Fish caught in clear water: encompassed state-making in south-east Myanmar

ABSTRACT

This paper explores processes of state-making by the New Mon State Party (NMSP), an ethnic armed organization (EAO) that claims to represent the Mon people in south-east Myanmar, and which has fought the Myanmar military to pursue self-representation for the past 50 years. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper focuses on a specific area that is encompassed by three states in the making: the NMSP, the official Myanmar state and another EAO, the Karen National Union (KNU). The paper shows that NMSP state-making happens neither in parallel to nor through a simple separation from the Myanmar government and the KNU, but through different forms of encompassment. It introduces the concept of ‘encompassed state-making’ to capture the simultaneous mimicry and opposition of the NMSP’s state-making practices in relation to the other two states. A core argument is that Mon villagers – albeit deeply loyal towards the NMSP and considering them the legitimate authority – constantly have to take into account the ongoing political transformation in the country and therefore critically have to engage in managing their lives in this encompassed state in formation.

KEYWORDS:

• state-making
• rebel governance
• encompassment
• sovereignty
• territory
• Myanmar

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is particularly thankful to Mi Thang Sorn Poine for her contribution to data collection and analysis; and is grateful to Nils Bubandt, Helene Maria Kyed and Finn Stepputat for their support, valuable feedback and suggestions made on an earlier version of this paper, as well as to three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and thoughtful suggestions, which gave the opportunity to strengthen the analytical and conceptual points of this contribution.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Owing to the sensitive nature of the field site, and out of concern for the safety and integrity of informants and communities, all place and person names have been consistently anonymized.

2 Three trips comprising a total of 15 days of fieldwork were conducted between 28 March 2016 and 5 February 2017. The author was able to live at both the NMSP district headquarters as well as with a family in the village. The shorter term stays are not ideal for anthropological research, but were necessary owing to the limited accessibility to the EAO areas, which requires the renegotiation of permissions from higher ranking EAO members each time. The case study area was chosen based on accessibility criteria, including security concerns. The research within the NMSP governed area was complemented with interviews with NMSP representatives and various villagers in the Mawlamyine NMSP liaison office, a place the author was able to visit frequently during the course of six months.

3 Like the qualitative data collection, the survey was performed with the permission of the NMSP, but conducted independently by research assistants.

4 The distribution of interviews was as follows: NMSP administration and the MNLA at district level (10 persons), NMSP administration and the MNLA at township level (three persons), village elites (such as various committee members, leaders, monks) (10 persons), and ordinary villagers (23 persons, of these seven were male and 16 female). In addition, three villagers, two NMSP Central Executive Committee leaders and three Mon community service organizations were interviewed in Mawlamyine.

5 As this is beyond the scope and relevance for this paper, it will not engage with Dumont’s discussion about egalitarian versus hierarchic societies, nor go more into the West–Rest dichotomy that his work has raised. The author is thus mainly concerned with Dumont’s theory about holism, which was fruitful when analysing and making sense of the material. Dumont has been extensively critiqued for what have been perceived as insensitive accounts of caste practices, orientalism and totalizing discourse (see also Appadurai, 1986; and Gledhill, 1994, pp. 47–69).

6 The majority ethnic group in Myanmar.

7 Translated from the word Gol Phyul in Mon. Interview 2 June 2016.

8 Interview 5 February 2017.

9 For an intricate analysis of how the Myanmar military state has bolstered its presence and authority in contested areas in northern Myanmar through local, strong, armed men and Chinese cross-border investments, see Woods (2018).

10 See http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring03/branks.cfm/.

11 Interview 2 February 2017.

12 Interviews with village tract justice committee member, 30 March 2016.

13 Interview 4 February 2017.

14 The NMSP has since signed the NCA in 2018.

15 Interview 5 February 2017.

16 Approximately US$35.

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork was conducted as part of the project Everyday Justice and Security in the Myanmar Transition, which was made possible through funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.