Ewan Cameron asks what reality the term “Myanmar” expresses and what it might hide.
The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is.
Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” 1988
“The real risk, I see, is not in that bottom-up governance is romanticized—but that we dismiss or undermine it before it can be strengthened”
Saw Kapi, Facebook, August 2025
Does our use of language come to affect the way we comprehend empirical facts? What do we mean when we say ‘Myanmar’, and what do we mean when we say ‘rebels’? How do such concepts change our approach to research and the evaluation of claims to legitimacy and victory?
This article looks critically at widely-held assumptions in and around the country that is internationally recognised as Myanmar. It argues that the language we use is never neutral, but reflects deeply engrained modes of thinking. It does not advance a tight prescription on the correct language to use, but also should not be seen as a plea for relativism. Instead, I argue that there is a real world out there, and that our language choices should reflect our judgment on what that real world looks like.
Nor is this an attempt to retread the Myanmar/Burma debates, which were largely based on political preference; the existence of state assumed and without question. The argument I make here is about the ontological basis of political institutions. It is not about what we call Myanmar, but instead asks, in what form Myanmar exists, and if it does exist, when is it appropriate to use the term Myanmar, and when do the circumstances of our research call for other terms which are more relevant to what we are studying.
The analytical toolkit of critical realism is useful in setting a foundation for the arguments made here. Critical realism acknowledges the existence of an actually existing material world, but denies that humans can know this in its entirety through empirical methods of observation and measurement alone (Bhaskar 1978). Both abduction and retroduction are compatible methods of generating inference within a critical realist framework (Danermark et al. 2019, p.116). Retroduction analysis asks what must be possible for an observed phenomena to exist. If we observe the concrete reality of, say, schools, clinics, and courts that are not under the auspices of an internationally-recognised state, we might reasonably judge that there must be another core of governance in this region. Abductive thinking is both working creatively and innovatively with data, to engage not only with the data to hand, but the received wisdom and ‘ingrained habits’ of the ‘theoretical canon’ (Bryant 2017, p.275). Research and analysis in this mode is not simply description but “redescription” that breaks with habitual ways of expressing our perceptions (Danermark et al p.136). These analytical tools form the basis from which I advocate for a wider debate on the language we use to describe Myanmar and northwest Southeast Asia.
A Jigsaw World
The concept of Myanmar is fundamentally rooted in its relationship to the international system of states. Given the various governments operating inside the map we know as Myanmar, no serious observer would claim that domestic sovereignty is complete. Yet there is a very strong sense of ‘international legal sovereignty’ which involves the mutual recognition of states (Krasner 1999). The world, in this paradigm, is a jigsaw puzzle of sovereign states: neatly interlocking pieces of territory, each with uniform control of the piece of land shown on the map.
Our perception of geographical space is thus often a ‘territorial trap’, one whose adherence to ‘fixed units of sovereign space’ makes us miss the flows of power and political identity that exist within, outside, and beyond these ‘containers’ that we call states (Agnew 1994). The map has become the territory, based largely not on what happens within, but on the relationships with those outside.
To be clear, international recognition is not something easily dismissed, nor merely a free-floating idea. International sovereignty gives states and governments the ability to mobilise resources and enfranchise populations in a way that those outside the system cannot. Myanmar, in this sense, is an institutional ensemble. One that has asked for and been granted in large part through recognition by other such institutions.
Multitudes of Governance
There is another Myanmar, though, one that exists as a geographical area, again defined by its relationship to others. This Myanmar is a territorial one, the negative space on the map between India, Bangladesh, China, and Thailand. In this understanding, Myanmar-as-space, we can speak of multiple competing institutions each with their own claim to varying degrees of sovereignty. In this Myanmar, Governance, the political and collective management of resources, security and services, comes not from a sole state organ, but from a variety of actors, organisations and parallel states, some with their own territory maintained by force, others operating in hybrid, overlapping fashion, with more than one governance actor operating in the same place, There are relatively stable, services and welfare provisions, that have a significant amount of legitimacy with local populations (e.g. Joliffe 2015; Mark 2016; South 2018; Kyed and Thitsar 2020; Karenni Civil Society Network et al 2024; Naw et al 2025). Do we have the language to adequately work with this reality, one that is not part of world maps?
