Sitting on the Fence?: Politics and Ethics of Research into Cross-Border Aid on the Thailand-Myanmar/Burma Border

The politics of humanitarian aid are complex and often sensitive, central to a multi-billion dollar global aid industry — or so I argued in a presentation before beginning fieldwork on the Thailand-Myanmar/Burma border. Yet before working with a humanitarian organization in Mae Sot, on the Thai side of the border, I did not grasp the extent to which the debate around cross-border aid was politicized and at times emotional. Nor did I appreciate the impact that these issues would have on my fieldwork, as a researcher who was told early on by one of the organization’s leaders that I could not “sit on the fence.”

Drawing on my experience conducting long-term ethnographic fieldwork while working as a volunteer in a crossborder aid organization, I examine the difficulties of academic neutrality in a context shaped by a history of conflict, violence, and disputed claims to socio-political legitimacy. I discuss “taking sides” as part of a methodological approach that I constantly had to re-adapt to an evolving, complex, and conflict-ridden research situation. My emphasis is on the political and ethical dilemmas that this approach raised, as well as on issues associated with what David Mosse calls relational epistemology — that is, the way in which ethnographic knowledge is tied to evolving socio-political relationships and positionings (Mosse 2006). This article serves to illustrate how academic research is not only contingent upon, but can influence changing socio-political relationships, positions, and perceptions, all of which are key to the politics of aid. It also highlights the importance of taking into account objections to academics’ work. Therefore, I identify issues of concern for researchers interested in Myanmar/Burma, as well as in other potentially sensitive and politicized research contexts.

Background to a Polarized Debate

My research consisted of an anthropological study of the politics of humanitarian aid, focusing on the Back Pack Health Worker Team (or Back Pack, as it is commonly known), a network of indigenous medics supporting healthcare services for ethnic minority communities in Burma’s historically disputed borderlands.¹ The study used anthropological data and analyses to elucidate the debate around humanitarian aid to Burma — a debate that, by the time of my research, had become part of a wider polarization of discourses concerning the once-pariah state. As Mark Duffield wrote, two years before the country’s 2010 elections:

Myanmar has been associated with war and ethnic conflict for over half a century. This war is now as much global as it is local. Besides physical violence, it also embraces a battle of ideas, identities and values. A defining feature of this internationalized battlespace is its polarized nature. Within this globalized arena a military dictatorship — the SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] — confronts a range of external political activists and international human rights lobby groups. The territory upon which these warring parties have pitched their tents, and on whose behalf they claim to speak, are the peoples of Myanmar. Myanmar — or Burma — is an internationalized battlespace where the peoples’ multiple masters have established competing regimes of truth and legitimacy.

(Duffield 2008: 6)

Until recently, Burma was infamous for a military junta, which had repeatedly demonstrated its readiness to use brute force, surveillance, propaganda and draconian laws to preserve its predatory grip on power. When I began fieldwork in late 2009, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups had been ongoing for more than 60 years, and ethnic minority communities had been subjected to decades of systematic and widespread abuses by armed state and non-state actors (Callahan 2003; Pedersen 2008b; Smith 2007; South 2008). The Burmese state had also restricted humanitarian access to populations in remote and disputed border areas throughout this period (Duffield 2008; Rae 2007; Stover et al. 2007). Communities in these areas had little to no access to basic healthcare and education, and their livelihoods were constantly threatened. In international humanitarian circles, conflict-affected, displaced, and impoverished communities in Burma’s borderlands were generally recognized as being in need of...