Local politics and violence in Myanmar's drylands

The purpose of this communication is to try out ideas to study violence in the central drylands of Myanmar. My broader project explores how the Bama people of Myanmar's heartland transform local politics as responses to violence and uncertainty under military surveillance.

The Anya region remains quite understudied compared to other places in Myanmar. Part of the reason for this lacuna is that long-term fieldwork has been almost impossible since the 1960s. In consequence, we tended to overestimate the homogeneity of Bama society and to see the central drylands as a state space.

Yet, the current guerrilla warfare within Anya contradicts this narrative. I approach this region as an internal frontier of the military state, where people have experienced several episodes of violence and upheaval in recent history. By analysing how violence in the Bama society affects local politics, I seek to specify the experiences of violence, the reconfigurations of temporality, and to understand local politics as changing spaces of engagement.

CHAIR: This dialogue will be chaired by Hunter Marston and Cecile Medail

SPEAKER

Stéphen Huard is an anthropologist, currently a Research and Teaching Fellow at EHESS in Paris. He specialises in political, historical anthropology and Burma studies, with a focus on land issues and village politics.