From British to humanitarian colonization:

the early recovery response in Myanmar

after Nargis
Maxime Boutry
Abstract: The humanitarian response to the disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis
that hit the Ayeyarwady Delta region of Myanmar in 2008 is a pertinent example of a very specific phase in humanitarian response at the transition between
emergency and development. The author shows that this phase, known as early
recovery, being built on the specific characteristics of the emergency (lack of
time and lack of means and input) and oriented towards development, is one
in which the humanitarian aid agency is relatively restricted to the humanitarian sphere itself. As a result, the ideological discourse lengthily denounced
by the post-structuralist anthropology of development as a set of Western
values imposed on the developing countries to assert a new form of dominion
is actually powerful and quasi-monolithic in shaping the consequences of
humanitarian aid. While there is no arena for the beneficiaries to discuss
the aids agency, a methodological populism approach reveals, on the one
hand, the antagonisms between a humanitarian ideology conveying considerations such as horizontal communities versus hierarchical bonds and, on the
other, the similarity of its socioeconomic consequences on the Deltas society to
those of the British colonial period.
Keywords: anthropology of development; colonization; early recovery; humanitarian aid; Myanmar; Nargis
Author details: Dr Maxime Boutry is a Research Fellow at Centre Asie du Sud-Est
(CASE), CNRS, Paris, France, and at the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC), 29 Sathorn Tai Road, Bangkok 10120, Thailand. E-mail:
maximeboutry@gmail.com.

Nargis: a textbook case in the anthropology of development?

The humanitarian response to the disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis, which hit
Myanmar in 2008, is a pertinent example of a very specific concept in humanitarian response at the transition between emergency and development. This concept,
known as early recovery, is supposed to help the transition between emergency
and development as its design is meant to take into account longer-term strategies. Based on our observations, we shall examine the theoretical changes and
critiques that have arisen in the anthropology of development over the last two
decades. In so doing, we will be able to discuss the place of anthropologists as
active participants in the implementation of development policies or, at least, as
productive critics. Our hypothesis is that early recovery, being built on the specific
characteristics of the emergency (lack of time and lack of means and input) and
oriented towards development, creates a time and space in which the humanitarian
South East Asia Research, 21, 3, pp 381401 doi: 10.5367/sear.2013.0165

382

South East Asia Research

aid agency is relatively restricted to the humanitarian sphere itself (and this, contrarily, to how it is defined). As a result, the ideological discourse lengthily
denounced by the post-structuralist anthropology of development as a set of
Western values imposed on the developing countries to assert a new form of
dominion is actually powerful and quasi-monolithic in shaping the consequences
of humanitarian aid.
In the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which struck the Ayeyarwady
Delta in May 2008, the Myanmar government toiled to accept the depth of the
disaster, as it did in the days following the tsunami in 2004. Although both situations might at first seem similar, the Ayeyarwady Deltas proximity to Yangon,
the development of Internet connections and the presence of some international
NGOs1 on-site2 quickly gave the population and the government a wake-up call to
the disasters reality. As it faced the international awareness that this immediately
called for a wide-scale humanitarian response,3 the Myanmar government was
thus placed in an uncomfortable situation between the first statements concerning
the underestimated death toll, the prospect of the arrival of foreigners en masse
and the necessity to formulate a plan of action to address the cyclones consequences. The cyclone that hit the country on 2 and 3 May 2008 also coincided
with the referendum that was expected to be held on the 12th of the same month.
The purpose of the referendum was to ratify the new constitution, which would in
2011 lead to the first elections since 1990 and to the democratization process of
the country. Because of this sensitive national context and because of Myanmars
long-standing international isolationism at least from the USA and European
countries the first official reaction was to freeze international aid and cargoes
and to forbid any foreign NGO to access the delta. Nonetheless, international
NGOs that had already been working in the delta before Nargis struck were able
to provide aid to the region, albeit less than judged necessary by the international
community.
The encounter between the demonized military government of Myanmar (from
whom nobody would have expected a straightforward estimate of the death toll)
and the idealized world of humanitarian aid has been given a lot of media coverage. However, this should not conceal the constructive lapse of time that witnessed
the rise of a Myanmar civil society.4 This came during the momentary gap, specific
to the countrys geo-political isolation (according to the Western perspective of
1

3
4

International NGOs are generally kept distinct from local NGOs, the latter being run by nationals
only, and thus, in countries such as Myanmar, having easier access to the field. Nonetheless, this
distinction also marks a difference in the degree of professionalism between the two categories
that naturally favours international NGOs, as they employ action methodologies that can be exported to other countries, hence allowing for mutual comparison, while local NGOs may have a
more empirical (top-down) approach. Consequently, in Myanmars case, international NGOs (such
as EuropeAid, AusAID, USAID, etc) generally have access to international funds that they partly
transfer to local NGOs, entrusting them with project implementation in the field. This is particularly true in Myanmar, which includes many areas where access is forbidden to foreigners and/or
international bodies.
According to South (2008, p 25), there were approximately 48 international NGOs in the country
before May 2008.
Under the (2005) Right to Protect Statement signed by the United Nations.
While there were spaces for civil society under the former military regime (Heidel, 2006), it is
likely that the post-Nargis humanitarian phase helped reactivate and shape the new civil society
that has been proactive in the political changes and democratization process of the country since
the 2011 elections.

From British to humanitarian colonization

383

globalization) between international overreaction inherited in part from the death

toll of the tsunami that hit the Asia-Pacific region in late 2004 and local expectations. Indeed, according to interviews with the cyclones victims, some of whom
had arrived in Yangon and others who were interviewed in the delta some time
later, no affected citizens were waiting for help of any kind, at least from the
government or from international organizations. However, once the population
throughout the rest of the country came to realize how extensive the disaster was,
some elite groups made up of small entrepreneurs, artists and businessmen, as
well as religious organizations, rapidly formed a network to help isolated victims
by distributing clothes and tarpaulins to protect them from the rain and by providing them with basic food ingredients. All these items were bought thanks to funds
raised by these elites and their kinship networks. In the days that followed the
cyclone, while most of the local administrative bodies were ineffective and disorganized, collective donations were entrusted to local religious authorities, mostly
to Buddhist monks, and sometimes to Christians in the Karen villages. The week
following the cyclone saw the effervescence of Myanmar civil society and shed
light on the unexpected solidarity and activity of Myanmars population living
behind the curtain of the regime. Indeed, this time, neither political/cultural nor
religious matters were involved in the collective consciousness and solidarity to
face this new event (at least at first).
However, this action, rooted in civil society, directly challenged the governments ineffectiveness, creating on the one hand an unprecedented freedom of
speech concerning the authorities and on the other hand the necessity of a governmental response to the cyclone. The double consequence was then to limit and
sometimes totally forbid the deltas access to local aid networks while governmental action was being formulated, the latter benefiting from high media coverage.
However, during the second week after the cyclone, the government was forced
to acknowledge the extent of the impact of the disaster: on 24 June 2010, the
official death toll stood at 84,537, with 53,836 people still missing and 19,359
injured.5 The government also had to take note of the rising indignation of the
international community, which inevitably jumped at the opportunity once again
to stigmatize the Myanmar government, this time on humanitarian rather than
political grounds. Despite this, as soon as the Myanmar government granted international NGOs access to the delta and new foreign humanitarian workers began
to arrive, the political shadow of aid again preyed on everyones mind, as exemplified in the International Crisis Groups (ICG) report (2008). Entitled Burma/
Myanmar after Nargis: time to normalize aid relations, the report is brimming
with political intentions filtered through a humanitarian cover.
This brief description of the context in which a new humanitarian story would
be written in Myanmar is enough to question the very meaning of a developmentalist
approach in Third World countries and the place of the anthropologist within it,
all in a very contemporary context and several decades since the beginnings of the
anthropology of development. Here, the link between anthropology and development must be briefly recalled in order to define the anthropology of development
in the 2000s.
Hart (2002) interestingly refers to development as the non-egalitarian growth
5

Tripartite Core Group, 2008, p 1.

