Hans Steinmüller

Hans Steinmüller is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Hubei Province (China), in Myanmar's Wa State, and in Ecuadorian Amazonia, and writes about sovereignty, militarism, legibility and care. Currently he is working on an anthropological theory of complexity.

My field setting

My first fieldsite is the Wa State, a de-facto state in the borderlands between China and Myanmar, lacking international recognition. As a geopolitical buffer zone, it developed government structures and legal frameworks relatively late compared to neighbouring nation-states. Multiple overlapping systems of law, custom, and local rules exist with varying legitimacy. My second fieldsite is the Ecuadorian Amazon, specifically the provinces of Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe, where large-scale mining operations have met a lot of opposition from local communities. Major Chinese and Canadian mining companies operate mega-projects, and both among local inhabitants and wider Ecuadorian societies, there are ongoing conflicts between pro- and anti-mining factions.

My key research questions

My main research questions in the Wa State had to do with legal codes and practices of extortion: How do legal texts map onto social realities of patronage, forced recruitment, corvee labour, and illegitimate taxation? How do productive contradictions between violence and morality create conditions for extortion in contexts of emerging sovereignty? My main research questions in the Ecuadorian Amazon are about the role extortion plays in the relations between mining companies and local communities. How do different actors define and legitimize 'gifts that cannot be refused'? What distinguishes legitimate community support from extortive transfers?

My research findings

While there are ongoing efforts to expand the existing legal frameworks in the Wa State, many practices of extortion remain external to it, and invisible. Extortive practices are however central to the exercise of power between the military elites and ordinary villagers: my research on forced recruitment, patronage relations, and corvee shows how aggressive violence and nourishing care are combined in the exercise of local power. I document cases where officials publicly condemn behaviours they privately engage in, and the dilemmas of care relations that also sometimes turn violent. In Ecuadorian Amazonia, my research offers a better understanding of the conflicts around extractive industries: ambiguous 'gifts' blur boundaries between legitimate cooperation and coercive pressure, and sometimes can be used to create dependencies and silence opposition. This occurs, for instance, when indigenous leaders are co-opted through job offers, money transfers or implicit threats. But extortion always remains in a grey space and the perspectives and opinions on what constitutes extortion are characteristically divided.

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