Introduction: Module Goals
This module explores how Buddhist values and political power have been and continue to be articulated in Myanmar, formerly Burma. In this country located at the crossroads of India and China, monks have constituted a powerful social institution that for many centuries has been in charge of producing knowledge through memorization, manuscripts, and teaching.
This module uses examples from Myanmar to illustrate how communication technologies impose parameters on the ways in which Theravada discourse, knowledge, and social formations are mediated. Manuscript, print, and digital cultures differ qualitatively and substantively in the kinds of social formations they empower and in the ways in which they record history. By highlighting how communication technologies become tools for constructing social reality, we can also discern how they record history and inscribe the past into the present moment.
In the course of this module, we look at the impact that different types of communication technologies—especially manuscripts, print, and digital media—have on the relationship between Buddhism and its political patrons. In doing so, we will learn how Buddhist knowledge was constructed, communicated, and circulated during specific historical periods, i.e. pre-colonial, modern, and the contemporary digital information age.
Writing, in any of its technological forms—stone carving, manuscript etching, print, and digital—allows for increasingly complex networks of communication and interaction to emerge. Society today is impossible without being rooted in writing. The module suggests that particular types of communication technologies facilitate corresponding social practices and formations. As we consider examples from premodern history to the contemporary, we will note that different information technologies often coexist in later periods as newer writing technologies only partially displace older ones, along with the social institutions they represent.
Focusing on the mutual influence between communication technologies and political culture allows us to understand the range of historical possibilities under specific technological constraints. From this premise, namely that communication technologies are linked to specific social formations, we can then consider additional comparisons: Who can access information? How and through what institutions or social venues can that be done? How does information circulate within social groups? Such factors, in turn, shape specific authority structures, educational and religious values, as well as social and political privileges.