Anne Décobert
Biographic Data
| ID | 190038 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anne Décobert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anne |
| FAMILY NAME | Décobert |
| SIGNATURE | DÉCOBERT A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5153-2790 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
‘We need solidarity’
Calls for solidarity by civil society are taking place alongside changes in how researchers navigate shifting research landscapes. Yet what solidarity‐based research entails in practice and how this might guide, critique, or challenge institutionalised ethics can be elusive. This is particularly the case in complex conflict and authoritarian research environments like Myanmar, which require us to question how solidarity can be practiced with civi…
Narratives of Localisation in Times of ‘Crisis
This article adopts a narrative analysis to explore contrasting approaches to ‘localisation’, and links with power struggles in an unequal aid industry. Drawing on qualitative research with aid workers in Myanmar, we analyse how ‘crises’ provide opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, but can also be instrumentalised to reinforce existing power inequalities. We show that the humanitarian ‘crisis’ precipitated by Myanmar’s 2021 coup sharpe…
Solidarity without consensus
Healthcare, solidarity, and moral community in Myanmar's humanitarian crisis and revolution
Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, this article explores how the experiences and practices of health workers responding to humanitarian crises can foster new forms of solidarity, moral community, and state-society relations in situations of conflict, structural violence, and disputed governance. Focusing on partnerships formed between ethnic minority and former government health workers since Myanmar's coup of 2021, it shows how shared exp…
Compliance and coloniality
In this article, we explore how logics and systems of coloniality are reproduced through the bureaucracy of international aid. Drawing on qualitative research with civil society and international aid workers in Myanmar, we examine tensions between international agencies' 'do no harm' and 'localisation' commitments and their compliance requirements. We demonstrate that international compliance frameworks are experienced as top-down and overly rigi…
Seeing like a donor
Following the Grand Bargain, there has been increasing focus on aid localisation and partnerships between international and local aid agencies. Yet there has been less scholarly attention on how and why international agency policies and partnerships can cause unintended harm to civil society organisations and their staff. Drawing on James Scott’s seminal work Seeing like a State, and interviews with Myanmar civil society organisation leaders in 2…
We returned home empty-handed
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
How political engineering can make health a bridge to peace
This case study analyses a health project that focused on peacebuilding in addition to service provision, and the impacts of this dual focus in contested territories of Southeast Myanmar. The Swiss-funded Primary Health Care Project provided equal funds to both ‘sides’ in a decades-long conflict, and brought people together in ways designed to build trust. The case study demonstrates that health can play a valuable role in peace formation, if rel…
‘I am the Bridge’
Borderland brokers can play a key role in shaping processes of socio-political change within contexts of ongoing ‘political unsettlement’. Myanmar’s contested ‘transition’ to democracy and peace, which began in 2011, created the space and need for brokers to mediate state–non-state and centre–periphery relations. Ethnographic research focusing on a polio immunisation campaign in Kayin State demonstrates how brokers’ characteristics as network spe…
Spaces of solidarity
Spaces of solidarity: Karen activism in the Thailand–Burma borderlands." Asian Studies Review, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Is the military coup in Myanmar the death knell of democracy and federalism
Based on the ENPP whereby one-party system if >1.75; two-party 1.76>2.25;two-and-a-half party systems 2.26>3; multiparty systems with a dominant party 3.01>4.25;and, multiparty systems <4.25+.** Using parties rather than alliances.Source: authors' calculations adapted from Breen (2020)
Myanmar’s human rights crisis justifies foregoing neutrality for a solidarity-based approach to humanitarianism
The February 2021 military coup has plunged Myanmar into chaos, rolling back progress achieved over the past decade in terms of human rights, development, and peacebuilding.Local populations are now facing a humanitarian catastrophe, with large-scale suffering caused by violence and displacement, an economic and food security crisis, and a public health emergency within which the junta has used COVID-19 to suppress the people.Myanmar's multi-pron…
Partnerships for Universal Health Coverage in Myanmar
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise the importance of partnerships in achieving targets like Universal Health Coverage. But how can partnerships between non-state and state actors be established, and what development and political ramifications might they have, within protracted conflict situations? In Myanmar’s Kayah State and Kayin State, decades-long conflict resulted in parallel health systems operating under Ethnic Armed Organ…
Health as a bridge to peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State
