Postcolonial Capitalism and the Politics of Dispossession: Political Trajectories in Southern Myanmar

TitlePostcolonial Capitalism and the Politics of Dispossession: Political Trajectories in Southern Myanmar
Annotated RecordNot Annotated
Year of Publication2018
AuthorsAung G
Secondary TitleEuropean Journal of East Asian Studies
Volume17
Issue2
Pagination193-227
Key themesCivilSociety-Donors, Dispossession-grabbing, FDI, Urban
Abstract

This article examines the trajectory of struggles over land and resources in Dawei, a town in southern Myanmar. The site of a major special economic zone project, Dawei has seen sustained mobilisation around displacement, dispossession and environmental degradation, against the backdrop of national political and economic reforms. Recently, scholars have argued that earlier visions of postcolonial transition have lost their empirical and political purchase, as farmers dispossessed of land increasingly become excluded from formal capitalist production. What happens to politics and political form if dynamics of exclusion, rather than transition, organise political activity under today's conditions of accumulation? Repurposing Kalyan Sanyal's concept of postcolonial capitalism, this article describes and theorises the politics of dispossession in Dawei. Tracing the political activities of activist groups and villagers, it argues that two contrasting political trajectories - one secular-egalitarian, one situational-differential - constitute a heterogeneous political field, reflecting the complexity of postcolonial capitalism itself.

URLhttps://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10094889
Availability

Available for download

Countries

Myanmar

Document Type

Journal Article