384

South East Asia Research

of capitalism during the two centuries of the industrial revolution, but most often
designates the attempt to positively transform the inherent damages due to such
process.6 Even though the author does not refer here directly to development as
undertaken by international bodies and NGOs, the latters actions in the last decades implicitly build on the same historical process inherent in the contact between
rich and poor countries (Hart, 2002). Such a definition also underlines the
intrinsic link between colonialism and development as much as between anthropology and colonialism, and thus between anthropology and development. The
legacy of colonial anthropology has been controversial (Asad, 1973). Nonetheless, it enables us to discuss how anthropologists were used to achieve
developmentalist goals by the colonial state under defined circumstances (Jaganath,
1981). And, although colonial racism towards local populations was condemned,
the colonists were nevertheless implicated in development, then called cultural
contact (Malinowski, 1945). Later on, for some authors writing in the early 1980s,
the anthropology of development could be summarized as a kind of community
development and social work for the third world, which is expected to develop
gradually in a cumulative way by participating in Western science, technology,
education and culture (Jaganath, 1981, p 625). It was probably due to this historical relationship that development and anthropology (and social sciences in general)
continued to evolve conjointly even after the end of colonization, partly because
of their common interest regarding Third World countries. Interestingly, some
theoretical approaches developed by anthropologists during the 1950s and 60s,
such as community development and modernization (which we will come back
to later in this article), are often still used by developmental and humanitarian
actors nowadays in a slightly different way. Over the last decade, some anthropological institutions such as the Ford Foundation (Jaganath, 1981) were thus
promoting strategies to modernize underdeveloped countries without breaking
their traditional structures. The job of some anthropologists was therefore to devise efficient ways to work around the cultural elements that could hinder the
countrys development.
We would have to wait until the 1980s to see the anthropology of development
rise as a discipline in its own right, becoming the main instrument for those who
were critical of development and towards anthropology being used as its tool
sometimes all the more vigorously since the two disciplines were formerly intimate.
Given the colonial background of northwestsoutheast relationships between
developed and underdeveloped countries, it is not inaccurate to infer that humanitarian aid and politics are intrinsically linked. And, even though its main
actors bear the title of non-governmental organizations, most international NGOs,
such as EuropeAid, DFID, USAID or AusAid for Europe, the UK, the USA and
Australia respectively, work with governmental funds. Thus, being politically influenced or even government-inspired, humanitarian aid and the ideology of
development may be largely characterized by dominant discourses from the developer towards Third World countries. This was emphasized by the
deconstructionist approach of development in the 1990s, with Escobar7 at the
6

All translations in this paper are by the author: Dveloppement se rfre la croissance
ingalitaire du capitalisme durant les deux sicles de la rvolution industrielle, mais le plus souvent,
il dsigne la tentative de transformer positivement les dommages inhrents un tel processus.
See his major work, Escobar, 1995.

From British to humanitarian colonization

385

head of the movement, largely inspired by the work of Foucault.8 Development

then started to be seen as a powerful discourse leading to the perpetuation and
expansion of global inequalities and the disqualification of non-Western knowledge systems (Escobar, 1995, p 13). Since then, both the discursive approach and
the populist approach have been widely criticized, with greater value placed on
traditional knowledge and practices and further attention paid to exploring the
cognitive and pragmatic resources of the populations targeted by development.
Olivier de Sardan, for example, rejects both of these approaches in favour of a
methodology centred on the entanglement of social logics9 (Olivier de Sardan,
2001a, p 733). Here, development as a subject encompasses all related actions in
their diversity of acceptations, meanings and practices, both from the developer
and the developed sides. This trend, which is now the most widely accepted one
among scholars, is focused on the agency of the humanitarian arena and aims
to consider development as the product of the interplay between an indeterminate number of localized social and political forces on the one hand, and the
dominant and subordinate in the global development encounter on the other (Friedman, 2006, pp 206207).

Early recovery and the discursive construction of sustainable funds

In my experience working as an anthropologist in Myanmar for the last few years,
the Nargis event and the humanitarian cyclone that followed represented an
opportunity to reassess personally the different anthropological stances described
above in regard to development. It appeared that the deconstructionist approach
was the most logical to adopt when, working as a consultant for NGOs, I became
aware of the discursive tools of humanitarian aid, aimed at serving both its action and legitimization. Indeed, as harshly summarized by Cohen et al regarding
NGOs, no matter how well-intentioned, these new colonialists need weak states
as weak states need them (Cohen et al, 2008, p 77). These new colonialists, to
use the authors words, refer to the increasing power that NGOs gain in Third
World countries, thus deepening the dependency of these States on outsiders
(Cohen et al, 2008, p 75). Four years after Nargis, we need only notice that dozens of newly arrived NGOs are still in the country and have gained ground in
many areas other than those struck by the cyclone. In some ways, the government
was right to fear the arrival of foreign workers en masse. Indeed, from 48 NGOs
present in the field before the cyclone, this figure had reached exactly 169 by the
end of October 2008, represented by hundreds of new foreigners working in the
country. Among them were UN bodies such as WFP and UNICEF, international
development groups such as Oxfam, humanitarian NGOs such as Save the Children, Mdecins Sans Frontires and Action Against Hunger, as well as faith-based
organizations such as Mercy Corps, World Vision, Adventist Development and
Relief Agency, etc. Despite this great diversity, it is nonetheless worth underlining that most of them shared the same approach, at least in terms of livelihood/
economic recovery actions, with only few exceptions.
As a matter of fact, even if we concede to the international emergency response
a form of impartiality, emergency response is certainly not an achievement in
8
9

See Escobar, 1984.

Enchevtrement des logiques sociales.

