To support my contentions, I provide background on the political and economic circumstances that enabled intensive forms of resource extraction to resume in Burma's former conflict zones. A case study, which compares the processes at work in two different mining enclaves, follows, the details of which are based on interviews conducted inside the country between 2002 and 2005 with Burmese of different ethnic backgrounds who lived and worked in the enclaves either as horticulturalists, miners, loggers, rattan and bamboo harvesters, or charcoal producers. (Additional interviews were carried out with internally displaced persons [IDPs] in or near the enclaves and with individuals that recently fled these areas for rehgee camps along the Thai-Burmese border.) After the case study, return to the broader question of how resource concessions differentiate sovereignty and the populations within, but in ways that diverge from those found in other areas of Southeast Asia where neoliberalism is ascendant