The Politics of Banana Planting in Waingmaw Township

Abstract:Since 2018, a steady stream of media reports has described the rapid expansion of tissue banana plantations in the Waingmaw area of Kachin State in Northeast Myanmar, noting the widespread environmental degradation and disenfranchisement of local residents. We conducted field research in two villages connected to banana plantations, interviewing residents, plantation workers, government officials, and health workers. Using assemblage theory, we analyze the local political ecology of food production, and how the particularities of local geography, especially in peripheral regions, result in different practical political settlements. These settlements involve a range of different actors including ethnic armed organizations, foreign merchants, government officials, and local brokers. Arrangements of power in border areas are implicit and negotiated, rather than explicit and formalized. These are appropriated through new spatial arrangements (e.g., banana plantations) and spatial relationships (e.g., migrant workers from Rakhine State) in which older identities and modes of living are redefined. A key component of this frontier assemblage is the banana itself, in particular, the practice of cultivating imported tissue strains which are reliant on imported technology and fertilizers. This, in turn, influences the form of the assemblage and power relations within it, illustrating the critical role of material and technological elements within assemblages.