386

South East Asia Research

itself. Since NGOs live on population needs, the switch between answering peoples needs and finding needs to be addressed by NGOs is systematic. Thus, even
though the difference between emergency and development is clear for all actors
two distinct fields of action, two different kinds of donors10 many post-disaster situations (the 2004 tsunami in the Pacific as well as the 2008 cyclone in
Myanmar) show us that, following the emergency phase, development seems ineluctable.11 Generally, the types of action are also quite distinct from one another,
emergency response being generally focused on providing provisional shelters,
health care and assistance during extraordinary situations such as conflicts or natural
disasters. Development, on the contrary, is a longer-term approach, considering
the need to bring improvements to the peoples daily lives, whether these concern health and sanitation, income generation or environmental issues. Here, the
fields are various and are in constant evolution.
How then does the profession manage to switch from one phase to the other, or
what is it that commits them to switching (the chicken-and-egg problem)? By
giving the presumption of innocence to humanitarian actors, there is a preoccupation with ensuring sustainable benefits from the emergency phase to the populations.
Nonetheless, with the emergency phase providing totally different grounds from
the development phase, there was a need to create a process that could link these
two:
Early recovery is recovery that begins early in a humanitarian setting. It is a
multi-dimensional process, guided by development principles, that seeks to build
upon humanitarian programmes and to catalyze sustainable development opportunities. Early recovery aims to generate to the extent possible self-sustaining
nationally owned and resilient processes for post-crisis recovery. Early recovery encompasses livelihoods, shelter, governance, environment and social
dimensions, including the reintegration of displaced populations. It stabilizes
human security and where the opportunity exists begins to address underlying
risks that contributed to the crisis.12
Early recovery is thus a tool to prepare for the achievement of (sustainable) development, a link that appears even more clearly in the following definition presented
at a conference in Geneva on this particular theme:
Jennifer Worrell, Chief of the Early Recovery and Cross-cutting issues team,
explained that the three aims of the CWGER [Cluster Working Group on Early
Recovery] are to:
(1) Augment and build on humanitarian assistance to ensure that their inputs
become assets for long-term development, foster the self-reliance of affected
populations and rebuild livelihoods;
10

11

12

For instance, Europe funds international NGOs worldwide through the Echo programme for emergency actions, while development is funded by EuropeAid. Of course, the two funding programmes
often follow each other for the same NGO.
For a comparison between the humanitarian response after the tsunami in 2004 and the cyclone,
see Boutry and Ferrari, 2009.
Background paper for the Humanitarian and Resident Coordinators Retreat, 810 May 2007,
Session on Early Recovery, 9 May, 9:0010:30, UNDP, 27 April 2007.

From British to humanitarian colonization

387

(2) Support spontaneous recovery initiatives by affected communities and change

the risk/conflict dynamics;
(3) Lay the foundation for longer-term transition and development.13
Early recovery seems to be a methodological tool to raise funds for sustainable
implementation for NGOs. Having worked with NGOs, there is no doubt about
the fact that many aid organizations will say that their ultimate goal is to ensure
their services are no longer needed. But aid organizations and humanitarian groups
need dysfunction to maintain their relevance. (Cohen et al, 2008, p 78) This is
even more the case when working in countries such as Myanmar, which, in 2008,
was far from realizing this unexpected change towards democratization that is
now being acclaimed within the international community. The many years of funding
and the substantial amounts normally put into development programmes may have
a deterrent effect for many donors in such an unstable political context. Thus,
early recovery was a means to extend the emergency phase and wait for better
times that eventually came to happen after the 2011 elections.

Looking for the arena

While remaining in the discursive dimension of humanitarian aid, it is time to
explore the concrete early recovery activities in Myanmar since the cyclone. While
the emergency phase consisted of distributing tarpaulins, medicine and provisional shelters, the early recovery approach took over with the distribution of
livestock in small quantities, rice seeds, small boats and fishing gear, home gardening kits, etc. Thus, the aim was clearly to act on a low economic basis: that is,
targeting the most vulnerable people.
The FSTPs general objectives are to improve food security (FS) in favour of
the poorest and most vulnerable people and contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 1) on poverty and hunger through a set of actions
which ensure overall coherence, complementary and continuity of the Community interventions, including in the area of the transition from relief to
development.14
As is the case in any language, humanitarian guidelines have to be interpreted and
defined, a process that may lead to different modalities of action and debates
among actors. Yet, while it could be discussed at length, it seems from my experience that the most vulnerable or the poorest are terminologies that are clear
enough for the practitioners:
Given the nature of the FSTP, project beneficiaries should be the most vulnerable populations, those with fewer assets, lacking opportunities and socially
excluded (i.e. landless, farmers with limited land for cultivation, women heads
of household, farmers with limited assets/poor soil quality, households with
13
14

Ibid.
2008 Food Security Program for the areas affected by Cyclone Nargis in Burma/Myanmar, Guidelines for grant applicants EuropeAid, European Commission, p 3.

388

South East Asia Research

many children, disabled people, migrant population, etc.). Pro-poorest targeting will be amongst the criteria of selection of the proposals.15
Despite the etc given as an open door for NGOs to find more most vulnerable
populations, to my knowledge, the above-mentioned categories are quite exhaustive
within the humanitarian scope of action since Nargis. Indeed, for valid reasons,
humanitarian practitioners need to categorize complex societies into delimited
communities: widows, elder heads of families, orphans, the landless, etc, at least
to direct the funds that are limited in quantity.16 However, this methodology, as
any other, cannot be extracted from its system of values such as Western ones,
which, as the result of a very human flaw, tend to be thought universal.17 This is
where humanitarian aid often conflicts with local societies or even local coping
mechanisms.
For example, the widows and orphans idea remains a Western symbol, and not
a Burmese reality (or Karen, as many of the villages affected by the cyclone are
Karen). Indeed, orphans always find relatives to take care of them and, in rare
cases, are sent to the Buddhist monastery. As for the widow, more interestingly,
there are two points of view. First, women represented a greater proportion among
the cyclones victims (in some villages, twice the number of men) and thus, the
natural disaster resulted in a higher proportion of widowers than widows. The
second point is that, during the two months following the cyclone, most of the
widowers and widows remarried each other and managed to create new alliances,
sometimes by amalgamating two or three families in the same household. Contrarily, in villages where humanitarian aid action was involved, I observed many
occasions in which widows did not want to remarry, being afraid to disappear
from the aids distribution lists.
Besides the methodological choices made in defining the different beneficiaries of the aid, just as there is a context a Western one there is also a history
behind all these concepts. And, as in any contemporary battle, the weight of
history on the strategies and means employed may have more consequences than
its actors may acknowledge. The acceptance of the concept of community in
Anglo-Saxon social sciences (which in turn led to the development of community studies)18 is certainly different from the French acceptation, which does not
constitute a field of research in its own right. However, the main criticism that can
be put forward is that community as a single concept, employed to resolve subtle
and deep social problems, may hide the complexity of multiple interlinked social
processes. As underlined by Lz, this concept benefits from a considerable affective over-determination (Lz, 2008, p 187) conveying the social and affective
values of solidarity, warmth, intimacy and autonomy. This is exactly the case
when the humanitarian actors imagine here with reference to Anderson19
the landless, farmers, fishermen, etc, as communities based on shared social
15
16

17

18
19

Ibid, p 4.
Another significant bias is the coverage trend, which generally leads to NGOs including several
villages within the same project and, consequently, resulting in one village receiving less support, as opposed to covering fewer villages and opting for more complete support.
This is the case even among national NGOs that are created (and sometimes trained) in the same
values, since humanitarian aid and development emanate from Western countries.
For a review of community studies and their contribution to social sciences, see Schrecker, 2006.
Anderson, 1991.

