‘I am the Bridge’: Brokering Health, Development and Peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State

Abstract

Borderland brokers can play a key role in shaping processes of socio-political change within contexts of ongoing ‘political unsettlement’. Myanmar’s contested ‘transition’ to democracy and peace, which began in 2011, created the space and need for brokers to mediate state–non-state and centre–periphery relations. Ethnographic research focusing on a polio immunisation campaign in Kayin State demonstrates how brokers’ characteristics as network specialists and ‘translators’ allowed them to create a temporary ‘brokerage fix’, facilitating collaboration between actors historically divided by conflict, enabling an internationally funded development intervention, and contributing to local-level peace formation. Yet the ability of brokers to reshape state–non-state and centre–periphery relations in ways more conducive to long-term positive peace and equitable development is constrained by the uncertain and shifting fields of power within which they operate. The 2021 military coup and escalating violence in Myanmar ultimately highlight the more general precariousness and temporality of brokerage networks.