Paper short abstract:

How do young people survive the intergenerational legacies of war, neglect, and violence? Based on ethnographic research in Karen State, Myanmar, this paper argues that post-crisis relations of care, belonging, and solidarity must be understood according to the biographies of those who enact them.

Paper long abstract:

How do young people in postcolonial states survive the intergenerational legacies of war, neglect, and violence? Based on ethnographic research in Karen State, Myanmar, this paper discusses how young civil society actors envisioned and built community during a decade-long ceasefire (2012–2021) between the Myanmar state and the Karen National Union (KNU), when the war had formally ended but its impacts were still being contested. My argument centers on the emic term “community” – an English loanword used by civil society actors even when they were speaking in other languages. “Community” referred to a prefigurative vision for building solidarity among war-affected peoples, distinct from the Myanmar state’s ethnocentrism and the KNU’s ethnonationalism. However, young peoples’ visions for “community” were often misunderstood by donors, who applied a comparatively apolitical definition to the term. Furthermore, donors’ assumptions about foregoing conflict did not square with young peoples’ experiences of growing up amidst war. I argue that the politics and antipolitics of building community – as well as other relations of care, belonging, and solidarity in the wake of crises – must be understood according to the biographies and lifeworlds of those who enact this vision. This has both conceptual and methodological implications for the study of post-war development.