From British to humanitarian colonization

389

characteristics, rather than recognizing them as professional categories, for example. In other words, the notion of community is most often defined and applied
from outside, by actors or observers that do not identify themselves as members
of the designed group. In most cases, then, the community is the others.20 (Crochet, 2000, p 50)
Returning to the shared history of anthropologists and development, the concept of communities should be retraced back to the 1950s, when anthropologists
spread the community development approach to facilitate adoptions of Western
technologies and justify foreign aid; that is, to enable international corporation
to reap profits without a challenge from the people (Jaganath, 1981, p 625). Our
aim here is not to polemicize the ultimate goals of humanitarian aid and colonization21 and if they were to be compared, we would do it in a derivative way: that
is, on the collateral effects of each of these two endeavours. However, some characteristics of the communities concept were most definitely inherited from the
colonial era:
The striking assumptions of the [community development] programme are that
it should involve all the households of village community irrespective of class,
caste, creed or sex; and that the planning and execution should be based on
cultural values, norms and traditions of the people. The first assumption, without
acknowledging the inherited disparities in the social structure, was instrumental in widening the already existing divisions among the various agrarian classes.
It is utopian to think that there would be more or less equal distribution of
benefits in the face of dominant landlords and usurers. (Jaganath, 1981, p 625)
Although humanitarian aid is now prioritizing the landless over landowners, the
same methodology still applies. It will not take into account the existing disparities of social structures, the differentiated roles of women and men in society, the
indebtedness binding workers to their employers, etc. Many aid workers would
thus argue that they merely have the time and the budget to undertake learning
studies about the societies they help. This is partly true, particularly according to
the donors:
The following types of action are ineligible: [] social or economic research
or studies and/or similar survey.22
Hence the role of early recovery is to justify actions belonging to the field of
development while buying both time and money. This statement coincides with
the confusion among humanitarian actors regarding the meaning of early recovery,23
20

21

22

23

La notion de communaut est le plus souvent dfinie et applique de lextrieur, par des intervenants
ou des observateurs qui ne sidentifient pas eux-mmes comme membres du groupe dsign. Le
plus souvent, donc, la communaut, cest les autres.
Some authors, such as Cohen et al, 2008, have already developed the argument qualifying NGOs
as new colonialists.
2008 Food Security Program for the areas affected by cyclone Nargis in Burma/Myanmar, Guidelines
for grant applicants EuropeAid, European Commission, p 10.
When working for a French NGO, a URD group (Urgence Rhabilitation Dveloppement, cf
www.urd.org) team came to Myanmar in order to collect the aid workers views about early
recovery compared to development. Such a step already underlines the confusion around the
concept and, from my discussions with them as well as with other aid workers, it appeared that
early recovery was far from being clearly defined.

390

South East Asia Research

which probably comes from the difference between the concept and practice. Early
recovery is conceived of as a tool, a multi-dimensional process to make the
transition between emergency and development, rather than as a proper phase in
the interaction between societies and humanitarian aid after a natural disaster.24
Nonetheless, the fact that Myanmars political situation at this time was a source
of much uncertainty regarding NGOs involvement in the country, early recovery
could not yet lead to development. In consequence, the early recovery concept
became in practice a phase in itself, at the edges of emergency and development.
Five years after the cyclone, major donors guidelines reflect political changes,
and cooperation with local authorities has become compulsory for most NGO
projects. Likewise, value-chain-oriented programmes are now being promoted by
donors. The early recovery lasted almost three years (from Nargis to late 2011
when the first signs of a democratization process were acknowledged by the international community), during which time economic interference was ideologically
pertinent and necessary to maintain and eventually develop the humanitarian presence in Myanmar.
Indeed, among the communities to be targeted and given priority during the
early recovery phase were the daily/casual workers, implicitly landless, with the
purpose formulated as one of giving them income opportunities. Hence, in my
view, there was a twofold solution. The first would be to give them back employment and the second to provide them with a means of production as a source of
income. The underlying question was: will the aid go towards restoring a situation similar to the one that prevailed before the cyclone, or will it contribute to
improving their situation?
Unsurprisingly, the second solution was chosen unanimously hence the ideological nature of aid. There was no room for discussion in the arena25 for two
reasons. First, the intrinsic bias of humanitarian-cum-development aid is to improve food security, health, etc so that even during an emergency there are ways
to do so (this is the purpose of early recovery). Second, giving back employment
opportunities would mean helping their employers, notably by providing them
with production tools lost during the cyclone. However, producers cannot be considered part of the same community as daily workers, the former being supposedly
rich and the latter poor and vulnerable. Although some NGO actors may be aware
that the so-called communities have exchanges (fishermen can also be farmers; a
small-scale fisherman can be a daily worker during the rainy season, etc), helping
a few rich people to help dozens of poor people is hardly justifiable to the
donors. Thus, contrary to the argument made by Olivier de Sardan,26 in this case
24

25

26

Early Recovery is [] a multi-dimensional process, guided by development principles. It aims

to generate self-sustaining, nationally-owned, and resilient processes for post-crisis recovery.
(IASC, 2006, p 1)
According to Olivier de Sardan (1995, pp 179 and 190), development deserves to be considered
as an arena that is, a place of confrontation between different social actors interacting around
common issues.
In the development milieu, there is a very wide gap between discourse and practice: what is said
of a development project, its design, set up, format or model, its funding and legitimization, has
only little relation with what this project becomes in the practice once it reaches its final recipients.
[ Le monde du dveloppement connat un dcalage trs grand entre les discours et les pratiques
: ce quon dit dun projet de dveloppement, pour le concevoir, le mettre en place, le formater ou
le modliser, le financer, le lgitimer, na que peu de rapport avec ce que ce projet devient dans la
pratique, une fois arriv ses destinataires finaux.] (Olivier de Sardan, 2001a, p 733)

From British to humanitarian colonization

391

there was a clear consensus between discourse and practice. The only argument I
witnessed was between a UN body and implementing NGOs in the delta. The
former considered the possibility of redistributing lands belonging to some big
farmers among landless people who would not even be able to cultivate them
because of lost assets. The latter (showing common sense) doubted that the farmers themselves would agree to such a project.

The delta, a long-lasting place for indebted pioneers

Eventually, there was a third argument preventing direct action over the relationship between farmers and casual workers (as well as between shipowners and
fishermen): this was the indebtedness relationship it generally supposes. In our
world of Western banking, this concept conveys enough negative representations
for us to leave out cultural contextualizing. The aim of development is to free the
daily worker depending on a patron from his precarious situation. Here is where
the concept of modernization intervenes, a concept that appeared in the study of
development in Third World countries during the 1960s:
The theories of modernization a derivative of structural functionalism [are]
characterized by the neglect of history, internal and external structure of domination and dependence, and swayed by anti-communism and ethnocentrism. It
does not question the legitimacy of the prevailing power structures. (Jaganath,
1981, p 625)
It would seem, then, that the contemporary humanitarian representation of Third
World societies paradoxically builds on two different ideologies. On the one hand,
it takes the implicit opposition between communities and modern societies, the
first being perceived as secure places of solidarity, intimacy, etc and the second as
the place where all the blights occur (depression, individualism, etc). On the other
hand, it considers modernization theories regarding cultural and institutional elements as vectors of backwardness. Likewise, it was long thought that modernisation
of traditional societies can be attained without destroying or modifying the structure (Jaganath, 1981, p 625). Accordingly, it may be possible to empower daily
workers through a community-based approach while breaking socially constructed
indebtedness bonds. The community approach is the counterpart of what Dumont
(1983) calls the ideology of modernity born out of national egalitarianism in
which individualism prevails on hierarchical bonds of holist societies such as the
caste societies of India, which bears a likeness to Burmese society (see Leach,
1960). Thus, my perception of the humanitarian arena is as a gigantic playground
where Western countries are trying to solve the problem inherent in individualist
societies while breaking the untenable hierarchical bonds of holist ones, to which
one solution is the empowerment of individuals through the community.
In order to adhere to a methodological populism approach (and avoid lapsing
into ideological populism),27 it is necessary to recall the meaning and function
27

On the difference between the two, see Olivier de Sardan, 2001b. To summarize, methodological populism considers it is worth exploring the knowledge and the different strategies embraced
by the populations concerned by development, while ideological populism tends to idealize the
populations capacities systematically in terms of resistance, innovation, etc.

