At the break of the military coup in Burma/Myanmar in February 2021, residents in many parts of the country would bang their pots and pans in their respective homes every eight o’clock in the evening. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has restrained social mobility, this signaled the beginning of a widespread protest movement against authoritarian rule.
Populism has become a buzzword in popular and media discourses in recent years. Academic debates on the concept of populism—what it is and isn’t, where to look for it and its normative prescription—has been highly contested. From minimal definitions to vernacular descriptions to propositions to drop the concept all together, a considerable but disparate field of study has emerged.
Humans, by a fallacious sense of ownership claim over the planet, have covered earth with more man-made mass than earth’s natural biomass. That’s saying something. It means that anthropogenic activities have been so drastic, so all-encompassing that in the year 2020 the produced and accumulated man-made objects far exceeded what the earth naturally generates. And it is believed that most of this built object, the infrastructure, and materials around us are made up of one core element, sand.
