This interesting monograph is about economic and political coping strategies employed in Myanmar to withstand economic hardship in the context of authoritarian rule. The analysis was inspired by the author's own experiences following the 1988 coup. The findings are based largely on the results of semi-structured interviews, life histories, personal conversations and a survey conducted between 2008 and 2015. Its twin objectives are to detail the myriad coping strategies found in Myanmar and to draw out their political, economic and social implications.

Sandwiched between the Introduction and Conclusion are chapters which provide vivid detail on coping strategies of an economic (‘Living frugally’, ‘Working on the side’), social (‘Networks, community and external aid’), psychological (‘Boosting morale’) and political (‘Accommodating, resisting, and exiting’) nature. The accessible narrative is replete with fascinating insights about everyday struggles to make ends meet. It is complemented by around a dozen photographs which nicely profile aspects of daily life in Myanmar.

The analysis stands at the intersection of at least three bodies of literature, namely: analyses of ‘passive’ resistance to authority, in the tradition of James Scott's Weapons of the weak (1985), studies of coping and survival strategies or ‘livelihood analysis’, and empirical analyses of poverty and vulnerability in Myanmar. It makes at least two important contributions to these literatures.

First, it addresses a gap in the empirical literature on poverty in Myanmar where good qualitative studies of coping strategies have been relatively rare (with a few exceptions such as United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Studies in social deprivation in Myanmar, 1999). There are many intriguing examples of the latter in the book including: adding large quantities of red pepper in curry to curb hunger and limit consumption (p. 48); establishing home-based mini-enterprises such as a pig-ear salad and noodle shop set up by one civil servant (p. 69); drawing on labour-sharing arrangements for agricultural and infrastructural work in the Pa-O community (p. 98); consulting clairvoyants and practising yadaya rituals to guard against misfortune (p. 141). Such accounts add a different dimension to existing studies of poverty in Myanmar with potential policy implications (though the latter are not the focus of the book).

Second, it presents a very useful conceptual framework to distinguish coping strategies, drawing on categories in Albert Hirschman's Exit, voice and loyalty: Responses to declines in firms, organizations and states (1970). Specifically, on one axis, strategies are categorised in terms of Loyalty/accommodation, Passive resistance, Voice or Exit (the LPVE framework). On the other axis, categorisation is based on whether strategies are self-enhancing, self-defeating or resilience-promoting. The framework generates a number of interesting insights. First, contra the Weapons of the weak tradition, harmful effects of passive resistance are highlighted (evasion of public health or safety directives, p. 174) and further, strategies of passive resistance are dwarfed in number by those of loyalty/accommodation (p. 177). Second, contra much of the literature on ‘sustainable livelihoods’, emphasis is placed on the limitations or harmful effects of local coping strategies. Examples include reducing expenditure on food, healthcare and education (pp. 47–56), using social mobilisation and voice to foster ethno-religious conflict (pp. 172, 192) and generally, employing accommodative strategies which serve to increase the regime's staying power. All of this makes for a nuanced and thoughtful inquiry which profiles, but does not romanticise, ‘the local’.

I have two small quibbles with the analysis. First, the work would have benefited if more closely linked to the large conceptual literature on poverty, vulnerability and sustainable livelihoods. Poverty and vulnerability tend to be conflated in the book, though they are not the same thing, and coping strategies may be quite different for each. Further, many of the same arguments presented in the book about the limitations of coping strategies are found in the complementary, critical literature on sustainable livelihoods.

Second, at times, it wasn't clear that the evidence presented in the study provided sufficient warrant for some of the claims made. I refer to claims that the quality of life in rural Burma is worsening (p. 37), that democratic processes create conditions favourable to economic development (p. 17), that small-scale informal activity does not fuel economic growth (p. 180), and so on.

These quibbles do not detract from the core contributions of this monograph, however. Further and sadly, there can be no quibble with the book's ominously prescient concluding remarks: ‘Because many of the forces at work in the country run counter to democratic norms and nurture conditions favourable to the return of the military rule, … there can be no guarantee that substantive democratic outcomes will emerge in Myanmar’ (p. 202).