About the Author

   Donald M. Seekins was born in New York. He obtained his B.A. in Asian studies at Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He is currently professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the College of International Studies at Meio University in Okinawa, Japan. Prior to joining Meio University, he was professor of political science in the Department of Law and Political Science at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, and research professor in the Foreign Area Studies Department of The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1988-1989, he was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at the University of the Ryukyus and in 1995 was a guest professor in the College of Letters and Social Sciences of the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Long interested in Burma, he first visited the country in 1970, during the height of Ne Win socialism, and has frequently returned to do fieldwork after 1988. He is presently working on a monograph about social, economic, and cultural changes in the city of Rangoon during the post-1988 period.