Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the Intha, a water dwelling ethnic group on Myanmar’s Inle Lake, and their practice of floating agriculture. It looks at this practice as a form of ‘agri-anarchy’ and follows the life of the tomato to explore the subversive social and environmental dimensions of ethnicity.

Paper long abstract:

According to Scott (2009), anarchic resistance to state power can take many shapes, and can be found in seemingly mundane daily action. It can be subtle and operate through uncoordinated movements, feigned compliance, and small gains - techniques that peasants and subaltern groups commonly rely on to contest authority and assert their own in the absence of access to machineries of the state.

This paper will examine such techniques in the context of an ethnic group known as the Intha who dwell upon Myanmar’s Inle Lake, the country’s second largest lake and a popular tourist destination. Although the region is a unique contact zone for multiple different ethnic groups, the lake itself is strongly associated with the Intha who occupy the lake and who have managed to carve out a dominant position through effective control of the local economy. This has largely been achieved through their practice of floating agriculture, specifically, the growing and selling of tomatoes.

I will argue that the ‘unique’ agricultural practice of growing tomatoes on floating gardens in water is a form of ‘agri-anarchy’ in that it takes on a subversively symbolic meaning as a performance of ethnicity and claim of legitimacy over the territory as a ‘watery region of refuge’ (Scott, 2009), allowing for the mobilization of autonomy, self-determination and a collective resistance identity against the Myanmar state. Following the (floating) tomato as a subtle symbol of subversion in a contested region, provides insight into the ways in which ethnicity is constructed as resistance in Myanmar.