Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T18:53:20.402Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conscription by Capture in the Wa State of Myanmar: Acquaintances, Anonymity, Patronage, and the Rejection of Mutuality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2019

Hans Steinmüller
Hans Steinmüller*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, London School of Economics
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Capturing people, sometimes by taking relatives hostage, is a common practice for purposes of conscription and law enforcement in the Wa State of Myanmar. Given the unreliability of the local census, as well as the relative weakness of civil government, and registration in a de facto state governed by an insurgent army, the personal politics of capture provides a functional equivalent to state legibility. This personal politics operates based on the reorganization of personal networks between representatives of the military state and ordinary people: first, circles of acquaintances within the military state that provide access to local knowledge, and second, relationships of patronage formed on the basis of those new acquaintanceships, as well as connections of kinship and co-residence. Conscription by capture, however, also requires anonymity; that is, the passive non-recognition of mutuality with strangers and the active refusal of mutuality with acquaintances. This article describes the historical emergence of networks of acquaintances and relationships of patronage as a combination of Maoist state-building and local institutions of war capture and adoption. It demonstrates how conscription by capture relies on relationships of acquaintances and non-recognition, as well as on patronage and the refusal of mutuality. The politics of conscription by capture are contrasted with conscription in imperial states and contemporary nation-states.

Keywords

capturechild soldiersadoptionconscriptionhostage-takingstate-buildingacquaintancespatronageanonymity
Type
Capture, Conscription, and the Economy of Protection
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 508 - 534
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allchin, Joseph. 2011. Save the Children Employee Trafficked Children: Cable. Democratic Voice of Burma, September 7. At: http://www.dvb.no/news/save-the-children-employee-trafficked-children-cable/17506 (accessed 20 Oct. 2018).Google Scholar
Bao, Guangxiang. 2003. Wazu Xingming Shulüe [A brief on Wa surnames and first names]. In Wang, Jingliu, ed., Wazu Yanjiu 50 Nian [Fifty years of Wa research]. Kunming: Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe, 136–41.Google Scholar
Callahan, Mary Patricia. 2007. Political Authority in Burma's Ethnic Minority States: Devolution, Occupation and Coexistence. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.10.1355/9789812304636Google Scholar
Chen, Kai. 2014. Comparative Study of Child Soldiering on Myanmar-China Border: Evolutions, Challenges and Countermeasures. London: Springer.10.1007/978-981-4560-02-3Google Scholar
Child Soldiers International. 2015a. A Dangerous Refuge: Ongoing Child Recruitment by the Kachin Independence Army. At: https://www.child-soldiers.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=ec4e525b-ab0a-4382-af95-ef2161d825dd (accessed 1 Mar. 2019).Google Scholar
Child Soldiers International. 2015b. Ongoing Underage Recruitment and Use by the Myanmar Military. At: https://www.child-soldiers.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=cf34ea63-8473-43b9-8914-91d4890891a0 (accessed 1 Mar. 2019).Google Scholar
Chin, Ko-Lin. 2009. The Golden Triangle: Inside Southeast Asia's Drug Trade. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Fiskesjö, Magnus. 2009. The Autonomy of Naming: Kinship, Power and Ethnonymy in the Wa Lands of the Southeast Asia-China Frontiers. In Macdonald, Charles and Zheng, Yangwen, eds., Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity. Singapore: University of Singapore Press, 150–74.10.2307/j.ctv1qv2k0.12Google Scholar
Fiskesjö, Magnus 2011. Slavery as the Commodification of People: Wa “Slaves” and Their Chinese “Sisters.” Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 59: 3–18.Google Scholar
Gibson, Richard Michael and Chen, Wenhua. 2011. The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1971. Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, David. 2012. Dead Zones of the Imagination: On Violence, Bureaucracy, and Interpretive Labor: The Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2006. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2, 2: 105–28.10.14318/hau2.2.007Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom and Stepputat, Finn. 2006. Sovereignty Revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology 35, 1: 295–315.10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123317Google Scholar
Lao, Di. 2007 Wuwei de Xisheng—Zhongguo Zhiqing Zai Miandian [Senseless sacrifice—Chinese educated youth in Burma]. At: https://www.aboluowang.com/2007/0207/30364.html (accessed 28 Sept. 2018).Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret. 1996. The Institution of Conscription. Social Science History 20, 1: 133–67.10.1017/S0145553200021568Google Scholar
Lintner, Bertil. 1990. The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asian Program.Google Scholar
LNDO. 2002. Unsettling Moves: The Wa Forced Resettlement Program in Eastern Shan State (1999–2001). Chiang Mai: Lahu National Development Organisation.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1961 [1937]. On Guerilla Warfare. Griffith, Samuel B., trans. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Meillassoux, Claude. 1991. The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold. Dasnois, Alide, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mendes, Sam. 2012. Skyfall [film]. Sony Pictures.Google Scholar
Qi, Xiaolin. 2015. Dang Bing: Huabei Genjudi Nongmin Ruhe Zouxiang Zhanchang [Becoming soldiers: how the peasants of the northern base areas of China entered the battlefield]. Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Sadan, Mandy. 2013. Being and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.5871/bacad/9780197265550.001.0001Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. The Stranger-King; or Dumezil among the Fijians. In Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 73–103.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 2008. The Stranger-King; or Elementary Forms of the Politics of Life. Indonesia and the Malay World 36, 105: 177–99.10.1080/13639810802267918Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C., Tehranian, John, and Mathias, Jeremy. 2002. The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, 1: 4–44.10.1017/S0010417502000026Google Scholar
State Ethnic Affairs Commission. 2009. Zhongguo shaoshu minzu shehui lishi diaocha ziliao congkan xiuding bianji weiyuanhui. Wazu shehui lishi diaocha [Editorial Committee for the revised collections of research material about the societies and histories of China's ethnic minorities. Research on Wa society and history]. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Sun, Yande. 2009. Wuwei de Xisheng: Zhongguo Zhiqing Zai Miandian [Senseless sacrifice: Chinese educated youth in Burma]. At: http://my.cnd.org/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=23603 (accessed 28 Sept. 2018).Google Scholar
Szonyi, Michael. 2017. The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.2307/j.ctvc77k06Google Scholar
Turton, Andrew. 1980. Thai Institutions of Slavery. In Watson, James L., ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 251–92.Google Scholar
UN General Assembly. 2014. Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. New York: UN Document A/68/878-S/2014/339.Google Scholar
Watkins, Justin. 2013. Dictionary of Wa with Translations into English, Burmese and Chinese. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Watson, James L. 1980a. Slavery as an Institution: Open and Closed Systems. In Watson, James L., ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–15.Google Scholar
Watson, James L. 1980b. Transactions in People: The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants, and Heirs. In Watson, James L., ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 223–50.Google Scholar
Wu, Xue, Hong, Ding, Ge, Chen, and Bixiang, Dai. 1963. Zhua Zhuangding [Conscription] [film]. Ba Yi Dianying Zhipiangchang.Google Scholar
Xiao, Anyun. 2010. Shaoxing Wang Jiaxi [The genealogy of the kings of Shaoxing]. In Wang, Jingliu, ed., Washan Jiuzhang Xilie. Kunming: self-published.Google Scholar
Zheng, Shiping. 2013. Shenbian de Jianghu [Rivers and lakes next to you]. Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe.Google Scholar