{"title":"Postcolonial Capitalism and the Politics of Dispossession","authors":"Geoffrey Aung","doi":"10.1163/15700615-01702006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n 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.","PeriodicalId":35205,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2018-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/15700615-01702006","citationCount":"10","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of East Asian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700615-01702006","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 10
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.
期刊介绍:
The European Journal of Health Law focuses on the development of health law in Europe: national, comparative and international. The exchange of views between health lawyers in Europe is encouraged. The Journal publishes information on the activities of European and other international organizations in the field of health law. Discussions about ethical questions with legal implications are welcome. National legislation, court decisions and other relevant national material with international implications are also dealt with. Each issue of the European Journal of Health Law contains articles (with abstracts), selected legislation, judicial decisions, a chronicle of events, and book reviews.