Surviving the State examines environmental justice, land governance, 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 project, 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, but also as a site of revolution and healing.

Hilary Faxon is an assistant professor of environmental social science at the University of Montana, currently on leave as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen. Her research, teaching and public scholarship investigates environment, development and technology with a focus on social justice in the Global South. She also leads a research project on small farmers and big tech in Myanmar and co-lead two interdisciplinary research groups: one focused on digital transformations in property and development, the other on the ethics and practices of algorithmic conservation.
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