The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar’s land governance

Suhardiman, Diana; Bright, John; Palmano, Casper

doi:10.1080/03066150.2019.1656200

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These encounter each other. Far from replacing past resource making strategies, claims and legitimacy frameworks (the early 20 th century maps are still, for instance, the only legal documents on the basis of which capture fishery areas are officially delineated), the new laws and claims "pile up" as to form an ever more complex millefeuille (multiple layers) that are challenging to navigate, can trigger conflicts but also open up new horizons and possibilities (see also Boutry et al 2017;Hong 2017;Mark 2016;Scurrah et al 2015;Suhardiman et al 2019aSuhardiman et al , 2019b for a description of Myanmar land sector institutional pluralism).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Claiming and re-claiming the Ayeyarwady Delta, time and again: the case of Nyaungdone Island, Myanmar

Ivars¹,

Venot²

2020

Journal of Political Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since 2011 and the transition to civilian government, Myanmar and the Ayeyarwady Delta in particular are witnessing swift and dramatic changes in the modalities of access and use of natural resources. Drawing from political ecology, and on the basis of ethnographic work conducted in Yeinek village tract in the Nyaungdone Township of the Ayeyarwady Delta, this article places recent resources dynamics in a historical perspective. Rather than seeing natural resources as a 'given', we see them as resulting from socially embedded strategies of resource-making. These strategies contribute to a constant redefinition of the "resource-frontier" the delta has historically been for multiple actors. Notably, we show how land for rice cultivation, and water for capture fisheries and aquaculture, have been made into key resources over time, often in an exclusionary way. Post-2011 land and fishery reforms are the most recent examples of resource-making dynamics; they have certainly triggered significant resource re-allocation, but existing cross-scale patronage networks still largely shape how this takes place in practice. Finally, in this deltaic environment where resources are part water, part land, part rice, part fish, and the legitimacy of one's claims often hinges on proving prior use of a specific resource, it is the nature of the resource to be reallocated that is contested. In the newly politicized context of Myanmar, resources and institutional fluidity is in itself a frontier to navigate.Keywords: Ayeyarwady Delta; Myanmar; fisheries; land; resource making; frontier; exclusion

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Claiming and re-claiming the Ayeyarwady Delta, time and again: the case of Nyaungdone Island, Myanmar

Ivars¹,

Venot²

2020

Journal of Political Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Across the verdant hills and dusty plains of Myanmar's countryside, generations of land grabbing had relegated many farmers to poverty and enriched the military‐connected elite (Barbesgaard, 2019; Mark & Belton, 2020). In borderland areas, protracted conflict had repeatedly dispossessed ethnic minority villagers and resulted in fragmented sovereignty and extractive accumulation (Ferguson, 2014; Suhardiman et al, 2021; Woods, 2011). These violent spatial patterns connected urban cores to resource‐rich peripheries; many of the gleaming office towers and stately buildings that surrounded the start‐up hub were financed by borderland profits, including those derived from illicit timber, gems and drug trade (Sarma & Siddaway, 2020).…”

Section: Building Digital Infrastructures In Landscapes Of Dispossessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical geographies of smart development

Faxon

Kintzi

2022

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The development of smart infrastructures is a political act that intersects, in powerful ways, with ongoing decolonial struggles across the uneven landscapes of the postcolonial world. This paper develops a grounded, relational approach to the critical geographies of smart development that starts from place‐based relations of power to investigate how specific postcolonial dynamics inflect the global articulation of smart development. Drawing on the work of Gillian Hart, our approach situates the development of smart infrastructures within longer, contested histories of geopolitical intervention and capitalist transformation and foregrounds ongoing land, labour and livelihood struggles that transect the urban–rural divide. Using critical ethnography and relational comparison in South East Asia and the Middle East, we show how Myanmar's smart farms and Jordan's smart grid were built and selectively adapted or refused in ways that furthered existing inequalities and ontologies of disconnection, while providing material conduits for the enhancement of ethno‐nationalist projects to define the postcolonial state. This approach reframes the stakes of smart development, providing pathways for generative comparison that centres ongoing equity struggles and historically situated constellations of power to understand how smart development materialises in the postcolonial world.

show abstract

“…In this section, with a focus on the Hat Gyi Dam in Karen State, we contextualise Salween hydropower projects in Myanmar to the power relations that have emerged through the history of conflict in the Salween basin. 4 We build upon Magee and Kelley (2009) and Middleton et al's (2019) analysis of the recent hydropolitics of the Salween basin in Myanmar and Thailand to draw out the implications of hybrid governance in the context of Myanmar's 'limited statehood' (Risse, 2013, cited in South, 2017 or competing sovereignty (Jolliffe, 2015;Suhardiman et al, 2020). Many actors influence contemporary water governance in Myanmar, including the Union government and the National Water Resources Committee; the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar Armed Forces); Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs); domestic and foreign companies and financiers; local, national and international civil society groups; and community-based organisations and social movements.…”

Section: Hybrid Governance and Conflict In Myanmarmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kittikhoun and Staubli, 2018), in the case of the Salween River there is not a trilateral agreement between the three states. Furthermore, throughout the basin there are significant power asymmetries between actors, especially in Myanmar given that political authority is contested over at times overlapping territorial spaces (Götz and Middleton, 2020; Suhardiman et al ., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power

Suhardiman

Middleton

2020

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and nonstate actors and institutions in hybrid and multi-scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision-making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmented processes through which decisions have been arrived at, and their implications. In the context of highly asymmetrical power relations throughout the basin, and the absence of an intergovernmental agreement to date, we argue that hybrid networks of state and non-state actors could be strategically engaged to connect parallel and fragmented decision-making landscapes with a goal of inclusively institutionalising the transboundary commons and maintaining connected local commons throughout the basin, foregrounding a concern for ecological and social justice.

show abstract

The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar’s land governance

Cited by 18 publications

References 46 publications

Claiming and re-claiming the Ayeyarwady Delta, time and again: the case of Nyaungdone Island, Myanmar

Claiming and re-claiming the Ayeyarwady Delta, time and again: the case of Nyaungdone Island, Myanmar

Critical geographies of smart development

The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About