A Relational Ethnography Study On Burmese Tibetans Who Flow In The Region

Burmese Tibetans living in the northern border of Putao in Myanmar’s Kachin State have settled in the region for more than a century.Their communities have been considered closed and isolated for a long time,because the area is located on the eastern edge of the Himalayas where the Hengduan Mountains meet.From the geopolitical perspective,the area where Burmese Tibetans live lies on the border between China,Myanmar and India.In modern times,the region has always been politically sensitive and rarely open to the outside world.As a result,the political boundaries produced by the game between nations have reinforced the outsiders’ imagination that the living areas of Burmese Tibetans are inaccessible.However,this is actually not the case.For a hundred years or more,Burmese Tibetans have never been isolated from the world.Instead,they have continuously connected themselves to and subsisted in the outside world through their regional mobile lifestyle.The livelihood activities of Burmese Tibetans,such as agriculture,animal husbandry and hunting gathering,are characterized by Zomia livelihood.Depending on the cooperation of various means of livelihood,Burmese Tibetans constantly adjust their choice of means of livelihood with the constant change of seasons and phenology,thus establishing a rhythmical relationship with nature.It is also because of their demand for salt and other natural substances that Burmese Tibetans have to do business outside their communities.Generally speaking,in summer,Burmese Tibetans set out from their villages,climb northward over the snow-capped mountains near the China-Myanmar border and cross the Tibetan section of the China-Myanmar border into the Chayu region of China for trade;in winter,they walk southward through the sub-tropical jungles to trade in Myanmar’s Putao region.Between interleaved conversion of winter and summer in the time sense and Putao and Chayu in the space sense,Burmese Tibetans gradually form a relationship economic strategy in the process of trade,and coordinate with other means of livelihood to jointly generate their lifestyle — flow in the region.Such a existential state is ultimately achieved by Burmese Tibetans who constantly build relationships with the outside world and integrate themselves into a larger relationship network.During this period,Burmese Tibetans continued to cross the border,making the state governmentality implemented in accordance with the national rationality face difficulties.In fact,the border was transformed into a flexible space,showing the production process of multiple power subjects on the border.It thus formed a set of boundary technique of Burmese Tibetans,and then posed a challenge to the national perspective.For a hundred years or more,a set of relationship strategies developed by Burmese Tibetans with the fundamental purpose of subsistence finally condensed into an existence practice with the wisdom of mountain society.Such an existence practice required a new view of the world,which was what ethnographic researches of anthropology/ethnological relation expected recently.That is,we should get rid of many binary oppositions in epistemology and return to a relational world.