After the Rice Frontier: Producing State and Ethnic Territory in Northwest Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on resource frontiers has often privileged moments of discovery and sites of spectacular infrastructure and extraction. Yet smallholders can alter socio-ecological landscapes in ways that structure spatial and political possibilities even after resource rushes wane. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research to illustrate how agrarian frontier histories shape contemporary ethnic and territorial boundary-making. In Kalay Valley, activists drew on the colonial principle of ethnic separation and aligned with a national turn towards territorialisation to successfully advocate for restoring the colonial boundary. But efforts at demarcation contrasted with historical practices of cultivating ambiguity on the rice frontier, spurring new forms of border work. I argue, first, that this case demonstrates a change in how land is governed in Myanmar – from a regime of cultivated ambiguity, towards one of negotiated delineation – and, second, that it underscores the need for greater attention to the ways in which agrarian frontier practices shape racialized territorialisation.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks go to the farmers, officials and activists around Kalay who shared their stories of the border and life on the rice frontier as well as to friends and research assistants who facilitated my study. Fernando Galeana Rodriguez, Ryan Nehring, Ewan Robinson, Kim Roberts, Jasnea Sarma, Mads Barbesgaard, Laur Kiik, Elliott Prasse-Freeman and four anonymous reviewers provided useful suggestions on various drafts of the manuscript. 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.