ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS book has been percolating for well over a decade, since I first stepped out into the Thai-Myanmar borderlands in 2010 and experienced Pwakanyaw hospitality. The following list of thanks is therefore far from comprehensive. My deepest apologies to anyone I have missed.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my most heartfelt thanks to all the people of the Myanmar-Thai borderlands who helped me along the way over the years and who made this book possible. I owe my greatest debt of gratitude to the residents of the village I call Ta K’Thwee Duh (“Misty Village”) and the surrounding Mutraw highlands. Thank you, from the very bottom of my heart, for your countless acts of generosity: constantly bringing me fruit, vegetables, and lashings of rice alcohol; caring for me when I was sick; telling me stories that made me laugh until my sides hurt; sharing your hearths, histories, and lives with me, all while dealing with my endless stream of questions with such grace and good humor. During my time in the United States, I am also eternally grateful to the generosity of spirit and dazzling wit of the Pwakanyaw living in upstate New York and to Katheryn Stam and Chris Sunderlin who took me in, found me a home, and filled my days with joy. In Chiang Mai I was continually bowled over by the kindness, brilliance, and resilience of the activists from the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN) and Tenasserim River and Indigenous Peoples’ Network (TRIP NET), who also facilitated my access and travel to the Mutraw hills. While none of your real names feature in this book, your passion, verve, and intelligence have seeped into every page. The same goes for my field assistant, whom I call here Naw Paw. Your boundless humor, keen intellect, and warmth of heart shine throughout this book. The way the residents of these borderlands continue to face down apocalypse after apocalypse, without losing their warmth and good humor, is a perpetual source of inspiration to me. Ta plu doh ma!

Several brilliant scholars were instrumental in making this book happen. Paramount among them are Beppe Karlsson and Johan Lindquist, who have acted as advisers and later colleagues of the highest caliber, supporting me at each stage of the process. This work would have never come to fruition without their searing intellect and warm encouragement throughout. At the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, I have been blessed with the best colleagues imaginable. Ivana Maček, Shahram Khosravi, Hege Leivestad, Anna Gustafsson, Karin Ahlberg, Annika Rabo, Alireza Behtoui, Johan Nilsson, Andrew Alan Johnson, and my fellow PhD cohort of Isabella Strömberg, Victor Nygren, Simon Johansson, Igor Petričević, Siri Schwabe, Tekalign Ayalew, Rasmus Rodineliussen, and Jonathan Krämer have all, in ways both great and small, made this text infinitely more readable and my life more livable.

In Ithaca, I am immensely grateful to Thamora Fishel at the Southeast Asian Program (SEAP) and Magnus Fiskesjö at Cornell University who both helped me find my feet practically, intellectually, and morally. My stay in Chiang Mai was made possible thanks in no small measure to the good graces of Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, who facilitated my time at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RSDC) and constantly provoked me to rethink my ideas. At Chiang Mai University, I also had the good fortune of meeting and learning from Kwanchewan Buadaeng, Bobby Farnan, Ekraj Sabur, and Emily Teera-Hong and received unfailing administrative help from Chanida Puranapun. My stay was also greatly enriched by the company of Ashley South, who so generously offered his time, a friendly ear, and a critical eye throughout. I would also like to thank Tine Gammeltoft and Alexander Horstmann from my time at the University of Copenhagen.

Parts of chapters 2 and 3 were presented at a workshop at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen and the SOAS-Oxford Graduate Workshop in Oxford, both in 2018. The scholarly generosity and engagement of Matthew Walton, Mandy Sadan, Izzy Rhoads, Courtney Wittekind, Ardeth Thawnghmung, Shona Loong, Elisabeth Olivius, and Helene Kyed all left a deep impression on these chapters. Parts of chapters 4 and 6 also greatly benefited from feedback provided at the Land, Law, and Nationalism Workshop in Stockholm and the Varieties of Peace Asia Conference in Jakarta, both in 2019. A special thanks to Kevin Woods, Geoff Aung, Nick Cheesman, Andrew Ong, Michelle Miller, and Jenny Hedström. Jenny in particular has been an outstanding friend, neighbor, and inspiration throughout the years for what an academic/activist should look like. The same can be said of Camelia Dewan.

Magnus Fiskesjö, Mark Graham, Martin Saxer, Mikael Gravers, Claudia Merli, and Danielle Drozdzewski have all read and commented on early versions of this book and helped vastly improve it. I reserve special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their careful, insightful, and inspired comments and suggestions that greatly assisted me in turning this text into the best version of itself. I am also deeply indebted to the keen editorial eye and steady hand of Amy Bonnaffons, without whom this book may have never seen the light of day. I am also exceedingly grateful to the editorial team at the University of Washington Press, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Caitlin Tyler-Richards, and Dandi Meng for their careful readings, constructive suggestions, and warm encouragement throughout the publishing process. It is possible to trace the deep imprints of all these intellectual contributions throughout this book. That said, any mistakes herein are wholly of my own making.

The fieldwork this book is based on was made possible by generous grants from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG), the Axel and Margaret Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit, and the Stockholm Center for Global Asia. I am especially thankful to the latter, and to Eva Hansson in particular, for a grant allowing me to dedicate several months to preparing my manuscript. I would surely have perished long ago without this steady help.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends, near and far, for sticking with me and supporting me through thick and thin. None of this would have been possible without my elders who went before me, especially my parents who mean the world to me. Last, but far from least, thank you to my beloved Aga, for everything.