Communities of care: Public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar

Ong, Andrew; Feuchtwang, Stephan

doi:10.1177/0308275x20974099

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Some elements for a different approach to sovereignty where violence is not an essential nature of society but of a certain form of political power with cosmic pretensions can be found in the links between the 'divine' or 'sacred' kingship and cosmologies of temporality, alterity, and utopia (Graeber and Sahlins 2017). Ethnographic analysis following this approach questions the legalistic and Cartesian frameworks of (post-)colonial modernity, for instance, when examining de facto states of armed groups and considering communities of care, emerging social relations, and subject positions rather than governance control and legitimacy (Ong and Steinmüller 2021). 5.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty, Prefigurative Politics, and Basques’ Joy to Decide

Gaztañaga

2021

Social Analysis

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The literature about Basque politics and the anthropology of sovereignty often define the political within the boundaries of violence, desire, and statehood: a sort of pessimism pervades the general assumptions and the end results. In this article, I shift the focus to a different aspect of the problem of sovereignty, drawing on ethnographic research about a Basque social movement that asserts self-determination in terms of a democratic and pacifist ‘Right to Decide’. Exploring the movement’s organization, daily activities, performances, sociality, and discourses, I argue that they prefigure political pleasure in a way that encourages the performance of sovereignty as a positive force. I show how the movement creates an environment in which producing sovereignty becomes a joyful experience.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty, Prefigurative Politics, and Basques’ Joy to Decide

Gaztañaga

2021

Social Analysis

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“…Although dispersed networks of mining and opium production have long sustained Wa autonomy in relation to powerful neighbors and colonial powers [103], since the late 1980s, the group has also pursued more conventional forms of development supported by international agencies and the governments of countries such as China and Japan [104,105]. In 1988, the UN Drug Control Programme and the Myanmar Government's Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control launched the Wa Alternative Development Project, mirroring national and international development efforts to the north in Wa State [106]. More recently, large tracts of forest were cleared to make way for new infrastructure, as captured in Google Earth imagery (Figure 8).…”

Section: Northeastern Border With Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven Frontiers: Exposing the Geopolitics of Myanmar’s Borderlands with Critical Remote Sensing

Bennett

Faxon

2021

Remote Sensing

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A critical remote sensing approach illuminates the geopolitics of development within Myanmar and across its ethnic minority borderlands. By integrating nighttime light (NTL) data from 1992–2020, long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and a review of scholarly and gray literature, we analyzed how Myanmar’s economic geography defies official policy, attesting to persistent inequality and the complex relationships between state-sponsored and militia-led violence, resource extraction, and trade. While analysis of DMSP-OLS data (1992–2013) and VIIRS data (2013–2020) reveals that Myanmar brightened overall, especially since the 2010s in line with its now-halting liberalization, growth in lights was unequally distributed. Although ethnic minority states brightened more rapidly than urbanized ethnic majority lowland regions, in 2020, the latter still emitted 5.6-fold more radiance per km2. Moreover, between 2013 and 2020, Myanmar’s borderlands were on average just 13% as bright as those of its five neighboring countries. Hot spot analysis of radiance within a 50 km-wide area spanning both sides of the border confirmed that most significant clusters of light lay outside Myanmar. Among the few hot spots on Myanmar’s side, many were associated with official border crossings such as Muse, the formal hub for trade with China, and Tachileik and Myawaddy next to Thailand. Yet some of the most significant increases in illumination between 2013 and 2020 occurred in areas controlled by the Wa United State Party and its army, which are pursuing infrastructure development and mining along the Chinese border from Panghsang to the illicit trade hub of Mongla. Substantial brightening related to the “world’s largest refugee camp” was also detected in Bangladesh, where displaced Rohingya Muslims fled after Myanmar’s military launched a violent crackdown. However, no radiance nor change in radiance were discernible in areas within Myanmar where ethnic cleansing operations occurred, pointing to the limitations of NTL. The diverse drivers and implications of changes in light observed from space emphasize the need for political and economically situated remote sensing.

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“…Care is absolutely central to understand the economy of life embodied in the plantation (Steinmüller 2021). Public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State create different “communities of care,” each uniting a set of actors and recipients along a particular moral logic (Ong and Steinmüller 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Sovereignty as Care: Acquaintances, Mutuality, and Scale in the Wa State of Myanmar

Feuchtwang

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Sovereignty always relies on a double movement of violence and care. It requires the power to exercise violence as well as the capacity to care, to protect, and to nourish. In the footsteps of Foucault and Agamben, numerous scholars have rediscovered the same paradox in philosophical and legal texts. Anthropologists writing about informal and practical sovereignty pay attention to violence, but sometimes ignore the importance of care for the exercise of sovereignty. Against such tendencies to focus on texts and on violence, this article deals with sovereignty as care. The concrete examples are the relationships of care between commanders, soldiers, and villagers in the Wa State of Myanmar, a de-facto state governed by an insurgent army. In the absence of an effective government bureaucracy, popular sovereignty in this military state relies on a particular logic of personal relations, in which care is central. Subordinates have to care about leaders, whereas leaders are supposed to care for subordinates. Care provides the balance and foil for the exercise of violence, and both are necessary for the exercise of sovereignty. The combination of violence and care in personal relations is scaled up to create “the people” as the subject and object of sovereignty. The article describes the logic of personal relations that allows for the exercise of popular sovereignty in the Wa State and elsewhere.

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Communities of care: Public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar

Cited by 7 publications

References 33 publications

Sovereignty, Prefigurative Politics, and Basques’ Joy to Decide

Sovereignty, Prefigurative Politics, and Basques’ Joy to Decide

Uneven Frontiers: Exposing the Geopolitics of Myanmar’s Borderlands with Critical Remote Sensing

Sovereignty as Care: Acquaintances, Mutuality, and Scale in the Wa State of Myanmar

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