Infrastructure and livelihoods along China's Belt and Road: The case of coffee farming in Shan State, Myanmar

在全球南方的大部分地区，不断扩大的基础设施和土地变化正在重塑边缘社区的政治生态。转型发展项目——国家的“消除距离的技术”（Scott, 2009）——正在推动这些群体重新定义他们与生计和自然资源的关系。全球南方的社区正在应对物质日益丰富和物质脆弱性日益增加的挑战。通过中国的“一带一路”倡议（BRI）等网络，基础设施正在有效地创造资本主义的新前沿——在这些领域，国家的政治经济理想与当地的资源利用模式和生计发生了冲突（Eilenberg, 2014; Pinkaew, 2012; Woods, 2011）。为了理解资本主义前沿的这些冲突，有必要研究个人和社区的生计选择，以及他们如何在发展和权力的话语中阐明新的定位。自Conway和Chambers对生计进行基础研究（1992）以来，研究人员使用可持续生计方法来发展对地方和个人的理解；批评已经扩展到分析全球化、工业化、殖民主义、国家扩张和经济一体化的结构和过程（de Haan, 2012; Scoones, 2009）。现在需要多尺度和更深入地研究在基础设施和生计交叉点的地方“运作方式”，研究日常创造力的程序和“已经陷入‘纪律’网的群体或个人的分散的、战术的和临时的创造力”（de Certeau, 1984; Carney and Watts, 1990）。缅甸掸邦是一个高地民族地区，许多民族在历史上一直在争夺国家权力，而中国“一带一路”倡议下的发展项目正在以新的方式改变国家边缘关系，这就是在新型基础设施景观中改变生计的动力。在过去二十年中，由发展参与者、非政府组织和缅甸政府推动的高价值咖啡种植的出现，说明了国家-边际关系的转变（Winrock, 2017）。长期以来，掸邦的生计反映了传统的粗耕农业和鸦片种植与国家权力的脆弱关系（McCoy, 2003; Meehan, 2011; Scott, 2009）。虽然支持咖啡种植的努力未能取代鸦片（Meehan, 2020），但掸邦的许多社区现在正在转向高价值咖啡。我建议研究通过掸邦这些咖啡种植社区改变生计的选择、经验和理解。采用沉浸式参与式观察、访谈和绘图方法，我建议：(I)确定导致家庭种植咖啡的因素；（二）探讨这些变化对掸邦各少数民族个人、家庭和社区的意义；（iii）研究大规模基础设施如何通过经济和国家一体化改变生计；（四）调查日常国家-边际关系的变化。深入的民族志方法将有助于扩大目前对当地社区如何应对农业和生计变化影响的理解。该项目将研究当地的选择和理解，以推进对本质上是全球性现象的研究：基础设施的扩张和我们与自然资源和生计的关系的重塑。这项关于中国“一带一路”沿线民生变化的研究，有助于理解国家边缘关系如何在新的“资本主义边界”发生变化。

Throughout much of the Global South, expanding infrastructure and agrarian change are remaking the political ecologies of communities on the margins. Transformational development projects-"distance-demolishing technologies'' of the state (Scott, 2009)-are pushing these groups to redefine their relationships to livelihoods and natural resources. Communities across the Global South are navigating the challenges of increasing material affluence and increasing material vulnerability. Infrastructure, through networks like China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is effectively creating new frontiers of capitalism-sites where states' political-economic ideals come into contention with local resource use patterns and livelihoods (Eilenberg, 2014; Pinkaew, 2012; Woods, 2011).To understand these conflicts at the frontiers of capitalism, there is a need for research into the livelihood choices of individuals and communities, and how they articulate new positionalities in discourses of development and power. Since Conway and Chambers' foundational study of livelihoods (1992), researchers have used the sustainable livelihoods approach to develop an understanding of the local and the individual; critiques have expanded this to analyze structures and processes-of globalization, industrialization, colonialism, state expansion and economic integration (de Haan, 2012; Scoones, 2009). There is now a need for multi-scalar and deeper research into local "ways of operating" at the intersection of infrastructures and livelihoods-into procedures of everyday creativity and "the dispersed, tactical, and makeshift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of 'discipline'" (de Certeau, 1984; Carney and Watts, 1990).Proposed research projectThe dynamics of changing livelihoods amid a landscape of novel infrastructure are exemplified in Myanmar's Shan State, an upland ethnic area where many groups have historically contested state power and development projects under China's BRI are altering state-margin relations in new ways. One livelihood transition that illustrates shifting state-margin relations is the emergence of high-value coffee farming, pushed by development actors, NGOs and the Myanmar government over the last two decades as an alternative to widespread opium farming (Winrock, 2017). Livelihoods in Shan State have long reflected a tenuous relationship to state power through traditional swidden agriculture and opium cultivation (McCoy, 2003; Meehan, 2011; Scott, 2009). While efforts to support coffee farming have failed to supplant opium (Meehan, 2020), many communities in Shan State are now turning towards high-value coffee.I propose to study choices, experiences and understandings of shifting livelihoods via these coffee farming communities in Shan State. Using immersive participant observation, interviewing and mapping methodologies, I propose to: (i) identify factors that lead households to coffee farming; (ii) explore the meaning of these changes for the diverse ethnic minority individuals, households and communities in Shan State; (iii) study how large-scale infrastructure alters livelihoods through economic and state integration; and (iv) investigate changes in everyday state-margin relations. In-depth, ethnographic methodologies will help expand present understanding of how local communities navigate impacts of agrarian and livelihood change. This project will study local choices and understandings to advance research on what are essentially global phenomena: the expansion of infrastructure and the remaking of our relationships to natural resources and livelihoods. This study of livelihood changes along China's BRI informs an understanding of how state-margin relations are shifting at new "frontiers of capitalism".