Scaling struggles over land and law: Autonomy, investment, and interlegality in Myanmar's borderlands

This article explores the relevance of spatial global legal pluralism-an emerging field at the interstices of geography, anthropology, and socio-legal studies-for research on the global land rush, and the study of land law and investment in particular. I argue that a focus on the spatial dimensions of law-coupled with attention to the interlegality, scalar politics, and spatio-temporalities of semi-autonomous law-offers important insights into the dynamic forces, actors, and stakes in the global land rush. In Myanmar, the prospects for peace-however tenuous-have led to an acceleration of land law development including the creation of 'semi-autonomous land law' by ethnic armed groups and activists in its borderlands. I discuss the ways in which such policies not only anticipate peace but seek to shape its political-economy over multiple spatio-temporalities. By recognizing both international human rights law and customary law, such 'non-state' laws bring these two scales into an intermediary legal jurisdiction, contributing to the sedimentation of Kawthoolei and Kachinland as political scales in their own right.