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Short abstract:

Here, I investigate the role of sensory politics in Indigenous Karen refugees’ discourses about the affects and effects of living with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides in Mae La refugee camp, located on the Thailand-Myanmar border, amid humanitarian imperatives for "self-reliance."

Long abstract:

In this paper, I investigate the role of sensory politics in Indigenous Karen refugees’ discourses about the affects and effects of living with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides in Mae La refugee camp. In Mae La, located on the Thai-Myanmar border, gardens have become a means of survival in the wake of what Geographer Elizabeth Dunn calls “humanitarian abandonment” (2017). Such abandonment has been unfolding in the camp since the mid-2000s. In this context, humanitarian imperatives of “self-reliance” necessitate that camp residents sell the produce from their gardens at the camp market to make ends meet. Selling at the camp market prompts gardeners to adopt the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides which camp gardeners consider to grow vegetables that are “bigger” and “more beautiful” and thus sell better at the market. This is even while many camp residents critique the use of synthetic agricultural inputs as “unhealthy” and the camps as a place where “tasteless” and “old-tasting” food is grown. This is in contrast to the flavorful, healthy, and fresh-tasting foods remembered and recounted from people’s home villages, which they were forced to flee because of war. Sensory critique and refusal take on a darker edge when—exhausted by the imperative to sustain bodily life in the absence of freedom of movement and self-determination—many camp residents choose to take their own lives by ingesting these same herbicides and pesticides.