The latest issue of Asia Pacific Viewpoint (49: 1) has two interesting articles on resource conflict in northern Thailand. They are part of a special issue which examines “natural resources and ethnic conflict in the Asia Pacific.” The first article, by Neil Englehart has the provocative title “Resource Conflict and Ethnic Peace in Northern Thailand” [englehart.pdf]. Presenting an argument that runs somewhat contrary to regular accounts of ethnic tension and identity politics in northern Thailand, Englehart argues that there has been “remarkably little violent conflict over either resources or ethnicity.”
In northern Thailand … there has been little collective violence organised along ethnic lines. The relatively high-capacity state has preferred assimilation, and has been able to suppress or mediate incipient conflict. Culturally diverse groups therefore have incentives to participate in a national forum, rather than emphasising their distinctiveness and turning it into a political cleavage. … Popular protest on environmental issues in the north has thus typically employed Thai, monarchist and Buddhist idioms virtually identical to strategies used elsewhere in the kingdom. It is addressed to the central government or its local representatives, invokes Buddhism as a legitimising ideology and pays overt respect to the King and Queen as symbols of the Thai nation. It seeks national media attention to win the interest and sympathy of a national audience. More particularistic strategies are likely to alienate central Thai audiences and lead to failure.
This emphasis on the strategic use of common national symbols is a refreshing alternative to conventional accounts of resource conflict (including some of my own) that are often overly preoccupied with ethnic divisions.
This more conventional approach is nicely reflected in the volume’s second paper on northern Thailand. This paper, by Chiang Mai geographer Chusak Wittayapak, discusses “History and Geography of Identifications Related to Resource Conflicts and Ethnic Violence in Northern Thailand” [chusak.pdf]. The paper opens with a brief description of the infamous destruction of Hmong orchards in Nan province in mid-2000. “The above incident,” Chusak writes
epitomises resource conflict and ethnic violence born out of the specific history and geography of the region. The event is by no means an isolated one, but is indicative of the racial oppression that stretches between the lowlands and highlands of mainland Southeast Asia, where valley-based states have regularly attempted to repress hill-dwelling ethnic minorities.
In his account of these resource conflicts he takes a rather different route to Englehart, arguing that different ethnic groups have drawn on cultural traditions to contest the resource enclosure of the state:
In the highlands of Northern Thailand, despite continuous encroachment and resource exploitation in pursuit of national economic growth, many ethnic communities have been able to sustain traditional, dynamic and adaptive resource management regimes, and agricultural systems appropriate to the highlands. Highlanders such as Karen have been living in harmony with the conservation of forest in the mountainous North. …
The community forest movement is often associated with the ethnic Karen identity in terms of forest stewardship. The community forest movement has constituted a space for indigenous knowledge and a repertoire of protest of powerless ethnic minorities. It is endowed with and enriched by various forms of symbolic resistance and cultural meaning.
Of course these are powerful arguments and they are backed by a rich body of scholarship on resource politics by both Thai and foreign scholars. But I do wonder why Chusak seems reluctant to engage with the arguments (put, among others, by myself and implied in the paper by Englehart) that political appeals to ethnicity (especially those based on images of ecological guardianship) are not necessarily empowering at all. Of course it is an unfortunate academic indulgence to be disappointed about not being cited but I would have been genuinely delighted if Chusak had critically engaged with the arguments I have presented (including at several conferences in Chiang Mai itself) about the pitfalls of both ethnic stereotyping in accounts of uplanders in Thailand and the lack of attention to livelihood in the campaign for community forestry. There is a legitimate debate to be had about political strategy and the livelihood outcomes of political campaigns. I hope that, at some stage, it can take place. Otherwise we will continue to see scholars writing in parallel as is nicely illustrated by this special issue of Asia Pacific Viewpoint.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Leif Jonsson // Mar 21, 2008 at 4:32 am
On political strategy and ethnic markers, it seems to me that in general, upland minority people would just court overt suppression and violence if they emphasized their ethnic distinctiveness in relation to political action or agitation. Like Andrew (above), I of course think my own work should have been cited
and there could have been a useful debate. For the Mien people I am familiar with, they can dress ethnic at public events that express loyalty and devotion to king and country (in politics, they dress, act, talk, and think Thai, it’s the only way to go). There have been quite a few sports festivals, for instance, that feature parades, flag raising, the national anthem, and sometimes a speech by an invited politician. In 2005, Channel 7 broadcast a clip of one of those, “three times on national television” said some of the locals (I missed the event itself). Real politics, about resources, land rights, ethnicity, culture, gender, and more, is happening at these festivals, and it seems to me that the focus on ethnicity and resource conflict has so far brought with it a very selective notion of the character of political life in rural Thailand, to the point of sometimes missing the boat. I have written some about this, in a book and a set of articles, and also did a short video documentary on a sports and culture festival that I can provide the weblink to if anyone is interested.
