Pioneers of the plantation economy: militarism, dispossession, and the limits of growth in the Wa State of Myanmar

Hans Steinmüller

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The characteristic mobility of highland populations in Southeast Asia relied to a large extent on their particular adaption to an ecological environment: swidden cultivation of tubers on mountain slopes. This ecology corresponded to cosmologies in which potency was limitless, or at least had no fixed and delimited precinct (as did the rice paddies and Buddhist realms in the valleys). Military state building, modern transport, and new crops and agricultural technologies have effectively ended swidden cultivation. In this article, I follow the pioneers of the plantation economy in the Wa State of Myanmar, who dispossess local populations of their land and employ them as plantation labour. The limits of growth and potency they encounter are (a) in the natural environment and (b) in the resistance of local populations. Yet, even though there are such limits, the potency to which these pioneers aspire is still limitless. It is however channelled through a new economy of life, epitomised in the plantation, nourished in excessive feasting, and maintained by the kinship dynamics of capture and care.

Keywords: plantation; dispossession; life; economy; Wa; Research Infrastructure Investment Fund (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2021-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea
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Published in Social Anthropology, 1, August, 2021, 29(3), pp. 686 - 700. ISSN: 1469-8676

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