The'Karen consensus', ethnic politics and resource-use legitimacy in northern Thailand (original) (raw)
Related papers
People in Between: Conversion and Conservation of Forest Lands in Thailand
Development and Change, 2000
The analysis of ‘ambiguous lands’ and the people who inhabit them is most revealing for understanding environmental deterioration in Thailand. ‘Ambiguous lands’ are those which are legally owned by the state, but are used and cultivated by local people. Land with an ambiguous property status attracts many different actors: villagers hungry for unoccupied arable lands in the frontiers; government departments looking for new project sites; and conservation agencies searching for new areas to be protected. This article shows, first, how two types of ambiguous land — state‐owned but privately‐cultivated land, and communal lands — were created. It then examines how the Karen, one of the hill peoples living on the ambiguous lands, have been struggling to survive between the forces of capitalistic development and forest conservation. Using a detailed study of forest use and dependency conducted in two Karen villages, I argue that the state’s efforts to reduce the Karen’s forest dependency,...
1997
Since the 1980s Thailand has seen a rise in civic activities in environmental issues. which. particularly in the case of localized issues. have led to bottom-up action that has halted projects initiated by a group of international organizations and national and local elites.!) Environmental movements in most first world countries have originated from the educated middle class. In Thailand. too. the prominence of civic action since the 1970s can be traced to the rise of the middle class. Yet the success. albeit partial. of the environmental movement In Thailand can also be accounted for by the wide strata of people involved and the multiplicity of interests. encompassing not only the educated middle class. but the local population as well as ethnic minority groups on the periphery. Environmental crisis has become a real threat. especially since the flooding in the south in 1988. Urbanites are increasingly aware of the direct link between the condition of hills and forests and the living conditions in the lowland and cities. For hill dwellers. however. the Question is one of minority claims over forest. land and survival. This paper addresses the Question of land rights and forest conservation for those on the periphery. i.e. the minority hill-dwelling population. specifically. the Karen. Over the past century. the hill-dwelling Karen in Thailand have transformed their subsistence agriculture from that based primarily on swidden cultivation in secondary forests on the lower hill slopes towards wet-rice cultivation in irrigated paddy fields. In either case. the Karen are in a no-win situation. Swidden agriculture in forested land (i.e .. state land) can be condemned as an illegal practice. while thei r paddy fields are diminishing in size as I shall explain below. Furthermore. villagers are acutely aware of the environmental effects of deforestation on the water level in their paddy fields. It is crucial that they secure sufficient water in their diminishing fields by conserving the forests in the watershed areas. The watershed areas. however. are also under state protection. and villagers have no legal claim over them.
東南アジア研究, 1997
Since the 1980s Thailand has seen a rise in civic activities in environmental issues. which. particularly in the case of localized issues. have led to bottom-up action that has halted projects initiated by a group of international organizations and national and local elites.!) Environmental movements in most first world countries have originated from the educated middle class. In Thailand. too. the prominence of civic action since the 1970s can be traced to the rise of the middle class. Yet the success. albeit partial. of the environmental movement In Thailand can also be accounted for by the wide strata of people involved and the multiplicity of interests. encompassing not only the educated middle class. but the local population as well as ethnic minority groups on the periphery. Environmental crisis has become a real threat. especially since the flooding in the south in 1988. Urbanites are increasingly aware of the direct link between the condition of hills and forests and the living conditions in the lowland and cities. For hill dwellers. however. the Question is one of minority claims over forest. land and survival. This paper addresses the Question of land rights and forest conservation for those on the periphery. i.e. the minority hill-dwelling population. specifically. the Karen. Over the past century. the hill-dwelling Karen in Thailand have transformed their subsistence agriculture from that based primarily on swidden cultivation in secondary forests on the lower hill slopes towards wet-rice cultivation in irrigated paddy fields. In either case. the Karen are in a no-win situation. Swidden agriculture in forested land (i.e .. state land) can be condemned as an illegal practice. while thei r paddy fields are diminishing in size as I shall explain below. Furthermore. villagers are acutely aware of the environmental effects of deforestation on the water level in their paddy fields. It is crucial that they secure sufficient water in their diminishing fields by conserving the forests in the watershed areas. The watershed areas. however. are also under state protection. and villagers have no legal claim over them.
2003
Drawing on various case studies, this article presents evidence of the failure of the state paradigm in the management of natural resources, such as forests and agricultural land in protected areas, and discusses the ambiguous achievements of the land reform process in the most poverty-stricken regions of North and Northeast Thailand. Results suggest that local communities and ethnic minorities have reacted to top-down planning, corruptive land allocation and repressive forest policies by initiating their own reforestation activities – often supported by NGOs – with local management and control structures, by initiating resource protection measures, such as planting of fruit trees, and by reviving religious traditions of sacred forests. Thus, rural communities try to demonstrate that the conventional paradigm of the Royal Forest Department of “forest without people” is alien to their local concepts of natural resource management. Recently, desperate attempts of reclaiming rural peop...
Tōnan Ajia kenkyū
この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されました。 Since the late 1980s, the hill dwelling minority in Thailand have gained visibility amidsocial movements concerning environmental conservation, community forest rights, andthe appeal for citizenship. In this process they have gained a stage and a voice to representthemselves to a considerable degree. The discourse and representation pertaining to thehill-dwellers are becoming an arena of negotiation, where the hill-dwellers themselves areactive participants. In this paper, I examine the layers of discourse regarding the Karenwhich has evolved within the changing socio-political context. Participants in the discourseadopt varied elements of the existing layers of discourse by travelers, missionaries,academics, administrators and NGOs which have all contributed to the stereotype of theKaren as the meek and submissive hill-dwellers. In the latter half of the paper, I take up acase of a recent eco-tourism venture in Chiang Mai Province, and analyze h...
Forest and Society
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