Smaller-scale land grabs and accumulation from below: Violence, coercion and consent in spatially uneven agrarian change in Shan State, Myanmar

This article presents field research data on a smallholder maize crop boom in Shan State, northern Myanmar, and its spatially uneven dispossessory effects. Local research teams studied eight villages, four in the north and an equal number in the south of Shan State, using focus group discussions and randomized household interviews, supplemented with key informant interviews. This study deepens the global land grab debate by highlighting the role of smallholder cash crop booms in “smaller-scale” land grabs that have been shown to be significant drivers of agrarian transformation, especially in Southeast Asia. The article builds on the conceptualization of “accumulation from below” by accounting for the geographically differentiated processes of dispossession from smallholder contract farming arrangements, its variant forms of coercion and consent, and the political contingencies that give rise to and help explain uneven agrarian change. The study’s findings demonstrate how political contingency shapes spatial patterns of accumulation and dispossession through regional and local variations in the politics of ethnic identity, migration, insurgency and an illicit drugs economy. These political dynamics inform the hierarchy of power and cultural familiarity between smallholders and local state-supported “silent strongmen”, in this case town moneylenders and village elites, which—together with several other identified factors, especially the poppy economy—influence the spatial distribution of dispossession. Neither extra-economic coercion within orbits of state power nor simply accumulation from below by market opportunities adequately explains uneven agrarian transformation. Instead, the analytical frame on forms of violence in capital accumulation should be expanded and deepened in order to better capture the complex coming together of violence, coercion and consent that is geographically specific, and taken together is more than the sum of their parts.