Twice hidden, twice forgotten

Reviewed publication:
Ikeya, Chie. 2011. Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. xiii + 239 pages. ISBN: 9780824834616 (hardback)

Ikeya’s study brought lectures of two of my former teachers to mind. A favourite topic of the ethnologist among them was “Why exceptions?”, while the then so-called non-western sociologist prompted us to always be alert to ‘counterpoints’. However ingenious and plausible, paradigms ‘freeze’ the object of scrutiny, at the same time that things social are always on the move and never fixed. As a result, the absence of exceptions should evoke our suspicion that something is amiss, or missing at least, at the same time that counterpoints could well be indicators of things to come.

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