Agency during Armed Conflict: Everyday Life under Competing Authorities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

Abstract The paper looks at the relationship between ordinary people and competing authorities during armed conflict. In particular, the paper investigates the sources of agency that enable civilians to engage with armed actors, for instance, to ensure their own protection. The analysis rests on extensive fieldwork conducted in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where the Arakan Army (AA), the armed wing of the United League of Arakan (ULA), was in active conflict with the military government, the State Administrative Council (SAC), at the time of research in 2023. Drawing on Bourdieu, the paper shows that people’s agency is shaped by their ability to access and mobilize different types of capital. What type of capital matters is influenced by structural dynamics, especially how armed actors exercise control within their often-overlapping spheres, but can include economic resources, social networks, and other types of capital. In the context of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, economic capital in the form of bribes, social capital in the form of personal connections to the armed actors, and ethnic capital in the form of belonging to a specific group are particularly crucial. Different types of capital enable civilians and communities to employ different practices for their engagement vis-à-vis different armed actors. However, many people in Rakhine State lack any relevant capital and therefore try to be as friendly or inconspicuous as possible, avoiding any interaction—especially with the SAC—as much as they can.