Circulating in difference: performances of publicity on and beyond a Yangon train

Abstract

Abstract: Amid Myanmar's fraught democratic transition, some local Pentecostals took up new opportunities to publicly evangelize to Buddhists, efforts that were met mostly with indifference. This article explores the role of indifference in mediating encounters across difference. Drawing together scholarship on recognition and sincerity, it argues that these evangelists were occupied not just with the challenges of hailing an audience in a tentatively more open public sphere, albeit one shot through with heightened tension around religious belonging; they were also concerned with what I call the performance of publicity: the ways in which publicity is itself publicized, celebrated, circulated, and received – especially online.