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326. Mediating Contrasting Views of the World: Institutional Agents, Map-Making, and the Development of Geographical Thought in Burma

Sun, March 19, 8:30 to 10:30am, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: 2nd Floor, City Hall

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

In Burma, knowledge of the wider world and the ways in which it was first dispensed in written form and progressively through visual materials by the sangha and the crown have largely served to establish a sacred and political order. Early on, notions of cosmology adapted from Pali literature strictly determined the place of all sentient beings in an overall hierarchy of realms extending from subterranean to celestial abodes and helped to plot Burmese sacred space on the basis of the Buddhist geography of Ancient India. Closer in time, empirical knowledge gained from land surveys helped to establish cadastral records, define boundaries between principalities, and locate the most appropriate place for the construction of new royal centers; in this, it served to consolidate local or regional political power and also to exacerbate the rivalry of colonial powers for regional domination.
The making of sacred charts and topographical maps has continuously developed well into the early twentieth century. While only the sangha out of the two institutional agents in charge has remained, it had to negotiate ever more widely-accepted positivist approaches to knowledge and attempt to offer a revised interpretation of its traditional worldview.
The panel seeks to examine the representations of these contrasting worldviews, the role of institutional agents in defining them and shaping spatial and geographical consciousness. The diversity of the panel members’ backgrounds promises to bring stimulating insights into the ideas and practices that generated the development of Burmese cartography from pre-modern times to colonial and post-colonial eras.

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