392

South East Asia Research

of indebtedness in the peculiar context of the Ayeyarwady Delta societies. First,

contrary to what most of the development actors may imagine at first sight, indebtedness is far from being just an economic relationship and is inscribed in a
wider patronclient relationship. In the recent history of developing agriculture in
the deltas lowlands, which dates back to the nineteenth century, patronclient
relationships were essential, notably to structure economic and social networks.
The gradual populating of the Ayeyarwady Delta took place in three stages from
1858 to 1941 (Adas, 1974b) and was mainly initiated by the British, who wanted
to develop the production of this area.28 As explained by OConnor (1995), in the
early era (700 AD), Mon, Khmer, Cham and Pyu ruled the southern part of mainland South East Asia. These ethnic groups were garden-farmers in the highlands
or flood-managing farmers in the lowlands. People living in the northern part of
South East Asia, such as Thai, Vietnamese and Burmese (Bamar) specialized in
wet rice agriculture and were known to be skilled irrigators. These peoples expanded southward and conquered three of the largest rice bowls of Asia: the Mekong,
the Chao Phraya and the Ayeyarwady River Deltas. During the first stage of the
Ayeyarwady Deltas conquest by the Burmese, the rice economy of Lower Burma
grew rapidly thanks to the existence of large areas of virgin land and to the great
number of migrants from Upper Burma. It then became an expanding pioneer
front, to which Dao The Tuan and Molles description about the Chao Phraya
Delta (Thailand) applies perfectly:
As a consequence of [the] gradual colonisation and artificialisation of the
region, the delta society has much of the features attributed to frontier societies:
a certain degree of independence from the grip of the central state, a propensity
to evade social conflicts or responding to bankruptcy by moving further away,
and the formation of villages with migrants from different origins and backgrounds, therefore with little social glue. At the same time, the integration to
the wider economy and national sphere was provided by the marketing of the
rice production surplus. (Dao The Tuan and Molle, 2000, p 17)
In other words, the deltaic pioneer fronts were a place of migration, without sufficiently developed traditional villages or kinship units to bring social control and
means of empowerment to individuals in these loosely structured societies. However, as further pointed out by Dao The Tuan and Molle on the Chao Phraya Delta:
While the [] society can be considered loosely structured with regards to
corporate communities, it is not deprived of strong structural regularities centred
on flexible, voluntary patterns of relationships between individuals. Social control
is apparent in issues such as money borrowing or land rental contracts. (Dao
The Tuan and Molle, 2000, p 17)
The establishment of strong patronclient relationships among new villages
correlates with the pioneer fronts development in terms of production, as well as
28

Before this period, the delta had been mainly inhabited by Mon. However, settlements were
scarce and there was no surplus of rice production until this period. Thus, the nineteenth century
marks the beginning of a new era for the delta as the main rice granary of Myanmar.

From British to humanitarian colonization

393

referring spatially to what is called the rice frontier (Adas, 1974b). Scott notes
the main preconditions for promoting the patronclient network in three points:
[] the persistence of marked inequalities in wealth, status, and power which
are accorded some legitimacy; the relative absence (or collapse) of effective,
impersonal guarantees, such as public law, for physical security, property, and
position often accompanied by the growth of semi-autonomous local centers
of personal power; and the inability of either kinship units or the traditional
village to serve as effective vehicles of personal security or advancement. (Scott,
1972, p 8)
Patronclient networks arose in a structurally loose social context, far from the
states control, meaning that the patron could seldom rely on outside support to
maintain his power and wealth and thus relied mostly on his local clients networks, peasants or fishermen. In the Ayeyarwady Delta, socioeconomic systems
are made up, to put it simply, of three main actors: the ngwei-shin,29 literally master of the money, who is the retailer and/or moneylender; the lok-nganshin, literally
master of work, who is the landowner or the boat owner for large-scale fishing
activities; and finally, the workers, alok-thama. However, as is the case for any
patronclient relationship, when the bargaining of the client is still strong, it overwhelms the economic frame and projects itself into the social one. To win the
loyalty of his client, the masters duty is to redistribute part of his wealth within
his social group, either in collective ritual ceremonies or by lending some money
to his clients for extra-professional needs such as weddings, burials or Buddhist
initiation ceremonies [shin-pyu]. Finally, all these relations are encompassed within
a more inclusive system known as kyeizushin. This literally means the master
of ones good deeds, which could be translated in a Buddhist context as the
master of ones life, given the rebirth cycle tying every living being to this world
and the good deeds needed to acquire merits in order to free oneself from this
cycle.30 The kyeizushin system, in which clientelism was the counterpart of the
economic dominance of the moneylender over the landowner and the landowner
over the labourers, was instrumental in the structuring of land exploitation and
especially of the territorys civilization, creating the networks that exist nowadays. This patronclient relationship is not specifically Burmese. However, the
inclusive kyeizushin system has probably been a powerful tool in maintaining
Burmese sovereignty over exploitation of resources in a development context where
foreigners (mostly Chettiars and Chinese) played an important role.31
From the period of the British colonization onwards, the delta has been a dynamic
pioneer front, and continues to present the same particularities. Concretely, until
the cyclone hit the delta, the region was economically highly productive and
depended mainly on patronclient networks to structure its production. This is
even more true in the southernmost parts of the region where some fishing villages have recently been created (less than 10 years ago). They are generally built
29

30

31

The Burmese words are rendered in this article using the conventional transcription with raised
comma tones (Okell, 1971).
There are three principal kyeizushin in ones life: Buddha, ones parents and teachers. See
Schober, 1989.
See Boutry (forthcoming).

394

South East Asia Research

on seasonal migrations bringing workers from distant rice fields and progressively becoming permanent settlements along rivers, these being the main means
of communication to this day. As a consequence, the deltas society still presents
little social glue. Hence, it is relatively fragile and vulnerable to disasters such
as the cyclone. To conclude this brief study of the nature of methodological
populism, in humanitarian words we would say that one patronclient network
could represent one community.