In the English-speaking Burma-studies world, we have a range of possibilities to describe such governance actors. ‘Ethnic Armed Organisations’ has for many years been the go-to term for institutional actors that have organised around an ethnic symbolism and, through force of arms, won and/or held territory within Myanmar[1]. More recently, the term Ethnic Resistance Organisation (ERO) has become popular as an alternative. In my own reading of this, by switching out armed for resistance, the term ERO allows for a broader conception of what these groups do and how they are received, which could include both wider governing roles (more than just simply fighting with guns) and a sense of hegemony with local populations.[2] The term is still ambiguous, perhaps by design, about the normative intentions of such groups and allows for many levels of organisation to become part of a larger loose coalition of resistance to the central state.
Here is where we need to stop and check ourselves from lapsing into romanticism; of casting the rebels as eternally on the right side of history by virtue of who they are fighting against. We may have moved to a different scale of reference, but that does not make the socio-political realities any less complex (Sadan 2013). There is a risk that whether we use EAO or ERO, we assign too much credit to armed organisations and not to others and create a binary of ‘rebels’ who rule and civilians who are governed, when in concrete reality the provision of key social services are carried out by a variety of actors (Ong and Steinmuller 2021, p.68). For example, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) are the formal armed governors of Kachinland, yet their hegemonic struggle owes much to the concurrent social and material power of the Kachin Churches (Brenner 2015). The new Karenni State Consultative Council (KSCC) has gone part of the way to formally acknowledging this multi-faceted aspect to governance, with the Council designed to have representatives of armed groups and civil society sitting alongside each other.
Perhaps then, terms such as rebel governance (e.g Arjona 2016; Mamphilly 2017) or parastates (Rossi and Pinos 2020), offer a better sense of more developed governance. However, the term rebel has been critiqued by many in the Myanmar context, with the argument that terms such as rebels and insurgents ‘overlook and dismiss their mandate from the people, as well as their political objectives, structure, and functions, including the provision of services to the population’ (Karenni Civil Society Network et al 2024). The term parastate might offer a better alternative, at least for those institutions and places where there is a sense of functioning government, rather than just militias. As with “Myanmar”, it also may serve a dual function: describing the formal and informal organisations that govern as well as the landscape that is governed and the sense of negotiated and variegated power that this entails.
One of the most straightforward options would be to use the terms that parastate populations use themselves. The question for the external researcher writing in English might be: what is the difference between Kayin State and Kawthoolei? What arrangement of empirical reality would you need to identify in order to use the latter?
Beyond States and Parastates.
Rebels describe those in an antagonistic relationship to the state, and parastates describe forms of government that mirror the modular state form but are unrecognised as such. Still, researchers in Myanmar, in attempting to describe what they have seen and what they know to be concrete reality, will certainly find governance that transcends these descriptions.There is an inherent danger to our redescription that in an eagerness to acknowledge the legitimacy of governance organisations whose legacy has been by way of armed insurgency, we miss those groups whose revolution has not been forged through direct assault on the state but instead through the progressive evolution of social forces, simmering and ‘surfacing’ ‘a marginal world now aspiring to become the hegemonic center of life’ (Cherstich et al 2020 p.152, see also Gramsci 1971 p.109;).
New societal realities in Myanmar are not always parallel states but may also be self-organised ‘emergent circuits of social cooperation’, that are prioritising need over state building or state capture (Aung 2024). In jettisoning the normative assumption that in the context of conflict, the reunification of the state form is the underlying policy goal, analysis can proceed in a much more liberated direction, one that sees complexity not as an ‘excuse for failure’ but an ensemble of actually existing realities (Aung Naing 2025, p.13). Within this map there are other forms of something that looks like sovereignty. For instance ‘the creative, formative power of a people to constitute the political forms of their own existence’ (Thame 2024).
Myanmar or Northwest Southeast Asia?