This article explores ‘health as a bridge to peace’ in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It focuses on an Auxiliary Midwife training programme, which has created partnerships between actors historically divided by decades-long conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights the agency of community-level service providers, who are often overlooked in conventional approaches to peacebuilding. It demonstrates that community health workers ar…
From Toilet Paper Wars to #ViralKindness
By examining seemingly contradictory reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and relating these to the basic income debate in Australia, this article explores the potential that the socio-economic crisis provoked by COVID-19 presents for a transformation of welfare systems. Drawing on ethnographic observation, the article describes the emergence of grassroots forms of solidarity in response to the pandemic. Within the context of the increasing hardshi…
The struggle isn’t over
In recent years, international optimism about Myanmar’s fledgling democratization and peace process has contributed to a shift by many Western donors towards the ‘normalization’ of aid relations with the former pariah state, and from more ‘humanitarian’ to more ‘development’-style approaches. Yet these shifts are not necessarily seen as progress by members of community-based health organizations, which operate under para-state governance systems …
Interpretive Complexity and Crisis
The Politics of Aid to Burma
The Politics of Aid to Burma
For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency c…
Politics of Aid to Burma
Interpretive Complexity and Crisis
The struggle isn’t over
In recent years, international optimism about Myanmar’s fledgling democratization and peace process has contributed to a shift by many Western donors towards the ‘normalization’ of aid relations with the former pariah state, and from more ‘humanitarian’ to more ‘development’-style approaches. Yet these shifts are not necessarily seen as progress by members of community-based health organizations, which operate under para-state governance systems …
The Politics of Aid to Burma
Seeing like a donor
Following the Grand Bargain, there has been increasing focus on aid localisation and partnerships between international and local aid agencies. Yet there has been less scholarly attention on how and why international agency policies and partnerships can cause unintended harm to civil society organisations and their staff. Drawing on James Scott’s seminal work Seeing like a State, and interviews with Myanmar civil society organisation leaders in 2…
Health as a bridge to peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State
This article explores ‘health as a bridge to peace’ in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It focuses on an Auxiliary Midwife training programme, which has created partnerships between actors historically divided by decades-long conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights the agency of community-level service providers, who are often overlooked in conventional approaches to peacebuilding. It demonstrates that community health workers ar…
Narratives of Localisation in Times of ‘Crisis
This article adopts a narrative analysis to explore contrasting approaches to ‘localisation’, and links with power struggles in an unequal aid industry. Drawing on qualitative research with aid workers in Myanmar, we analyse how ‘crises’ provide opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, but can also be instrumentalised to reinforce existing power inequalities. We show that the humanitarian ‘crisis’ precipitated by Myanmar’s 2021 coup sharpe…
Healthcare, solidarity, and moral community in Myanmar's humanitarian crisis and revolution
Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, this article explores how the experiences and practices of health workers responding to humanitarian crises can foster new forms of solidarity, moral community, and state-society relations in situations of conflict, structural violence, and disputed governance. Focusing on partnerships formed between ethnic minority and former government health workers since Myanmar's coup of 2021, it shows how shared exp…
We returned home empty-handed
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
The Politics of Aid to Burma
For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency c…
Politics of Aid to Burma
The Politics of Aid to Burma
The struggle isn’t over
In recent years, international optimism about Myanmar’s fledgling democratization and peace process has contributed to a shift by many Western donors towards the ‘normalization’ of aid relations with the former pariah state, and from more ‘humanitarian’ to more ‘development’-style approaches. Yet these shifts are not necessarily seen as progress by members of community-based health organizations, which operate under para-state governance systems …
Interpretive Complexity and Crisis
From Toilet Paper Wars to #ViralKindness
By examining seemingly contradictory reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and relating these to the basic income debate in Australia, this article explores the potential that the socio-economic crisis provoked by COVID-19 presents for a transformation of welfare systems. Drawing on ethnographic observation, the article describes the emergence of grassroots forms of solidarity in response to the pandemic. Within the context of the increasing hardshi…
Is the military coup in Myanmar the death knell of democracy and federalism
Based on the ENPP whereby one-party system if >1.75; two-party 1.76>2.25;two-and-a-half party systems 2.26>3; multiparty systems with a dominant party 3.01>4.25;and, multiparty systems <4.25+.** Using parties rather than alliances.Source: authors' calculations adapted from Breen (2020)
Myanmar’s human rights crisis justifies foregoing neutrality for a solidarity-based approach to humanitarianism
