Normative Contests Against the “Legal Transplant”: A Survey of Farmland Dispute Resolution in Myanmar

Abstract This paper purports to identify the origin of farmland disputes in Myanmar triggered by the 2012 land law reform, and the attitudes of mediators. While 120 interviewed farmers showed a strong perception of the traditional right of farming to their ancestral land Bobwapaingmyae , the land administrators believe such a traditional right was lost with the formal registration of “cultivation right.” To fill such a perception gap, village mediators apply a legal pluralist view that both rights can exist in parallel. Once, however, a farmer separates his “cultivation right” from Bobwapaingmyae and places it in the market through sales or mortgages, the disputes come under the formal system where legal positivism governs. But the authors found the tendency of formal forums which affirm the claims of Bobwapaingmyae lacking the registration upon the proof of “actual cultivation,” revealing a legal postulate that sustains the substantive value of livelihood protection upon a condition of formalistic appearance of the asserted right, as a compromise between plural legal regimes.