It’s also too easy to exaggerate the looseness of Myanmar as a coherent entity. Being a unitary concept recognised in the world system means it has tangible effects for citizens and populations, especially those who travel and migrate. Ideologically, too. We should also be cautious about seeing identification as a mutually exclusive phenomenon in the context of ethnicity. A recent study into national identity among youths in Myanmar found that there is strong identification with both minority ethnicities and the Myanmar nation (Chew and Jap 2023). Looking forward, social imaginaries of a unified Myanmar organised along federal democratic lines would go some way to expanding the autonomy of the states, which in turn could animate the collective will of the NUG and their allies, including many in ethnic regions.
Yet all we can do as researchers is to be clear about what we mean by Myanmar and relate it to the concrete realities on the ground. When we speak about Myanmar, are we talking about a state ensemble of institutions? A geographical location? A social imaginary? It could be multiple things at once, but it pays to be clear about this. The conceptual slippage, from geography to country to state power, serves to mask social relations in service of that power.
When there are institutions, polities and socio-political arrangements that exist in antagonism or a state of refusal to abide by the claims of other sovereign powers (Prasse-Freeman 2023) on the state and its ability to project power, is it always correct to say these institutions exist in Myanmar?
Rather than make this a binary yes or no, in or out, it is instead better to consider what it is we are actually describing. From many angles of approach, Myanmar retains its salience, but for others, perhaps when we are describing the inner governance of a parastate or communal polity, or the long histories of populations, then terms such as northwest southeast Asia may work better as our locating device. Terms such as northwest Southeast Asia allow us to approach a region of conflict or ethno-cultural groups with something approaching neutrality. There are other options to avoid frontloading the state. We may choose to talk about socio-political life in the Irrawaddy delta, the Salween Basin, or the highlands. Whatever terms we use, when we begin with more neutral geographical terms[3]., we give our research space to breathe and we can approach certain socio-political realities firstly as they are. The question of whether we locate these realities in Myanmar or northwest Southeast Asia, comes to depend on what we wish to emphasise in our narratives.
This is not merely an intellectual language game but one that has potentially far-reaching effects. The language we use to describe political institutions in Myanmar can act as ‘a sorting mechanism’ in which the state is ‘granted permanence’ while other actors are ‘contingent, conditionally legitimate’ (Beyond Ah Nah 2025). The implication is that both external and internal support may be weakened if the institutions that request it are seen as illegitimate. When our mental maps privilege states over other governance actors, we miss opportunities to connect. For example, when humanitarian actors fail to acknowledge the ‘pluralist’ nature of governance in this region, their support is asymmetric, often favouring the military-controlled rump of territory and missing communities outside (Naw, Naw, and Barter 2025). This isn’t to assume that non-State governance is better. But when we accept the empirical reality that there is governance outside the state, then supporting it to become better is in the direct interests of populations. For example, a recent report from Kachin civil society recommends that the KIO, whose oversight of rare earth mining has often put them at odds with Kachin civil society, be admitted as an observer to Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), an INGO that can provide technical support and guidance (Ta Wei Chu et al 2025).
What I have argued here is that researchers in the northwest Southeast Asian context have discovered what populations already know; socio-political realities that are much wider than insurgents with guns patching together resources. To use different terms for places and people is not a form of constructive wish-fulfillment but to arrive at a more reasoned judgement about what is really happening on the ground. I have argued for terms such as parastates and northwest Southeast Asia as terms that may express reality clearer. Nevertheless, I do not argue they are at all comprehensive and welcome disagreement and a multitude of alternatives, providing they grapple with what is actually happening, rather than supplicating to the concept of State or romanticization of rebels. In some respects, language and attendant concepts set the foundations for a self-fulfilling prophecy; when support for governance is based on being and not becoming, then rebels remain rebels and states remain states. Perhaps that is the preferred state of things for many researchers, but sooner or later the reality of governance will catch up with conceptual inertia.
Ewan Cameron is a researcher based at the University of Edinburgh
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Notes
[1] Though this doesn’t include the Tatmadaw, who are a first among equals when it comes to ethnic armies, owing to their capture of the state.
[2] See Brenner (2025 p.3) for an alternative point of view of this.
[3] Of course it is difficult to ever be fully neutral. The term Southeast Asia is itself a political construct, but it also remains a mostly neutral phrase for describing the region that remains coherent in a geographical sense even extended back into history. You may wish to dispense of Southeast altogether along with its capitalization and speak only of northwest southeastern Asia.
