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Possessed Earth Transnational Activists Have Begun Formulating a Radical Alternative Vision of How Peace and Conservation Might Be Achieved in Practice

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Possessed Earth Transnational Activists Have Begun Formulating a Radical Alternative Vision of How Peace and Conservation Might Be Achieved in Practice Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology 24 Tomas Cole In the wake of seven decades of protracted revolution and armed conflict in Southeast Myanmar, an ensemble of indigenous peoples and Possessed Earth transnational activists have begun formulating a radical alternative vision of how peace and conservation might be achieved in practice. Ownership and Power in the Salween Peace Park of Southeast Through translating and rescaling indigenous modes of possessing the Earth Possessed Myanmar earth, this ensemble is working to transform 5,000 km2 of highly contested terrain in the highlands along the Salween River into a conservation zone they call the Salween Peace Park. Tomas Cole In this study I explore what indigenous practices and cosmologies, and the ways they are being translated and rescaled into the Salween Peace Park, might teach us about ownership, sovereignty, and politics at large. Tomas Cole holds an MSc in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. ISBN 978-91-7911-308-7 ISSN 0347-0830 Department of Social Anthropology Doctoral Thesis in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020 Possessed Earth Ownership and Power in the Salween Peace Park of Southeast Myanmar Tomas Cole Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Friday 18 December 2020 at 10.00 in Nordenskiöldsalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 12. Abstract In the wake of seven decades of protracted revolution and armed conflict in Southeast Myanmar, an ensemble of indigenous peoples and transnational activists have begun formulating a radical alternative vision of how peace and conservation might be achieved in practice. Through translating and rescaling indigenous modes of possessing the earth, this ensemble is working to transform 5,000 km2 of highly contested terrain in the highlands along the Salween River into a conservation zone they call the Salween Peace Park. In this study I explore what indigenous practices and cosmologies, and the ways they are being translated and rescaled into the Salween Peace Park, might teach us about ownership, sovereignty, and politics at large. The first half of this study focuses on the highlands along the Salween River, to explore how people residing here commonly treat their landscapes as already possessed, in the dual and entangled senses of being both occupied or haunted by spectral more-than-human presences, and controlled and owned by them. In these Possessed Landscapes human ownership of land is always ephemeral, ultimately nesting in the encompassing ownership of spectral presences (who I describe as persons). Humans can only borrow land by constantly negotiating with and propitiating its spectral owners. A corollary of these indigenous modes of possessing the earth is that these highlands were not so much anarchic as in sense of “no ruler”, but rather, power and sovereignty is nesting in the hands of the spectral owners of the earth. I describe this as an alternative mode of politics that I name Spectral Sovereignty. In the second half I take a small step back to shuttle between the residents of these highlands and networks of activists based in Chiang Mai in Thailand. Here I focus on both growing new forms of dispossession and counterinsurgency that have accompanied the cooling of armed conflict, and efforts by ensembles of indigenous peoples, activists, armed groups, and conservationists to attempt to push back and re-territorialise and re- possess the earth. I go on to explore how this ensemble is subtly translating and rescaling possessed landscapes and spectral sovereignty into land laws and conservation policy as a way to transform these former war zones into a protected area, the Salween Peace Park. I then show how, in the process of establishing this protected area, these activists are continuing the revolutionary movements to attain greater autonomy for the indigenous people residing here. I then close this thesis by exploring what is happening as the Salween Peace Park is coming into contact and being negotiated on the ground in these highlands. Here we find revolutionary politics and spectral sovereignty are becoming entwined into a form of Alter-Politics that is unsettling established notions of sovereignty and politics. However, beyond unsettling, it also gestures towards alternative ways of understanding the shifting entanglements between people, politics, spectres, and other unseen more-than-humans, and radical alternatives to conservation and armed conflict in Myanmar, and beyond. Keywords: Myanmar, conflict, peace, conservation, political ecology, ownership, sovereignty, indigeneity, ontology. Stockholm 2020 http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-186523 ISBN 978-91-7911-308-7 ISBN 978-91-7911-309-4 ISSN 0347-0830 Department of Social Anthropology Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm POSSESSED EARTH Tomas Cole Possessed Earth Ownership and Power in the Salween Peace Park of Southeast Myanmar Tomas Cole ©Tomas Cole, Stockholm University 2020 ISBN print 978-91-7911-308-7 ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-309-4 ISSN 0347-0830 Cover illustration by Agnieszka Abramowicz. Collage of authour's photos Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020 Til mormor Contents CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................................ I GLOSSARY ...................................................................................................................................... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................. V OPENING | FROM BATTLEFIELDS TO REFUGES ......................................................................... 1 Perspectives and Positions .................................................................................................................................... 9 StAtes of WAr and Revolution.............................................................................................................................. 13 Insurgency, sorcery, and getting cAught: EthnogrAphic Theory ....................................................................... 18 TowArds a More-ThAn-HumAn PoliticAl Ecology ................................................................................................. 24 ChApters in brief: .................................................................................................................................................. 32 PART I. POSSESSION ONE | LIVELY HISTORIES ............................................................................................................. 37 “Wind, Sky, WAter”: Continuity with ancestrAl power and potency ................................................................. 42 ContAct Histories of Power and Possession ....................................................................................................... 48 “KAren: Their NAture and History”: Reified OfficiAl stories ............................................................................... 56 Violent Frontiers and “Cut-ThroAt People” ........................................................................................................ 61 Cut-throAt people in more-thAn-humAn contAct zones ..................................................................................... 65 TWO | POSSESSED LANDSCAPES ............................................................................................... 69 RemnAnts/RevenAnts ........................................................................................................................................... 70 Possessed LAndscApes ......................................................................................................................................... 80 NegotiAting (with) Possessed LAndscApes ......................................................................................................... 92 i THREE | SPECTRAL SOVEREIGNTY ............................................................................................. 99 At the frAyed edges of stAte sovereignty ......................................................................................................... 104 Village-Kaw And AlternAtive Modes of Ownership ........................................................................................... 109 -KAw Politics: NegotiAting Power ...................................................................................................................... 122 SpectrAl Sovereignty .......................................................................................................................................... 135 PART II. DISPOSSESSION/RE-POSSESSION FOUR | COUNTERMOVEMENTS ............................................................................................... 143 The “Cool” Counterinsurgency: Prospecting, PAgodAs and Bulldozers .......................................................... 146 LiberAl PeAce/PredAtory PeAce .......................................................................................................................... 152 Land-Rushes, LAnd LAws and CeAsefire TerritoriAlisAtion ................................................................................ 159 KNU Activity, CorporAte activity, and Green TerritoriAlity in TAninthAryi ....................................................... 166 Countermovements, Counter-MApping,
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