The event launches David Brenner's book Rebel Politics: A Political Sociology of Armed Struggle in Myanmar’s Borderlands with a roundtable on the changing dynamics of the civil war in Myanmar, one of the most entrenched armed conflicts in the world.

Based on long-term research inside the Kachin and Karen rebellions, Rebel Politics analyses the relations between rebel leaders, their rank-and-file, and local communities in the context of political and geopolitical transformations in Myanmar. Using ethnographic methods and social theory, Rebel Politics provides an insight into the hidden social dynamics of ethnic conflict, rebel governance and borderland politics. In doing so, the book explains how revolutionary elites capture and lose legitimacy within their own movements and how the internal politics of rebel movements drive wider dynamics of war and peace.

The book launch will feature a roundtable with David Brenner (Goldsmiths), Kai Htang Lashi (Kachin National Organisation), Lee Jones (Queen Mary University of London) and Shona Loong (University of Oxford). The discussion will be chaired by Sanjay Seth (Goldsmiths) and followed by an audience Q&A and then a drinks reception.

More information about Rebel Politics can be found here: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501740091/rebel-politics/