ABSTRACT
Various competing narratives of the state of the rural economy in Myanmar range from largely positive appraisals of increased income and assets to more negative assessments, which acknowledge the inherent instability and uncertainty of contemporary rural life. This chapter analyses available data on socio-economic conditions in rural Myanmar to highlight the context into which moral economies emerge. Scholars such as Jonathan Rigg have highlighted the value of the terms precarity, which, by referencing notions of uncertainty, unpredictability and insecurity, help to provide some form of analytical bridge between narratives of growth, on the one hand, and the stubborn persistence of poverty in those same growth contexts. This chapter uses precarity as an analytical concept to describe rural life, to understand how conflicting findings of increased rural productivity and incomes co-exist alongside increased vulnerability and a declining sense of well-being. As Charney observed of the pre-Second World War colonial period in Burma, ‘village associations emerged in response to a diverse range of interests […] to resolve serious rural economic or legal problems’ (Charney, 2009, p. 12), and this chapter points to how parahita organizations represent a particular form of moral economy emerging in response to conditions of precarity.
