Ploughing for Justice: Land Return, Clientelism and Citizenship in Central Burma

ABSTRACT This article asks if clientelism is a form of citizenship in an agrarian society under military domination. It focuses on the efforts made by villagers in central Burma to recover land previously grabbed by force by the military state. A promise of land return during the political transition of the 2010s enabled dispossessed farmers to define themselves as ‘original owners’ and thousands of complaints about land seizures were put on the record. But while justice could hardly be achieved through the executive, the courts or the law, some farmers occupied confiscated land by ploughing it. Based on ethnographic work, this article argues that while exclusion from militarized networks of patronage enabled dispossession, farmers acted on vertical and horizontal relationships in order to participate in politics and reclaim land. It shows how this battle for land and for justice was a struggle for citizenship that challenged embedded forms of clientelism.