Economic interference: from British to humanitarian colonization

Clearly bound by the donors guidelines during the early recovery process, NGOs
voluntarily excluded patrons as potential actors in the regions recovery. However, this is not completely surprising since, even through the developmental phase
and prior to the cyclone, they already had a different reading of the existing social
structures:
The poor have tremendous capacity to help themselves, if they have the opportunity to do so. The availability of, and access to reasonable credit is the key to
this: if people can generate sufficient surplus from their farms or small businesses, they can repay the credit and reinvest the remainder. Experience has
shown that credit programmes targeted at the poor, and especially at women,
can have a significant effect on improving incomes and living standards.
UNDP Myanmars HDI microfinance project targets those who would not
normally qualify for credit through the banking system: women, the landless,
and other marginalised groups.32
Based on these observations, the deltas population has been the target of microcredit
programmes initiated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in 1994.
And rightly so, because these groups imagined as communities by humanitarian actors and categorized into groups such as women, the landless, etc are
marginalized by the Myanmar banking system (as is the case for a large percentage of Myanmars population). As a result, the role of the ngwei-shin moneylender
remains essential in the deltas societies. Due to the success of NGO projects
being quantified by tools created by the developers themselves, they are not able
to take into account the transition that occurred from a local socioeconomic and
religious system, with ramifications at every level of society, to an exogenous
entity, which is the NGO. Then, after the cyclone, the latter began to notice the
following:
Prior to Nargis a number of development agencies have supported community
based savings and credit operations. Microfinance programmes are confronted
by both the demand by members for the withdrawal of their savings and the fact
that members with outstanding loans are unable to repay them because their
asset base has been destroyed or damaged. The micro-credit schemes, thus,
require immediate funds for asset replenishment to enable them to re-start credit
operations. (Tripartite Core Group, 2008, p 143)
32

Website: http://www.mm.undp.org/HDI/MICRO.html.

From British to humanitarian colonization

395

NGOs certainly offer more interesting rates to the daily workers or peasants than
the ngwei-shin. However, they do not fulfil the social contract implicitly established with the moneylender. They will not lend the necessary money to perform a
Buddhist initiation or wedding ceremony. In other respects, when the relationship
between a ngwei-shin and his client is broken, the former does not have any interest
in perpetuating the social contract if he cannot find any economic reward. Thus, the
inclusive way of acquiring merit is simply reduced to an economic relationship
preventing the redistribution of wealth among the clients network on the one hand
and the patronclient networks on the other to reactivate the economy after exceptional events such as Cyclone Nargis. Then, microcredit or microfinance programmes
subjected their beneficiaries to the presence of NGOs and forbade them access to
the social mobility that the shin socioeconomic system had formerly guaranteed.
Thus, during early recovery, rice seeds were mainly given to small-scale farmers, generally within the limit of three acres of land, while economic support,
mostly through the distribution of small-scale fishing kits, gardening sets or livestock (pork, chicken) and microcredit/voucher/cash support, was allocated to daily
workers [bauk]. During my research, it was often pointed out by people in the
dominant economic position (at least before the cyclone) that such support was
not sustainable or was inappropriate to foster the economic recovery of the region. Indeed, it was clear and this for most of the population including daily
workers that economic recovery could take place efficiently only if the patrons,
who had been no less affected by the cyclone than the workers, could retrieve
their means of production and consequently would be able to procure employment for daily workers.
This has also been noticed by other monitoring studies, such as in the report
Myanmar surviving the storm: self-protection and survival in the delta:
[] local landholders were arguably in (greater) need, as they could only provide funds for investing in local agriculture, thus providing employment
opportunities, if they received some assistance themselves. It was argued by
many respondents, including many landless labourers, that only by also supporting landowners could local economies be re-started, thus providing labouring
jobs to landless people (ranked C). Otherwise, the poorest-of-the-poor would
remain dependent on outside assistance, without access to local jobs. (South et
al, 2011, p 61)
We may, however, give some credit to a few NGOs that distributed quantities of
rice seeds to match the size of the lands owned by each farmer, regardless of their
economic status, for example.
In the fisheries field as well, only small-scale fishermen (with boats of 14 feet
and under) received fishing gear. Here again, there was a failure in providing and
collecting information about the socioeconomic organization of fishermen in the
delta, which emphasizes the importance of the bigger boat owners, the fish-collecting points [nga taing] and their owners, of course and shipowners/
moneylenders [ngwei-shin] in re-boosting the dynamics of the fish commercialization chain, notably for species meant for export33. Still, from the humanitarian
33

See Boutry, 2008. This document was ready by the end of August 2008 and widely distributed
among NGOs working in the delta and presented during Livelihood Working Groups in Yangon.

396

South East Asia Research

perspective of freeing the workers from their bonds towards patrons and moneylenders, the few NGOs that dared to become involved in the fisheries sectors
recovery with a more considered approach tried to set up community-owned fishcollecting points. The aim was to bypass the usual fish collectors who actually
take profit margins as intermediaries to the township markets. Some recognized34
the failure of such projects since the fishermen could not bypass their patrons for
the same reasons explained above (the social protection-cum-economic support
characteristic of the patronclient relationship). Moreover, because of the specifics of the fishing sector, fishermen need year-round investments from the patrons,
which they repay by selling their fish at a lower price. These specifics include the
impossibility of controlling production (notably because of the invisibility of the
resources) as well as conservation issues (the necessity to exchange fish for ice)
for example.35
Eventually, we could say that this particular practice of humanitarian aid excluded its beneficiaries as a whole from the arena. Indeed, in the name of a
participatory approach, every NGO created committees to drive their communities. In the monitoring report mentioned above, the discussion about committees
is probably the more mitigated among other aid implementation strategies and is
well summarized by the following quotation:
Many villages reported establishing numerous committees. These initiatives
were generally externally motivated, in order to manage relations with aid agencies
and other donors, and organise the distribution of assistance. Although membership of these committees was sometimes perceived as an onerous duty, in
most cases villagers recognised that some form of structure is necessary, to
mediate between themselves and outside donors. [] Often committees were
functional and instrumental in distributing aid, but were not involved in setting
priorities for distribution or involved in designing project interventions. However, working through committees does often seem to have been a genuinely
participatory process, especially after the more acute phase of the disaster had
passed and when there was access and room for more long-term programming.
However, the sustainability of these committees can be questioned. As they
were often viewed (by communities and committee members themselves) as an
extension of the aid agency which helped set them up. (South et al, 2011, pp
7172)
Besides being mostly external creations, these committees and their dependants
the beneficiaries would not raise any discontent regarding NGO action, first
because they were afraid of being excluded from the distribution lists or of being
categorized as problematic villages (South et al, 2011, p 7). Second, the criticism
of NGOs is rarer than in other contexts since the aid is perceived as a donation
[ahlu] in the Buddhist sense (Brac de la Perrire, 2010) and the donor as a
master of donation [ahlu shin].
Hence, despite the monitoring processes and assessments that are common in
34

35

It was the staff of a French NGO who, for instance, shared their experience during a workshop on
the recovery activities implemented after Cyclone Giri that hit the Western part of Myanmar in
October 2010.
For a comprehensive view of the fishing sector in Myanmar, see Boutry, 2007.

