Email: nyein@iss.nl

Affiliation: International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague)

Nationality: Myanmar

Historizing the fishery and wetlands governance: How different political regimes historically have shaped the political economy of fisheries and wetlands governance in Myanmar

Abstract

Scholars have drawn a connection between political and economic transformation, social differentiation and social inequity in rural societies. However, most of these are focused on land and agrarian themes, and only a few have focused on wetlands, fishery, and riverine communities. As small-scale fisheries are anchored in local geographies, often with generations of embeddedness to a specific coastal or riparian context, deep engagement with the cultures and social norms of these communities is essential to grasp how cultural, political, and economic transformations have unfolded in these contexts. The riverine communities of the Ayeyarwady delta of Myanmar show the social transformation under successive political regimes. This paper draws an in-depth analysis of how political and economic upheavals impact everyday lives and livelihoods and its implications for social and cultural changes within and beyond the fishery and riparian communities. This paper examines how political and economic transformation and the systematic violation of wetlands resources significantly contribute to social inequality and changes the social structure of wetlands and riverine communities, specifically the gradual erosion of subsistence ethics, social reciprocity practices, and patron-client relations. More specifically, this paper advances three main arguments. Firstly, fishery policy changes under different political changes, successive policy regimes mainly focus on the commodification of wetlands resources, resource extraction, and revenue collection. Secondly, successive regimes assumed the wetlands as underproductive and illegible from effective management perspectives, and tried to transform these resources into permanent agricultural land through the Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Law. Thirdly, The counter-insurgency operations (1948-1975) of the Burma military oriented the permanent land transforms and infrastructure development as distant demolishing technologies to wipe off the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) and Karen National Union (KNU) operations in the Ayeyarwaddy region, paving the way for territorialisation and subject-making project of the Burma state. These policy regimes and different trajectories amplified the social differentiation, class dynamics, and social transformation of riverine communities.

The empirical data for this paper has been generated during the extended period of 2009-2024, mainly through qualitative ethnographic methods, especially key informant interviews and life event analysis which enable participants to discuss critical events for themselves along with the political, social, and cultural aspects of the society and the transformation process. Inherently, historical, this paper also used archival methods.

Bio

Yin Nyein is a PhD student PhD student at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague) as part of a special program, led by Jun Borras, the "Myanmar Initiative" with and of scholar-activists from Myanmar" in collaboration with the Chiang Mai University in Thailand. He is a member of the RRUSHES-5 project. His PhD research, supervised by Jun, examines how the social-cultural identity and social cohesion of coastal and riparian communities in lower and upper Myanmar were transformed by different political regimes and capitalist policies over time. His research tries to understand sociocultural transformations, evolving class relations and how they in turn shape collective movements and democratic struggles within riparian communities in the lower and upper Myanmar. He has professional experience in research and development work on fisheries and natural resource governance since 2009. He played a role in the fisher community's collective demand-making actions for reforms of neoliberal policies in the fishery sector. During the national regime transition period in 2010-2020, he worked in consultative processes of several regional governance bodies, while assisting local fisher communities in law-making processes.