Title: Surviving the State: Land and Democracy in Myanmar
Speaker: Hilary Oliva Faxon (Assistant Professor, University of Montana)
Abstract: Surviving the State examines environmental justice and state-making from the vantage point of small farmers and grassroots activists struggling for land during Myanmar’s democratic turn. During Myanmar’s attempted political transition in the 2010s, land was the basis not only of smallholder livelihoods and national development, but also a critical domain for negotiating citizenship after half a century of authoritarian violence and racialized exclusion. Turning on its head a rich tradition of scholarship that posits land as a tool for state-making or an outlet for state-escape, I argue that land is key to what I call surviving the state, a set of socioecological practices forged through cultivation and dispossession as well as the gendered work of care and connection. This talk will draw on my book, based on 26 months of participant observation, over 150 interviews, and five participatory research and art projects, to show how embodied histories of state violence shaped ecologies and communities, ultimately undermining reforms that aimed to formalize property, redistribute land, and recognize ethnic territory. In the aftermath of Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, these findings demand reimagining land not just as a resource for survival and a site of revolution, but also as a potential source of healing.
About the speaker: Dr. Hilary Oliva Faxon investigates environment, development and technology with a focus on social justice in Southeast Asia. Her first book, Surviving the State: Land and Democracy in Myanmar (forthcoming from Duke University Press) provides an intimate ethnography of agrarian and political change during Myanmar’s decade of military democracy. Hilary earned her PhD from Cornell University in 2020 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Social Science at the University of Montana. She has worked with Myanmar women’s, environmental and ethnic rights activists since 2013 and serves on the Steering Committee of Myanmar’s Virtual Federal University and the Board of Directors of Myanmar’s Gender Equality Network.