M.MAS 1/12/17 Introduction Myanmar has been the site of serious Buddhist-Muslim violence over the last five years, generating expressions of concern from a variety of quarters, including international organizations dedicated to monitoring the potential for mass violence, even genocide. Much of this concern has been directed towards Rakhine State, where at least 145,000 persons displaced since 2012 remain in rudimentary camps.2 More than 1,500 buildings have been destroyed within the last three months. 3 Collective violence against Muslims has also taken place in nearly every other state and region of Myanmar. Yet, the overwhelming majority of towns and villages in Myanmar have not been the sites of such violence. That fact is the subject of this paper. Paul Brass and Ashutosh Varshney both began ambitious studies of collective violence in India with a similar observation. Collective violence has been a frequent occurrence in India, they note, but only in a small number of locations relative to the rest of the country; most days in most places are peaceful. Brass and Varshney both asked, why? Brass focused his study on those cities where riots seemed to be a persistent feature of life. He concluded that this was best explained by the presence of “institutionalized riot systems.” 4 He argued that, when riots occurred, it was because organized groups, often involving members of political parties and the state apparatus, chose particular moments to mobilize them. Varshney studied precisely the cities that Brass did not—those where riots were not common. Varshney concluded that the relative absence of collective violence in these cities was best explained by the presence of inter-communal connections, particularly associational forms such as civil society and business organizations that included members of different communal groups.5 In our research and work with local civil society networks, we have regularly heard of incidents that seem to parallel the findings of both Brass and Varshney. In locales where riots have occurred, residents have told us that these incidents were deliberately organized in ways strikingly similar to the dynamics described by Brass in north India. Elsewhere, we have argued that taking such explanations seriously is important both for peace-building and for holding individuals and authorities responsible for violence. 6 We have also regularly heard anecdotes of incidents that seemed poised to escalate into larger-scale violence—but then did not. 7 In these cases, there were clear contests: situations where individuals and 2 UNOCHA, “Myanmar: Internal Displacement in Rakhine State (Jan 2015)” (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), January 2015), http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Affected_Map_IDP_Sites_Rakhine_OCHA_Jan2015_A4.pdf. 3 Human Rights Watch, “Burma: Military Burned Villages in Rakhine State,” December 13, 2016, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/13/burma-military-burned-villages-rakhine-state. 4 Paul R. Brass, The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (University of Washington Press, 2003), 32. 5 Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). 6 Matthew J Walton, Matt Schissler, and Phyu Phyu Thi, “Behind Myanmar’s Religious Tensions,” Nikkei Asian Review, August 10, 2016, http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Viewpoints/Walton-Schissler-and-Phyu-Phyu-ThiBehind-Myanmar-s-religious-tensions; Matt Schissler, Matthew J Walton, and Phyu Phyu Thi, “Reconciling Contradictions: Buddhist-Muslim Violence, Narrative Making, and Memory in Myanmar,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, Forthcoming. 7 Brass’s work might suggest that this is because those leading an institutionalized riot system ultimately chose not to force the matter. Varshney’s work might suggest that this is because intercommunal networks were able to prevent violence. For our purposes, we take both bodies of work as the launching point for a question rather than as sufficient for a confident answer, since aspects of both scholars’ theories seem to be present in our cases. 2/24