is inspired by his time serving with the Indian Imperial Police in the country. The novel describes the culture, the Burmese people, and social structures from the colonial times. In its way, Orwell´s grotesque descriptions are at the same time strongly influenced by his love for the country as well as the people. A surprisingly amount of Orwell´s descriptions can still be recognized in Myanmar today, which can show how the culture is preserved through politics and by the people. Other significant contributions are Manning Nash with his The Golden Road to Modernity: Village Life in Contemporary Burma (Nash, 1965). The book is a study of rural areas in upper Myanmar. The publication aims to do more than just present ethnographical facts of life with existing theories; Nash aims to give some guidance to rural development workers of the Burmese government (Brohm, 1966). Melford Spiro contributed with his Burmese Supernaturalism (Spiro, 1978) where he investigated the relationship between Buddhism and Burmese animism. Following the functionalism of Weber, recognizing the importance of religion for placing meaning in the unknown, in Myanmar, its function is more utilitarian (Thornburg, 1998). The general discussion in anthropology about area studies in the 80-90s affected Myanmarstudies as well. One argument is that area studies have a too narrow focus and is therefore not capable of engaging in proper comparative studies. As a result, some works are written on transnational problems in Southeast Asia and include case studies from Myanmar, by people with direct experience from the country. On the other side, some subject experts include Myanmar in their work, with mixed results. Selth writes: “Burma´s varied history and complex problems are not well understood by non-Burma specialists.” (Selth, 2010, p. 426). Recent scholars that included Myanmar is amongst others; Michael Adas that included a case study from Myanmar (Adas, 1979), Benedict Anderson cities Myanmar several times in his imagined Communities from 1983 (Anderson, 2006), where Myanmar has shown itself as a valid tool to illustrate broader issues. James C. Scott is an anthropologist crucial not to omit as he is well known for his work on peasant rebellions(J. C. Scott, 1976). This work had a considerable impact while looking into more general and well-known work in anthropology and political science (Hlaing, 2008, p. 253). Still, up into the late 2000s, one could still be punished with imprisonment for criticizing the government, which also means that the Burmese people are unwilling to speak with researches, this includes local scholars. Basically, since 1988 in particular, everyone following Myanmar has been reminded of the limitations of their knowledge, repeatedly. As a 22