PUBLICATIONS : "Strategic Engagement and Legal Pluralism: Navigating Knowledge and Expertise in Mining Disputes Author".

Publication Date :25 June 2026

Author: Sara K. Phillips

For further details on the article, visit the journal at

https://so08.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/ssjpolsci/article/view/5038

Abstract

This article explores how community and civil society actors in mining conflicts strategically engage with legal and technical vocabularies to assert legitimacy, contest exclusion, and influence mining governance. Drawing on an empirical case study of Thailand's Chatree gold mine, the article analyzes how affected groups navigate overlapping normative systems, such as state law, transnational norms, and technocratic discourses, through informal learning and strategic appropriation of expert language. Framed through the conceptual lens of legal pluralism, the study highlights how actors interpret and mobilize diverse normative orders to articulate grievances, shape narratives, and attempt to gain access to decision-making spaces. These engagements unfold across scalar dimensions, from local to international levels, reflecting both selective alignment with, and resistance to, dominant legal and institutional frameworks. By foregrounding norm contestation and plural authority, the article contributes to socio-legal scholarship on resource conflict, illustrating how actors operate in contexts of institutional distrust to advance alternative visions of justice, development, and legitimacy in sites of mineral resource development.

PUBLICATIONS:"Territorialization-from-below: Community-rooted strategies towards public authority in Kamoethway, Myanmar".

Publication Date: 16 June 2026

Authors: Naw Pe The Law

For further details on the article, visit the journal at

https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/8618/

Abstract

This article analyses territorialization 'from-above' and 'from-below' in Kamoethway, Tanintharyi Region in relation to the public authorities of the Karen National Union (KNU) and changing Myanmar governments. Fieldwork in Karen villages of the Kamoethway area details how community-based organizations and community leaders organized a social movement, documented situated knowledge, and claimed rights to govern territory locally including resources and land, which we term 'territorialization-from-below'. We analyze how strategies of resistance, consent and co-option empowered Kamoethway communities after the 2012 ceasefire. However, following the 2021 coup, while KNU's public authority expanded, community-based activism reduced due to the ongoing conflict, KNU security policies, and restrictions on civil freedoms.