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Outputs (33)

The political economy of illicit drug crops: forum introduction (2024)
Journal Article
Thomson, F., Meehan, P., & Goodhand, J. (2024). The political economy of illicit drug crops: forum introduction. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51(4), 763-800. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2024.2328647

This article and the forum it introduces examine illicit drug crop (IDC) economies from agrarian perspectives. Examining IDCs as a group implies analysing how prohibition distinguishes them from other (licit) crops. We identify seven mechanisms throu... Read More about The political economy of illicit drug crops: forum introduction.

Drugs and extractivism: opium cultivation and drug use in the Myanmar-China borderlands (2023)
Journal Article
Meehan, P., & Dan, S. L. (2024). Drugs and extractivism: opium cultivation and drug use in the Myanmar-China borderlands. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51(4), 922-959. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2023.2271403

This paper explores the intersections between two phenomena that have shaped eastern Kachin State in Myanmar’s northern borderlands with China since the late 1980s: the transformation of once-remote spaces into resource frontiers shaped by overlappin... Read More about Drugs and extractivism: opium cultivation and drug use in the Myanmar-China borderlands.

Drugs, frontier capitalism and illicit peasantries: towards a comparative research agenda (2023)
Journal Article
Goodhand, J., Ballvé, T., & Meehan, P. (2024). Drugs, frontier capitalism and illicit peasantries: towards a comparative research agenda. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 51(4), 801-825. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2023.2258808

A defining character of drugs-affected frontier regions is their dynamic instability and their boom-and-bust cycles. These are violent and disturbed landscapes, in which illicit drug economies play a transformative role. But not all frontiers are the... Read More about Drugs, frontier capitalism and illicit peasantries: towards a comparative research agenda.

Young people’s everyday pathways into drug harms in Shan State, Myanmar (2022)
Journal Article
Meehan, P., Sadan, M., Aung Hla, S., Kham Phu, S., & Muai Oo, N. (2022). Young people’s everyday pathways into drug harms in Shan State, Myanmar. Third World Quarterly, 43(11), 2712-2730. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2022.2090923

In recent decades, youth drug use has become a cause of increasing concern across Asia and has inspired hardening drug control measures. However, consistently missing from drug narratives is a deeper engagement with young people themselves on why the... Read More about Young people’s everyday pathways into drug harms in Shan State, Myanmar.

Brokered Rule: Militias, Drugs, and Borderland Governance in the Myanmar-China Borderlands (2022)
Journal Article
Meehan, P., & Dan, S. L. (2023). Brokered Rule: Militias, Drugs, and Borderland Governance in the Myanmar-China Borderlands. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 53(4), 561-583. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2022.2064327

This article develops the concept of brokerage to analyse the systems of borderland governance that have underpinned processes of state formation and capitalist development in the conflict-affected Myanmar-China borderland region of northern Shan Sta... Read More about Brokered Rule: Militias, Drugs, and Borderland Governance in the Myanmar-China Borderlands.

Difficult Development Trade-Offs Amidst 'Transition': Exploring Power and Politics in Post-2010 Myanmar (2022)
Book Chapter
Meehan, P. (2022). Difficult Development Trade-Offs Amidst 'Transition': Exploring Power and Politics in Post-2010 Myanmar. In C. Yamahata, & B. Anderson (Eds.), Demystifying Myanmar's Transition and Political Crisis (231-253). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6675-9_12

Development studies have often grappled with how to bridge the ‘theory/policy divide’ that exists within the discipline between an intellectual focus on historical processes of social change, and more practical objectives aimed at designing intervent... Read More about Difficult Development Trade-Offs Amidst 'Transition': Exploring Power and Politics in Post-2010 Myanmar.

"Ploughing the land five times": Opium and agrarian change in the ceasefire landscapes of south-western Shan State, Myanmar (2021)
Journal Article
Meehan, P. (2022). "Ploughing the land five times": Opium and agrarian change in the ceasefire landscapes of south-western Shan State, Myanmar. Journal of Agrarian Change, 22(2), 254-277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12446

This paper explores the relationship between the illicit opium economy and processes of agrarian change in south-western Shan State, Myanmar. This is a region where opium production has risen significantly since the 1990s despite the declining territ... Read More about "Ploughing the land five times": Opium and agrarian change in the ceasefire landscapes of south-western Shan State, Myanmar.