The February 2021 military coup has plunged Myanmar into chaos, rolling back progress achieved over the past decade in terms of human rights, development, and peacebuilding.Local populations are now facing a humanitarian catastrophe, with large-scale suffering caused by violence and displacement, an economic and food security crisis, and a public health emergency within which the junta has used COVID-19 to suppress the people.Myanmar's multi-pron…
Partnerships for Universal Health Coverage in Myanmar
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise the importance of partnerships in achieving targets like Universal Health Coverage. But how can partnerships between non-state and state actors be established, and what development and political ramifications might they have, within protracted conflict situations? In Myanmar’s Kayah State and Kayin State, decades-long conflict resulted in parallel health systems operating under Ethnic Armed Organ…
Health as a bridge to peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State
This article explores ‘health as a bridge to peace’ in Myanmar’s Kayin State. It focuses on an Auxiliary Midwife training programme, which has created partnerships between actors historically divided by decades-long conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research, the article highlights the agency of community-level service providers, who are often overlooked in conventional approaches to peacebuilding. It demonstrates that community health workers ar…
How political engineering can make health a bridge to peace
This case study analyses a health project that focused on peacebuilding in addition to service provision, and the impacts of this dual focus in contested territories of Southeast Myanmar. The Swiss-funded Primary Health Care Project provided equal funds to both ‘sides’ in a decades-long conflict, and brought people together in ways designed to build trust. The case study demonstrates that health can play a valuable role in peace formation, if rel…
‘I am the Bridge’
Borderland brokers can play a key role in shaping processes of socio-political change within contexts of ongoing ‘political unsettlement’. Myanmar’s contested ‘transition’ to democracy and peace, which began in 2011, created the space and need for brokers to mediate state–non-state and centre–periphery relations. Ethnographic research focusing on a polio immunisation campaign in Kayin State demonstrates how brokers’ characteristics as network spe…
Spaces of solidarity
Spaces of solidarity: Karen activism in the Thailand–Burma borderlands." Asian Studies Review, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Seeing like a donor
Following the Grand Bargain, there has been increasing focus on aid localisation and partnerships between international and local aid agencies. Yet there has been less scholarly attention on how and why international agency policies and partnerships can cause unintended harm to civil society organisations and their staff. Drawing on James Scott’s seminal work Seeing like a State, and interviews with Myanmar civil society organisation leaders in 2…
We returned home empty-handed
COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between matters of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in/exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland state, northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socioeconomic consequences. The public health emergency brought into question who is 'Indian' and the citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion…
Narratives of Localisation in Times of ‘Crisis
This article adopts a narrative analysis to explore contrasting approaches to ‘localisation’, and links with power struggles in an unequal aid industry. Drawing on qualitative research with aid workers in Myanmar, we analyse how ‘crises’ provide opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, but can also be instrumentalised to reinforce existing power inequalities. We show that the humanitarian ‘crisis’ precipitated by Myanmar’s 2021 coup sharpe…
Solidarity without consensus
Healthcare, solidarity, and moral community in Myanmar's humanitarian crisis and revolution
Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, this article explores how the experiences and practices of health workers responding to humanitarian crises can foster new forms of solidarity, moral community, and state-society relations in situations of conflict, structural violence, and disputed governance. Focusing on partnerships formed between ethnic minority and former government health workers since Myanmar's coup of 2021, it shows how shared exp…
Compliance and coloniality
In this article, we explore how logics and systems of coloniality are reproduced through the bureaucracy of international aid. Drawing on qualitative research with civil society and international aid workers in Myanmar, we examine tensions between international agencies' 'do no harm' and 'localisation' commitments and their compliance requirements. We demonstrate that international compliance frameworks are experienced as top-down and overly rigi…
‘We need solidarity’
Calls for solidarity by civil society are taking place alongside changes in how researchers navigate shifting research landscapes. Yet what solidarity‐based research entails in practice and how this might guide, critique, or challenge institutionalised ethics can be elusive. This is particularly the case in complex conflict and authoritarian research environments like Myanmar, which require us to question how solidarity can be practiced with civi…
Political science (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Economics (11 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Development economics (7 works) · Economic growth (7 works) · Law (7 works)