From British to humanitarian colonization

397

the practice of humanitarian aid,36 the early recovery process has mainly been a
one-way ideological economic strategy conveying considerations such as individual autonomy versus social indebtedness or horizontal communities versus
hierarchical bonds.37 Early recovery brings an accumulation of practices of economic interference into the social organization of the deltas society. This is in
many ways similar to British colonial policies aimed at transforming the delta
into the worlds rice granary during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Indeed, British economic policies, which we can assimilate around the ideological policies of humanitarian aid, had a deep impact on the deltas society.
They were responsible for systematically [undermining] the comprehensiveness
of exchange and the relative bargaining position of peasant clients particularly
in lowland areas most affected by colonial administration and market agriculture
(Scott, 1972, p 7). While the humanitarian aim is the early recovery of the deltas economic situation, British colonizers aimed for a surplus in the production
of rice to commercialize throughout British India, which led to the exploitation of
most of the deltas lands.
Instead of the humanitarian concept of using communities as an ideological
weapon, after 1852 the British used an economic one that consisted of replacing
non-contractual usufructuary rights with a tenure system modelled on the ryotwari,
which was the dominant system in South India:
The chief aim of this new system was to concentrate ownership in the hands of
individual cultivator-landholders. However, the new tenure system made it possible for agriculturists to mortgage their holdings as security for loans obtained
from money-lenders and other sources. This practice, which would eventually
permit the wide-spread alienation of land to nonagriculturists, was well-established in Lower Burma by the 1880s. (Adas, 1974a, p 387)
Indebtedness finally contributed to putting land ownership in the hands of an
absentee landowners class that lived in the main towns instead of villages, developing high-dependency relationships with tenants or sharecroppers. However, as
Scott (1972, p 23) emphasizes, during times of difficulty it was better to be a
tenant relying on a patron who would ignore ones debts for some time than to be
a smallholder without a reliable patron to secure ones livelihood. Thus, the patronclient relationship, while evolving to the advantage of the patron rather than
the peasant, was nonetheless a guarantee of security for the latter. Nevertheless,
according to Scotts work on patronclient systems in South East Asia, the process of social differentiation replaced a broader and more diffuse pattern of personal
exchange with a series of separate and narrower ties to specialized elites.
Likewise, the consequences of the community-based approach of the early recovery framework (aimed at being a self-sustaining and nationally owned process)38
have largely contributed to empowering big suppliers and patrons of the main
towns (such as Laputta, Myaung Mya, Bogale, Pyapon and Pathein). Considering
the large number of beneficiaries (daily workers, small-scale fishermen and small36

37
38

We must, however, emphasize that needs assessments and other studies are generally confined to
a technical field rather than a socioeconomic one.
As explained by Dumont, 1983.
IASC, 2006, p 1.

398

South East Asia Research

scale farmers who logically represent a higher proportion of the population) they
needed to supply with little input, NGOs often asked one supplier to provide them
with a wide range of different assets (rice seeds, livestock, gardening kits, small
fishing boats and nets). These suppliers were obviously not located in small villages. Although British economic policies indeed resulted in a pioneer phase through
the creation of many income-generating prospects for the farmers who took possession of the deltas lands, these farmers quickly fell into situations of indebtedness
and were eventually dispossessed of their property for the benefit of landlords
living in towns. Similarly, we could not say that the early recovery phase did not
bring any benefits to the deltas populations. Nevertheless, a lot of smallholders
had to sell their lands back to bigger landowners because they could not afford the
costs of the extremely poor harvests of 2008 and 2009 without a retailers assistance. On the contrary, many patrons decided to cancel their clients debts to facilitate
economic recovery. Indeed, land acquisition due to lack of repayment of loans
has been relatively low post-Nargis, as even money lenders have not been interested in taking over land due to the high investment costs for land cultivation
combined with their own lack of capital (South et al, 2011, p 79). Thus, by excluding patrons from aid benefits and ostensibly trying to break up the existing
patronclient relationship, humanitarian action weakens the resilience capacity
of the deltas economic sector. As Scott clearly argues regarding the consequences
of British economic policies, which can be entirely applied to the consequences
of the early recovery phase after Nargis:
In terms of the balance of exchange between local officials and peasants, therefore, the relative power of the patron was vastly inflated, his need for clients
was reduced, and the incentive to serve the community by protecting it against
the larger state was broken. (Scott, 1972, p 18)

Conclusion
Since Cyclone Nargis, the Myanmar government, with its isolationist stance towards Western countries, has most certainly favoured a confinement of the
humanitarian agency to its own humanitarian sphere during the long early recovery phase. Indeed, aside from the tripartite Myanmar governmentASEANUN
groups efforts to identify needs, drive funds and assess the progression of humanitarian effort, local governmental bodies were far from being ready to collaborate
with the implementing NGOs. On the contrary, they tried to interact with them as
little as possible. Conversely, most NGOs were unwilling to work with the
authorities.39 National civil society, although pre-existing, benefited from the heavy
presence of humanitarian actors, progressively building itself up, to the extent
that, nowadays, many local NGOs, mainly confessional (Buddhist and Christian)
and environmental (sometimes both), are proactive in the shaping of the new political
development of the country. Still, for our own purposes, it is worth noting that
they have been shaped by and trained according to Western values and
methodologies of implementation, even though they are now integrating these
new parameters into a local vision of their own society (Desaine, 2011).
39

Some cases make the exception throughout the vast Ayeyarwady region. Since the political shift
towards democracy, the main donors and implementing partners have unsurprisingly changed
their strategies to work as closely as possible with the new government.

From British to humanitarian colonization

399

What remains is the fact that the concept of early recovery appears as a discursive tool to justify development where emergency action is needed, rather than a
methodology. Other than buying time and effort (and thus money) for humanitarian actors on the path towards development which, from the professions point
of view, was indeed necessary, given their uncertain future under the then military
government early recovery involves the practice of theoretical values in development in their universalist essence: this involves the romantic egalitarianism40
of the community, self-determination and economic autonomy. This singular feature of early recovery is powerful enough to remind us of the universalist economic
aim of the British colonial empire. The socioeconomic consequences of these two
periods have to be carefully compared, given the great difference in their duration. While colonization lasted over two centuries, humanitarian aid in Myanmar
is at the beginning of its era, having really started in 2008 in the context of
Cyclone Nargis. Nevertheless, the processes that promote change can be compared in their finality: the verticalizing of relations between local and national
economic issues by the suppression of intermediate levels of socioeconomic interdependency embodied by the patronclient relationship at a local/regional level.
Consequently, local actors (farmers, fishermen, daily workers) find themselves in
a one-way dependency on national/regional economic players (big suppliers, rice
and fish exporters) and international markets.
During the early recovery period, the humanitarian approach to local realities,
the socioeconomic structure of societies, their representations and their beliefs
were ignored by NGOs. Hence, the meaning of this disregard deserves to be questioned, or reformulated. How can local complexities be taken into account when
applying for funds to international donors? This disregard seems to be a necessity
of accountability constraints, particularly when part of a massive response such
as in post-disaster situations.
Can the anthropologist therefore bring an efficient contribution to the humanitarian effort, especially during the early recovery phase? Among the different
positions I experienced in the humanitarian sphere, such as needs identification
prior to the project, evaluations a posteriori and direct participation during the
implementation process, the latter logically seems to be the most interesting. In
fact, the comprehensive view of a situation, when given prior to the project, may
be overwhelmed by the necessity to answer the donors expectations, while project
evaluation will rarely overtake the implementing NGOs circle. There is room
between the lines of a projects proposal for NGO workers to adapt their implementation strategies to the context. It is within this limited space subject to the
country directors approval and to his or her capacity to negotiate with donor
guidelines that the difference between discourse and implementation may occur.
Therefore, particularly in a sensitive political context such as Myanmar in 2008,
the definition of humanitarian aid was principally discursive and quite monolithic,41 while the efforts made to fit local complexities (socioeconomic, technical)
40

41

According to Olivier de Sardan (1995, p 138), we could also call it egalitarian-individualistic

(galitariste-individualiste).
This runs contrary to what many authors criticizing the post-structuralist anthropology of development may argue. See Olivier de Sardan, 2001a, or Friedman, 2006, p 204: Development discourse
is not nearly as unified as the post-structuralists claim, and thus the encounter between the first
and third worlds is not nearly as hegemonic as the critique asserts.

