Explosive border: Dwelling, fear and violence on the Thai-Burmese border along the Salween River

Abstract

The Salween borderlands can be conceptualised as spaces of exception where contradictory outcomes of state actions lead to state violence. The Burmese and Thai states have maintained their sovereign power and responded to economic regionalisation through violent practices in particular spaces. The political conflicts between the Burmese junta and ethnic minorities in the Salween borderlands have become war zones. The Burmese government in association with the Thai state and transnational dam investors has imposed the Salween dam projects on the Salween borderlands and people in the form of a terrorising state. The border people have experienced fear, danger and military violence, which has become part of the violence in everyday life. This paper provides an ethnographic study focused on specific events involving an explosion and death in a particular place and time on the Salween borderland. It shows the suffering of the border people in relation to sovereign power. © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington.