Benedict Mette-Starke
Benedict Mette-Starke is a PhD candidate with the working group Social and Political Anthropology. He studied socio-cultural anthropology and economics (BA) at the University of Heidelberg. He did his postgraduate degree in anthropology at the University of Heidelberg and University College London (ucl). His MA dissertation dealt with Fairphones and their use. He examined how a diverse ‘community’ formed around the phone, in interaction with it and its ethics.
Benedict Mette-Starke‘s PhD thesis (working title: New Nets of Politics: Digital Rights Activism in Myanmar and its Ethics) examines digital rights activism that developed alongside the reforms in Myanmar between 2007 and 2021. It is primarily based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yangon in 2019 and 2020 in addition to online research and continued conversations with research partners. The thesis illustrates how Myanmar digital rights activism is constituted. It outlines how digital rights activists both use infrastructures for their activism and try to selectively reshape infrastructures, mostly digital and legal infrastructures, in the process. The internet has promised to be a new kind of public independent of the political entanglements and surveillance other Myanmar publics have had to offer. While the internet offers freedom, it has also reproduced inequalities. Thus, activists have to make tough practical and ethical decisions, such as how to document legal cases, whom to hold accountable and how, what to publicly address and what to keep silent about. The thesis argues that, whether supporting others with their skills and knowledge or critiquing global actors such as Meta, Myanmar digital rights activists redefine politics not just for Myanmar but on a broader scale. It situates Myanmar digital rights activism within the anthropological study of activism and infrastructures. Beyond a simple location in media anthropology, it relates Myanmar digital rights activism to questions of responsibility and freedom in the anthropology of ethics.
You can find Benedict Mette-Starke’s CV here.
Publications
12.2022
with Jenny García Ruales, Joaquín Molina and Naomi Rattunde. Sharing Messages, Not Meals: Engaging with Non-Humans in Fieldwork during the Pandemic. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie | Journal for Social and Cultural Anthropology 147(1/2): 75-98.
03.2021
Avoiding Pitfalls in Engaging with Digital Myanmar: A Post-coup Analysis of Risk Mitigation (Part 1). Tea Circle Oxford. A Forum for New Perspectives on Burma/Myanmar. (peer reviewed blog post)
Avoiding Pitfalls in Engaging with Digital Myanmar: Post-coup Signposts for Engagement (Part 2). Tea Circle Oxford. A Forum for New Perspectives on Burma/Myanmar. (peer reviewed blog post)
11.2020
Connected by Extension. How Paying Connects Old Regimes and New Isolations. Allegra Lab - #corona. (peer reviewed blog post)
10.2020
When is Myanmar data? The making of data through detachment and attachment. Boas Blogs – Fieldwork meets crisis. (peer reviewed blog post)
05.2011
with Eleonor Marcussen. The Transculturality of Historical Disasters. New Delhi (conference report), H-Soz-u-Kult.
Conferences
03.2024 Presentation: Facts Beyond Reproach: Myanmar’s Digital Rights Activist accountability through Establishing Data, Monitoring, and Archiving. Epistemologies of Evidence in Myanmar - Part 1: Fields: Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference 2024, Seattle, WA.
09.2021
Co-organisation of the workshop Activist Atmospheres - Bodies and Emotions in the Tremors of Protest (with Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer; workshop – panel 32) and presentation titled Of ‘Free Speech’ and ‘Hate Speech’ in Myanmar Digital Rights Activism. GAA/DGSKA conference 2021: Worlds. Zones. Atmospheres. Seismographies of the Anthropocene. Bremen (online).
07.2020
Presentation: Activist knowledge production through digital rights activism in Myanmar. Panel015: Engaged media anthropology in the digital age. [Media Anthropology Network]. EASA conference 2020: New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe. Lisbon (online).
05.2019
Presentation: Dynamics of Free Expression – the Everyday of Digital Rights Activism. Interdisciplinary Myanmar Conference 2019: Dynamics of Everyday Life in Today’s Myanmar, University of Passau.
10.2018
Presentation: Digital Rights Movements in Myanmar. Sudden Surges, New Openings. Interdisciplinary Myanmar Conference 2018: Migratory Models in Myanmar, University of Constance.
05.2015
Co-organisation of conference Subjectivity of the body in Mental Health and presentation on En-minding anxieties or embodying winds – what new to make of old problems. University College London.
Outreach
02.2024 "Chinas Verflechtungen in Myanmar" Interview für China Ticker, der Podcast des China Netzwerk Baden-Württemberg.
06.2021
with Carolin Hirsch. Myanmar. Episode of Podcast 9B on the situation in Myanmar following Myanmar’s 2021 coup d’état. KIM University of Constance.
"Mit Milchtee, Topf und Tastatur" interview für Zukunft Global, Magazin für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit aus schleswig-Holstein.
03.2021
"Proteste und Militärgewalt. Die Lage in Myanmar". (Protests and military violence. The situation in Myanmar). Radio interview with radioeins rbb.
"Der Kampf um Macht und Freiheit". (The struggle for power and freedom). Radio interview with BR2.