400

South East Asia Research

were on the contrary very diverse (depending on the projects implementers) and
were not subject to a specific methodology.
It is no longer necessary to argue that the humanitarian profession is a complex
system consisting of very different scales and actors, from governmental donors
with Western capital to the projects local implementers. Yet, as is the case in any
system, the humanitarian profession is working for its own perpetuation42 and,
consequently, evolves accordingly. The concept of early recovery can be considered as one form of evolution in which the interest resides in bringing into
action a new paradigm of continuity between emergency and development. The
anthropology of development should renew itself accordingly, without necessarily breaking from its own history that is, post-structuralist anthropology is still
useful in this context and should oscillate between its different stances. Moreover, it should certainly be less reluctant to involve itself in implementation.

References
Adas, Michael (1974a), Immigrant Asians and the economic impact of European imperialism: the
role of the South Indian Chettiars in British Burma, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 33, No 3, pp
385401.
Adas, Michael (1974b), The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian
Rice Frontier, 18521941, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso Books, London.
Asad, T., ed (1973), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, NJ.
Boutry, M. (2007), Lappropriation du domaine maritime : des enjeux revisits, in Defert, G., ed,
Birmanie Contemporaine, IRASEC, Paris, et Les Indes Savantes, Bangkok, pp 389410.
Boutry, M. (2008), Ayeyarwady Fisheries Analysis. Propositions for the Recovery Effort after Nargis,
TGH, Yangon.
Boutry, M. (forthcoming), Hgmonies birmanes. Dynamiques dappropriation des frontires littorales
(Irrawaddy, Tenasserim, Sud Thalande), Institut de Recherches sur lAsie du Sud-Est contemporaine/
Indes Savantes, Bangkok.
Boutry, Maxime, and Ferrari, Olivier (2009), Des catastrophes naturelles au dsastre humain. Consquences et enjeux de laide humanitaire aprs le tsunami et le cyclone Nargis en Thalande et
Birmanie, IRASEC, Bangkok.
Brac de la Perrire, Bndicte (2010), Le scrutin de Nargis le cyclone de 2008 en Birmanie, Terrain, Vol 54, pp 6679.
Cohen, Michael A., Figueroa Kupcu, Maria, and Khanna, Parag (2008), The new colonialists,
Foreign Policy, Vol 167, pp 7479.
Crochet, S. (2000), Cet obscur objet du dsir, in Brauman, R., ed, Utopies sanitaires, Le Pommier,
Paris, pp 4577.
Dao The Tuan, and Molle, F. (2000), The Chao Phraya Delta in perspective: a comparison with the
Red River and Mekong deltas, Vietnam, Proceedings of the Chao Phraya Delta : Historical
Development, Dynamics and Challenges of Thailands Rice Bowl, Bangkok.
Desaine, Lois (2011), The Politics of Silence. Myanmar NGOs Ethnic, Religious and Political Agenda,
IRASEC, Bangkok.
Dumont, Louis (1983), Essai sur lindividualisme. Une perspective anthropologique sur lidologie
moderne, Le Seuil, Paris.
Escobar, Arturo (1984), Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of
his work to the Thirld World, Alternative, Vol 10, pp 377400.
Escobar, Arturo (1995), Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Friedman, John T. (2006), Beyond the post-structural impasse in the anthropology of development,
Dialectical Anthropology, Vol 30, No 3/4, pp 201225.
42

This is one of the main criticisms of development, which needs dysfunctional states in order to be
relevant. Indeed, its actors are not often playing the game of which the finality would be to secure
their withdrawal while transferring their knowledge to governmental bodies (see Cohen et al,
2008).

From British to humanitarian colonization

401

Hart, Keith (2002), Quelques confidences sur lanthropologie du dveloppement, ethnographiques.org,

website: http://www.ethnographiques.org/2002/Hart (accessed 19 April 2012).
Heidel, Brian (2006), The Growth of Civil Society in Myanmar, Books for Change, Bangalore.
IASC Inter-Agency Standing Committee (2006), Implementing Early Recovery, Cluster Working
Group on Early Recovery, website: http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/iasc/downloaddoc.aspx
(accessed 10 March 2013).
International Crisis Group (2008), Burma/Myanmar after Nargis: time to normalize aid relations,
Asia Report No 161, website: http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-east-asia/burmamyanmar/161_burma_myanmar_after_nargis___time_to_normalise_aid_relations.pdf.
Jaganath, Pathy (1981), Imperialism, anthropology and the Third World, Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol 16, No 14, pp 623627.
Leach, Edmund R. (1960), The frontiers of Burma, Comparative Studies in Society and History,
Vol 3, No 1, pp 4968.
Lz, Samuel (2008), Cherry Schrecker, La Communaut. Histoire critique dun concept dans la
sociologie anglo-saxonne, LHomme, pp 187188.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1945), The Dynamics of Culture Change, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
OConnor, Richard A. (1995), Agricultural change and ethnic succession in Southeast Asian states:
a case for regional anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 54, No 4, pp 968996.
Okell, John (1971), A Guide to the Romanization of Burmese, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain
and Ireland, London.
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre (1995), Anthropologie et dveloppement. Essai en socio-anthropologie
du changement social, APAD/Kartala, Paris and Marseille.
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre (2001a), Les trois approches en anthropologie du dveloppement,
Tiers-Mondes, Vol 42, No 168, pp 729754.
Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre (2001b), Populisme idologique et populisme mthodologique en
anthropologie, in Fabiani, ed, Le got de lenqute. Pour Jean-Claude Passeron, LHarmattan,
Paris.
Schober, J.S. (1989), Paths to enlightenment: Theravada Buddhism in Upper Burma, unpublished
PhD thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL.
Schrecker, Cherry (2006), La Communaut. Histoire critique dun concept dans la sociologie anglosaxonne, LHarmattan, Paris.
Scott, James C. (1972), The erosion of patronclient bonds and social change in rural Southeast
Asia, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 32, No 1, pp 537.
South, Ashley (2008), Making a disaster out of a cyclone, The World Today, Vol 64, No 7, pp 2527.
South, Ashley, Kempel, Susanne, Perhult, Malin, and Carstensen, Nils (2011), Myanmar surviving
the storm: self-protection and survival in the Delta, Local to Global Protection, website: www.local
2global.info.
Tripartite Core Group (2008), Post-Nargis Joint Assessment, Tripartite Core Group, Yangon.