This article examines an ambitious plan to construct a built-from-scratch new city outside Yangon, Myanmar and sheds light on the contradictory responses sparked by rapid urban expansion. Despite fears that this megaproject would threaten the region's way of life, hopes for the new city's construction remained high. Residents went so far as to demand the city be built “as fast as possible”. In this article, I highlight the gap between residents’ pro-project enthusiasm and the expectations of civil society and development actors, who predicted locals would reject the planned new city.

Focusing on demonstrations held outside Yangon, Myanmar, in favor of urban development, this article intervenes in the binaries of “truth” versus “falsity” and the “genuine” versus “fake” to advance anthropological theorization on demonstration, speculation, and spectacle. The article traces contrasting claims about “real farmers” and their “genuine desires,” as marshaled by both supporters of a large-scale urban project and those who oppose it.

Scams are endemic to digital capitalism, whether they manifest as bitcoin bubbles or bullshit jobs. Drawing on two years of digital ethnography in Myanmar’s Facebook land markets, this article explains what happens when the land scam migrates online. By unraveling warnings of trickery, interviewing wary participants, and inhabiting Facebook Live real estate tours, we argue that the scam is a vocation born of hope and desperation that targets land as the most stable asset amidst crisis.

Digital platforms have changed how property is sold and valued in the Global North, yet little is known about digital tools in emerging land markets. Drawing on in situ and digital ethnography, we argue that Facebook plays a key role in making a new kind of market in Myanmar, where land is transformed into a speculative asset, exchanged across ever-expanding networks.

In this article, we assess ideas of “progress” in the evolution of Burma/Myanmar studies, asking whether shifting conditions might offer openings to reconsider narratives about the country. We question two recurring tropes consistent across the work of journalists, policy analysts and scholars: an alleged history of undifferentiated “isolation,” and the ensuing state of Burma/Myanmar following a seemingly “natural” decline.

In this article, I investigate conflicting claims to land made in the peri-urban areas of Taunggyi, in Myanmar’s Shan state. By exploring case studies linked to proposed road construction in Pa-O majority regions, I develop an approach to “land grabs”- and the counter claims-making they impel- that foregrounds the spatiotemporal, showing how distinct senses of time are activated, embodied, and re-animated through encounters with particular spaces.

Drawing on ethnographic research along the Thailand-Burma border, this article analyzes the experiences of migrating youth, asking how their socially ambiguous positioning relates to the “liminal landscapes” in which they move. Drawing on images captured on “photo-walks” throughout the border region, I argue that young migrants strategically exploit potentialities intrinsic in the ambiguous landscape of the border region.