Logistical turbulence

Between valorization and violence along the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor

Bibliographic Data

ID4475586
AuthorsG R Aung (0000-0001-9648-4334, University of Vienna, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume42
Issue5-6
Pages583-603
Publication date2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/02637758241243163
OpenAlexW4394957534
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited42

A pivotal Belt and Road project, the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) includes port, pipeline, economic zone, and transport projects that cut across Myanmar to southern China. Along this corridor, severe episodes of violence have shadowed the CMEC: communal violence, insurgencies, and counter-insurgencies, including atrocities against Rohingya Muslims. This article considers the relation-direct and indirect-between the logistical infrastructure projects of the CMEC, dedicated to capitalist valorization, and the episodes of violence that have occurred in their vicinity. Revisiting critical logistics scholarship, I suggest that the turbulence of logistical worlds does not necessarily reflect an internal logic of capital. Drawing on a form-analysis view of the state, rather, I show how the CMEC requires a conjunctural grasp of logistical worlds whose turbulence can stem from multiple determinations, including state-backed, extraeconomic force. Emphasizing the ties between the CMEC and Myanmar military operations, I argue that logistical infrastructures in Myanmar are dual in form. They are incorporative and connective, fuelled by fantasies of boundless growth and endless valorisation. Yet they are also "anti-relational," forging not only connections but disconnections along spatial, gendered, and racialized ethnic divides. These racialized processes of dispossession and immiseration present violent limits to logistical imaginaries of connective relation

Archaeology · China · Geography · Meteorology · Turbulence · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access