common conceptual understanding of the project and presented and discussed research ideas. Both the pandemic and the military coup in Myanmar has been a challenge for the project, particularly in the start-up phase. An important milestone for the project has been the employment of doctoral researcher Amara Thiha. Amara was employed by PRIO from 1 January 2022 with the project Rituals, Power, and the Search for Political Legitimacy in Myanmar. The doctoral thesis will be defended at Coimbra University in Portugal and is supervised by Teresa Almeida Cravo (Coimbra) and Marte Nilsen (PRIO). Amara defended his project outline at Coimbra University on 27 October 2022 with Professor Nicholas Farrelly as an external examiner in a jury appointed by the university. In the first year of the project period, much of the data collection took place digitally. In March 2022, the project leader conducted a research trip to Ubon Ratchathani and Bangkok and Amara Thiha conducted fieldwork in Myanmar from December 2022 to January 2023. On 9-11 December 2022, the whole research group met in a project seminar in Bangkok. Since then, the project leader has carried out fieldwork with data collection among Burmese exiled artists and activists in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot. Throughout 2023, the research group has mainly worked on developing drafts for a planned anthology (previously referred to as a special issue) on popular culture and art as a tool in the struggle against military rule. In May and June, Titipol Phakdeewanich was a visiting researcher at PRIO. The planned exchange to the Summer School at the University of Oslo for a representative from NDI in Myanmar was canceled due to a tightening of the Norwegian visa regulations. For the same reason, the planned mid-term seminar was moved from Oslo to Bangkok.

POPAGANDA investigates how political opposition groups in Myanmar and Thailand use popular culture and art to generate legitimacy for their political causes and propagate their messages. The project team seeks to discover how these subaltern groups and their supporters among artists reinvent narratives rooted in ancient belief systems and cosmologies to produce political legitimacy in contemporary struggles over democratization and peace. The project team aims to reveal how these groups use popular culture and art to contest the legitimacy of the state and how this practice of contestation affects political processes. This research is essential for the understanding of how and why countries that are undergoing transitions from autocracy to a more democratic system fail to solve internal political and violent conflicts. An outcome of the project is to significantly improve knowledge about the cultural, religious and cosmological origins of political legitimacy in these countries. Studying narratives and the cultural transmission of such narratives, provides a unique way of researching group identities, political legitimacy, power relations, and perceptions of democracy and peace. Such insights are needed to understand the dynamics of conflicts, but they are also necessary building blocks for theories and strategies for solving violent and political struggles in transitioning states.

Funding scheme:

UTENRIKS-Internasjonale forhold - utenriks- og sikkerhetspolitikk og norske interesser