From British to Humanitarian Colonization: The ‘EarlyRecovery’ Response in Myanmar after Nargis

Abstract

The humanitarian response to the disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis that hit theAyeyarwady Delta region of Myanmar in 2008 is a pertinent example of a veryspecific phase in humanitarian response at the transition between emergency anddevelopment. The author shows that this phase, known as ‘earlyrecovery’, being built on the specific characteristics of the emergency(lack of time and lack of means and input) and oriented towards development, isone in which the humanitarian aid agency is relatively restricted to thehumanitarian sphere itself. As a result, the ideological discourse lengthilydenounced by the post-structuralist anthropology of development – as aset of Western values imposed on the ‘developing’ countries toassert a new form of dominion – is actually powerful and quasi-monolithicin shaping the consequences of humanitarian aid. While there is no‘arena’ for the ‘beneficiaries' to discuss theaid's agency, a ‘methodological populism’ approach reveals,on the one hand, the antagonisms between a humanitarian ideology conveyingconsiderations such as ‘horizontal’ communities versus‘hierarchical bonds’ and, on the other, the similarity of itssocioeconomic consequences on the Delta's society to those of the Britishcolonial period.