From British to humanitarian colonization: the 'early recovery' response in Myanmar after Nargis

• Published in: South East Asia research Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 381 - 401
• Main Author: Boutry, Maxime
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England IP Publishing Ltd 01.09.2013; SAGE Publications
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Anthropology; British Empire; Burma; Colonial history; Colonialism; Colonization; Communities; Cyclones; Developing Countries; Development; Disaster relief; Disasters; Economic recovery; Emergencies; Government; Hostility; Humanitarian Aid; Humanitarianism; Ideology; Myanmar; Rice; River deltas; Socioeconomics; SPECIAL FOCUS: LIFE AFTER COLLECTIVE DEATH IN SOUTH EAST ASIA: PART 2 — HELPING AND BEING HELPED; United Kingdom; Values; Myanmar; Nargis; colonization; early recovery; anthropology of development; humanitarian aid
• ISSN: 0967-828X; 2043-6874
• DOI: 10.5367/sear.2013.0165

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 aid's 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 Delta's society to those of the British colonial period.