Nobody Owns the Land: How Inheritance Shapes Land Relations in the Central Plain of Myanmar

Huard, Stéphen

doi:10.1353/jbs.2020.0004

Cited by 9 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…In many villages, respected elders served as adjudicators of land sales and potential boundary conflicts, an effective system in a context where few outsiders owned land, though one that offered little recourse for frequent cases of land grabbing by military elites. Working in another part of rural Myanmar, anthropologist Stephen Huard (2020) describes entangled personal relations of inheritance and obligation, above and beyond the law, that create a contingent form of property best understood in terms of stewardship; ownership was rooted in the responsibility to maintain land as a source of ongoing security. Across the country, property transactions were arbitrated by trusted intermediaries.…”

Section: Making Myanmar’s Digital Land Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Networks of Speculation: Making Land Markets on Myanmar Facebook

Wittekind

Faxon

2022

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Digital platforms have changed how property is sold and valued in the Global North, yet little is known about digital tools in emerging land markets. Drawing on in situ and digital ethnography, we argue that Facebook plays a key role in making a new kind of market in Myanmar, one in which land is transformed into a speculative asset, exchanged across ever‐expanding networks. While commodification is familiar within longer histories of capitalism, this case highlights the significance of digital platforms to the contemporary remaking of property relations. Unlike classic cases of market‐making enabled by active state regulation, Myanmar’s digital land markets were forged in the context of state absence by brokers who harnessed the technological affordances of social media to increase the scale, scope and speed of transactions. This creative re‐appropriation of the platform forged new, unregulated digital markets that ultimately accumulated corporate profits and intensified participant risk.

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Section: Making Myanmar’s Digital Land Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%