Reimagining Space, Reorganizing Lives: Environmental Activism in Myanmar

This chapter discusses the significance of place for young people from marginalized, agrarian populations in the nascent democracy of Myanmar in South-East Asia, and makes visible new social practices based on material factors of land, labour and food. The young people in this study are being affected by spaces of extreme poverty and violence but also ones of unprecedented opportunity and social and political capital. Determined to protect their land and communities, they are engaged in alternative development practices and, as part of global communities of interest they are forming new relationships and mobility. This chapter argues that, through their political and social agency, these young people in Myanmar are vanguards of new forms of social life and connection to place, providing key signposts for global social transformations.