The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in Myanmar's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movement

• Published date: 01 June 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12135
• Date: 01 June 2015

The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in

Myanmar’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Movement

Lynette J. Chua

This article examines how activists build a movement for sexual orientation

and gender identity minorities in Myanmar, a country that is known for vio-

lent suppression of protests and is undergoing political reform. Based on orig-

inal fieldwork, it finds that activists deploy a strategy of “vernacular

mobilization of human rights” to persuade others to join their cause despite

the risks to personal safety and to get around political constraints on collective

organizing. Conceptualized at the intersection of the cultural study of human

rights and social movements scholarship, “vernacular mobilization of human

rights” theorizes the relationship between vernacularization—the translation

and local adaptation of human rights—and movement micromobilization,

specifying how the former unfolds as collective action framing processes.

Through vernacularization activities, such as human rights workshops, move-

ment leaders reframe grievances and shift the attribution of blame to

empower and recruit new activists. Furthermore, with these framing proc-

esses, they generate a political community with a collective identity and social

networks that they use to continue expanding the movement. The article

enriches debates about the implications of implementing human rights and

understandings of the relationship between human rights and movement

mobilization, especially under repressive or uncertain political conditions.

How do activists form a social movement and mobilize under

repressive and uncertain political conditions? They would have to

overcome stiff political constraints just to be able to persuade

others to join their cause at great personal risks, and innovate

strategies and tactics to avoid state retaliation as they make

Funding was provided by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant (WBS

No. R-241-000-118-646), National University of Singapore. I thank Catherine Albiston,

Nick Cheesman, Melissa Crouch, Prasenjit Duara, David Engel, David Gilbert, Andrew

Harding, Elaine Ho, Mark Massoud, Michael McCann, Calvin Morrill, Michael Musheno,

Eugene Quah, Rachel Stern, the editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as the audien-

ces at the 2014 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting and the Centre for the Study

of Law and Society, University of California-Berkeley,where earlier versions of this article

were presented. I also thank assistants Naw Mar Moora, Khine Khine Zin, Shaun Kang,

Koh Wei Jie, Jannelle Lau, Phua Jun Han, Maria Acton Thomas, U Kyaw Maung, Intan

Wirayadi, and YeoSam Jay. Most of all, I am grateful to the study informants.

Please direct all correspondence to Lynette J. Chua, Faculty of Law, National University

of Singapore, 469G Bukit Timah Road, Eu Tong Sen Building, Singapore 259776,

Singapore; e-mail: lynettechua@nus.edu.sg.

Law & Society Review, Volume 49, Number 2 (2015)

V

C2015 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

299

demands for rights or mount other forms of resistance (Chua

2012; Johnston 2006). In Myanmar,

1

a group of activists are navi-

gating such challenges to build a movement for sexual orienta-

tion and gender identity minorities (“SOGI movement”). They

began mobilizing even when Myanmar was ruled by a military

junta known for violent suppression of dissent. Although Myan-

mar started transitioning to civilian governance after the 2010

elections, political conditions for collective organizing remain

dubious. Alongside legal reforms and signs of liberalization, the

government still arrests activists, abuse of power persists, and

human rights violations continue (Cheesman 2014; Human

Rights Watch 2014). Yet the SOGI movement is growing. It is

becoming a part of post-2010 politics in which marginalized

groups increasingly demand for rights recognition, and its

human rights strategy is attracting international support. Bur-

mese SOGI activists hold publicly visible gatherings, and engage

government officials and politicians. They speak out against social

norms that regard SOGI minorities as immoral and deviant, and

advocate for legal reform of sexual regulation.

In this article, I focus on the question of how SOGI activists

build their movement and mobilize in Myanmar under military

rule and as the country currently undergoes political changes.

Based on fieldwork on Myanmar, a site understudied by law and

society scholars, I find that activists deploy a strategy that I call

“vernacular mobilization of human rights” to carry out recruit-

ment and expand to grassroots locations across the country: they

vernacularize human rights—translate and adapt them for local

practice (Merry 2006)—so that these global norms resonate with

people who live in a society where human rights discourse was

brutally suppressed and largely unfamiliar to them (see, e.g.,

Dale 2011). Through vernacularization activities, such as human

rights workshops, movement leaders cultivate oppositional con-

sciousness (Mansbridge and Morris 2001) and empowerment,

and produce a sense of efficacy among participants, increasing

their willingness to take up collective action despite difficult polit-

ical conditions and risks. Furthermore, through vernacularization,

they generate a new political community of Burmese SOGI

minorities and a set of social networks of which they make use to

get around restrictions on collective organizing.

“Vernacular mobilization of human rights” is conceptualized

at the intersection of law and society’s cultural study of human

1

I use “Myanmar,” the country’s official name since 1989, to refer to the state,

“Burmese” as the adjectival form for the state, society, and its citizens, and “Burman” when

referring to the dominant ethnic group. I use these terms with the understanding that they

are contested; for example, opponents of the military dictatorship rejected “Myanmar.”

300 VernacularMobilization of Human Rights

rights and social movements scholarship. According to law and

society research, human rights have the potential to achieve social

justice (Merry 2006) and actualize human dignity (Massoud

2013); however, they often lack cultural resonance (Engel 2012;

Munger 2006) and political legitimacy, especially under repres-

sive conditions (see, e.g., Chua 2014; Massoud 2011; Stern and

O’Brien 2011). Nevertheless, local activists frequently turn to

human rights’ ideas of dignity, respect, and equality to persuade

others to join their cause or recognize their claims (see, e.g., Muj-

ica and Meza 2009; Rajaram and Zararia 2009), and construct

their claims as human rights to secure funding and other assis-

tance from international non-governmental organizations

(INGOs) and foreign governments (Bob 2005, 2009). To under-

stand the complex interplay between the universalism of human

rights and their local mobilizations, law and society scholars have

begun to examine vernacularization as cultural processes (Levitt

and Merry 2009; Merry 2006).

I advance this line of research by developing “vernacular mobi-

lization of human rights” to theorize vernacularization’s relationship

to movement micromobilization. In short, vernacular mobilization

of human rights is a mobilization strategy that consists of collective

action framing processes (Snow et al. 1986) through which activists

translate and put human rights into local practice. Building on

extant scholarship, I specify how vernacularization unfolds as these

framing processes. In addition, I go further using the strategy of

vernacular mobilization of human rights to emphasize the impor-

tance of vernacularization’s social nature to movement mobilization.

I show how a social movement and vernacularization mutually con-

struct each other and produce multiple and varied practices of

human rights (Cowan et al. 2001; Goodale 2007).

Unpacking vernacular mobilization speaks to debates about

the implications of implementing human rights. Despite the

promise and allure of human rights, critics argue that human

rights are Western hegemonic impositions (De Sousa Santo and

Rodriguez-Garavito 2005; Nader 2007) and that their local adap-

tations reinforce unequal global distribution of power (Wilson

1997). They fear that Western funders pressure domestic activists

into engaging human rights, thus jeopardizing their safety (Mas-

soud 2013). On SOGI issues, human rights claims attract accusa-

tions of promoting undesirable Western culture and heighten

backlash from the state and other opponents (see, e.g., Boyd

2013; Currier 2009; Lee 2012). Others worry that human rights

discourse obliterates indigenous sexual identities (Kollman and

Waites 2009; Seckinelgin 2009), and obscures alternative inter-

pretations of social experiences and modes of conflict resolution

(Merry 2001).

Chua 301