Paper short abstract:

In Southeast Myanmar's Mutraw hills, the emergence of military formations within close groups of kin are seen to have fostered an ethic of care & common purpose, yet simultaneously bring question values of autonomy associated amongst these largely upland subsistence farmers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper highlights how previously more autonomous forms of social organisation in the Northern Papun (Mutraw) hills in Southeastern Burma, characterised in several ethnographies as broadly egalitarian & fitting with idealised visions of the commons (in terms of land governance and more equitable sharing of resources) shifted radically in wartime. Here the mobilisation of people through an armed movement, the Karen National Union, has led to a radical shift of living in common. Yet rather then a binary movement from autonomy to higher stratification - this paper highlights how intra-village kinship ties facilitated a supra-village form of organisation, in which care and family came to be extended through a militarised structure. These forms of militarised commoning can be seen as extensions of existing Christian networks and cross border NGO networks, which have long created communities of common purpose and sentiment amongst Karen people's living in Southeastern Myanmar' and in refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar Border. Yet, more substantially, they represent a social formation in which military bonds and social trust has been built within a closely nit network of kin. This case will be elucidated the example of care of the displaced by local villagers, military and associated NGOs following airstrikes in the area by the Burmese military in early 2021.