2 jonfernquest // Mar 21, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Re: Englehart’s paper, it was a breath of fresh air to hear successful policies praised instead of focusing solely on policy failures and shortcomings, but comparing radically ethnically diverse Burma with northern Thailand is like comparing apples and oranges (or rambutans and truffles). And the post-WWII formed during the Cold War Burmese state with the Thai state forged during the late colonial era? The details in the case studies that show that inter-ethnic conflict can exist at one level while at higher level forces are working to resolve problems, are the real strong point of this article. When it zooms out and tries to take a macro comparative perspective with Burma, it falls short.
3 Leif Jonsson // Mar 23, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Andrew asks if political appeals to ethnicity are empowering at all. I agree with his analysis of the (unintended) disempowering entailed in notions of Karen as stewards of the forest. But there remains a larger issue that Engelhardt’s paper does not get far into, which is the racialism of Thai national ideology. This is a 20th century phenomenon that has systemically precluded any rights to “non-Thai” upland farmers, and has since the 1960s fixated on the stereotyped Meo (Hmong) as subversive and dangerous. Most political action among uplanders since the early 1980s (after the fighting ended, against CPT units, with a lot of attacks on highland areas) has aimed to get away from the hill tribe image. Hayami’s 1997 paper on a Karen tree-ordination notes that this was perceived to show that they were not an ecologically destructive hill tribe. That simply moves some Karen from that racialized bracket, leaving Hmong and others there in the Thai view. The attacks on Hmong orchards in Nan belong there. The string of cases that Chusak describes is compelling and troubling, but the question remains whether to describe the events as ethnic. I have written on one of these cases, about the Mien in Huai Kok (125 in his paper). Throughout the case, the Mien people showed no sign of their ethnicity, they dressed, acted, and spoke Thai, and at the many meetings that followed they presented themselves as Thai farmers wanting the benefits of development (see my Mien Relations 127-147). The killing that took place was not a part of the protest, it was an individual vendetta. The villagers said “you have to arrest us all” not in relations to that, but when the authorities (about 100 soldiers and police, heavily armed, in seventeen trucks) arrived and demanded that the perpetrators be identified, they were going to arrest them. There is another description of this case in the book Sitthi Chumchon Thongthin: Chao Khao Nai Phakneua, that was done under the directorship of Saneh Chammarik and Cholthira Sattyawatthana (2546/2003), pp.272-286. At one of the meetings following the burning of Sanctuary buildings, people said that the wildlife sanctuary there had brought poaching and illegal logging, that they had lived with this forest longer and taken quite good care of it. This was not in reference to Mien eco-wisdom, but a contrast between farmers and nai-thun (capitalists). The setting is shaky. Many of the villages were given an eviction order in about 1991. Then nothing happened until about 2003 when the whole sub-district was declared a class A1 watershed, so all villages became illegal, including some that had been in the lowlands growing wet rice since about 1945. Mien hold ethnic festivals centered on sports and ethnic dress entertainment in order to gain a favorable outsider view, they have not agitated as ethnics as far as I can tell. But here, the contrast between the state and the ethnics is overdrawn. For one, the Highway Dept and the Forestry Dept have long been at odds about how to “lay out” the countryside. Perhaps more important, the area has had a Subdistrict Administrative Council for some time now, and that along with Mien schoolteachers (for close to thirty years) and an ethnically Mien kamnan (in place since tambol were established, 60-some years) makes it hard to draw clear lines between Mien and Thai, farmers and the state. The one time when people made a special appeal to their need (as ethnic minority highlanders) for authorized access to forest land, at a meeting in 1993, an MP for the province said “hill tribes are so numerically insignificant, barely one percent of the nation, that to give in to their demands would set a precedent that would lead to absolute chaos.” As I see it, Thai racialism has accentuated ethnic consciousness among highland people and at the same time it has precluded any ethnically based political action among the upland minorities. That’s the success that Engelhardt’s paper describes, and the problem described by Chusak.
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