M.MAS 7/22/15 have experienced recent violence (Sittwe, Meiktila, Mandalay, and Lashio) and two that have not (Pathein and Mawlamyine).21 Second, a series of small group discussions and ‘Listening Project’ interviews with local residents in these six cities. These two components are interrelated; many of the young activists elected to conduct their own Listening Project interviews, and the trainings and subsequent research have both contributed to the development of new ideas for actions that the groups are now undertaking. The discussions about framing, justifying, and enacting violence that took place during trainings also helped us in analyzing interviews in each location, by clarifying local incidents and dynamics. The M.MAS project was convened out of a desire to better understand the production of violence in Myanmar and to use this understanding to support local groups working for peace. Methodologically, it can be challenging to investigate the production of violence; these challenges are accentuated by the fraught contemporary context in Myanmar. Moreover, it is important not to presume that BuddhistMuslim ‘communal conflict’ is of central concern to people in Myanmar, or that people necessarily understand violence that has occurred to date as ‘communal’ or define it in religious terms as Buddhist vs Muslim.22 These concerns prompted the Listening Project approach.23 During February, March, and April 2015 we conducted 68 interviews with a total of 78 persons across the six research areas. We also organised trainings for groups of 7-10 activists24 in each city during the same time; afterwards participants volunteered to conduct their own interviews as well as assist us with arranging interviews with local residents. At the end of May 2015, 48 of these activists then came together at a monastery outside Mandalay to discuss what they had learned from their interviews, as well as participant observation undertaken in the months since the initial trainings. Interviews were conducted with subjects (referred to as ‘narrators’ in this paper) according to a loose but consistent format, consisting of three parts. The first asked a set of basic questions to establish familiarity and an easily discernable connection between the questions and the interviewers. These questions focused on biographical information, including work and voluntary activities, experience living or travelling in other parts of Myanmar, and familiarity with ‘other people’, that is, people of other ethnicities, religions, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India; Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, 2 edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 20 Training participants are University students and members of local civil society organizations working on a variety of issues including, among others, peace and interfaith harmony; environmental protection and land rights; social development; health; and legal aid. The majority of the participants are Buddhist, but Hindu, Christian, and Muslim participants joined as well. 21 Because the project was motivated by a desire to understand how people might, explicitly or implicitly, justify violence, research was focused on areas that have experience violence. However, inspired by Varshney’s work, the project also sought to include perspectives from at least two areas that have not experienced violence: Mawlamyine and Pathein. Mawlamyine was selected because it is the putative location from which the ‘969’ movement was launched; as the capital of Mon State, including it also meant that the project could maintain a research focus that was equally balanced between ethnic states and majority Burman regions. Pathein was selected as the sixth city because the Delta is generally excluded from discussions of religious conflict in Myanmar, yet the research team had heard strong indications that conditions there were tense between religious groups. 22 Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1998) 23 In another setting, this research may have been called an oral history. ‘Listening Project’ was chosen as the framing because the Phnom Penh based Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) has conducted a number of insightful ‘Listening Projects’ in Myanmar and the methodology, or at least the name, is familiar for many within Myanmar civil society. CPCS, in turn, has based their approach on methodology developed by Collaborative Development Action/Boston. See, http://www.centrepeaceconflictstudies.org/ and http://cdacollaborative.org/. M.MAS was inspired by the work of these groups but would not arrogate complete fidelity to their approach. 24 Training participants were invited based upon the research team’s prior connections in each area, including individuals known from prior collaboration or those who were introduced by people known to the team. 4