[This review appeared recently in Chiang Mai University's Sangkhomsat, 20 (2).]

Like many scholars who study contemporary rural society, Yos Santasombat is seeking to define a new type of peasantry. The challenge appears formidable, not the least because, as Yos argues on the first page of this book, “[m]odern industrialized agriculture and global market economies destroy peasant societies” (1). But, fortunately, the destruction is not complete and “peasant societies perpetuate traces of the peasantry’s complex identities and communities” (1). Flexible Peasants: Reconceputalizing the Third World’s Rural Types is a conceptually passionate and ethnographically engaged exploration of these persistent, flexible and counter-hegemonic traces. The book concentrates on northern Thailand—Nan and Chiang Mai in particular— where peasants in very different contexts are shaping new ways of coping with the challenges of modernity.

In his review of the extensive literature on the peasantry, Yos covers considerable conceptual ground: the persistent preoccupation with the peasantry as a primitive “other”; the evolutionary emphasis on transitions to civilisation and development; the relationship between peasant marketing and wider economic systems;  the impacts of colonial incorporation and capitalist expansion on rural society; debates between “moral economy” and “rational peasant” frameworks; and the role of the state in rural class formation.  Running through much of the discussion is the longstanding debate about the disappearance or persistence of the peasantry, a debate that can be traced back to the radically different views of peasant economy held by Lenin and Chayanov.  Yos’ position on this never-ending debate is subtle. As the book proceeds, it becomes clear that he shares, with Lenin and others, the view that commercialisation profoundly disrupts many of the underpinnings of peasant ecology, economy and society. But, drawing on the Chayanovian spirit of flexibility, he rejects the evolutionary view that modern peasants are destined to bifurcate into a class of capitalist farmers and a class of landless proletarians. Rather than worrying too much about whether one system of social and economic organisation will replace another, Yos is more interested in the “dynamics of articulation” between different systems in historically specific circumstances (26).

Yos argues that the contemporary forms of articulation involving the peasants of northern Thailand are characterised by adaptability and flexibility. He rejects romantic and essentialist notions of the peasantry and argues for an approach that recognises both “rural urban inter-penetration and dynamism of different rural types” (30-31). This general approach will be familiar to those with an interest in agrarian transitions, de-agrarianisation and the diversification of rural livelihood strategies. But the model of a “flexible peasantry” proposed by Yos is somewhat idiosyncratic and it needs to be understood in terms of the anthropological and advocacy work he and his colleagues have undertaken at Chiang Mai University. This important body of work, much of it also focussed on northern Thailand, has drawn attention to the importance of local knowledge, communal resource management, ethnic identify and the strategic mobilisation of tradition in pursuit of political empowerment. It is often motivated by an attempt to identify counter-hegemonic elements within rural communities that contest the intrusive power of the modern state and the capitalist market. There is a strong emphasis on empowerment through discourse and on the pursuit of rights. This is why, in Flexible Peasants, Yos argues that materialist understandings of the peasantry, which focus on land and agricultural livelihoods, give insufficient attention to new forms of identify built around symbolic struggles for basic rights. From this perspective, the flexibility of the northern Thai peasantry is primarily—but not exclusively, as I will discuss below—about their ability to creatively assert the importance of local ecological capability and to promote the relationship between cultural diversity and biological diversity: “The rice fields, paddy land and mountain slopes served as laboratories where local knowledge, practice, technology and germplasms have been continuously developed” (31). It is in these specific contexts of flexibility that, according to Yos, the persistent traces of the northern Thai peasantry cohere into three “contemporary identities”: “the forest conservationist, the indigenous person and the genetic manager” (2).

These contemporary forms of peasant identity are explored through a series of ethnographic case studies. The first concerns upland Lua cultivators in Nan province. Yos’ description of the Lua is passionately sympathetic and he places them firmly within the internationally familiar indigenous slot: they have strong communities characterised by exchange labour; village elders are important decision makers; socio-economic differentiation, wage labour and debt is minimal; swidden cultivation is practiced sustainably; fields and fallow are rich in biodiversity; sacred forests are protected; and, perhaps most charming of all, most of them are poor. This sustainable lifestyle is under threat from the Royal Forest Department which is imposing standardised systems of forest classification and implementing a conservationist framework that is blind to the ecological benefits of Lua agricultural practice. Forest regulations restrict the long fallow cycles that underpin local sustainability and Lua farmers are arrested for “illegally” clearing their own farm land. Yos writes that the Lua are “battered into place by more powerful outsiders’ fantasies based upon their labelling them as savages, wild, backward, illiterate, animist, etc., all centered within powerful discourses on development and progress” (63). But the Lua are resilient and they have responded to state oppression in various ways. They have joined protests against the declaration of the national park that would swallow up their land, and they avoid dealing with the Royal Forest Department, even passing up opportunities for employment. Most importantly, they have asserted their own “politics of place” (80), drawing on memories of northern Thailand’s ancient Lua kingdoms and making elaborate offerings to the local tutelary spirit to ritually assert their long-standing rights of residence and resource ownership. As indigenous conservationists the Lua are able to create a new “social space” in which they can “effectively challenge the state” (86).

Similar themes of local resilience and adaptability are pursued in the following two chapters. In Chiang Mai province, Karen leaders promote the ecological benefits of rotational shifting cultivation (rai mul wian) in order to challenge the common stereotype that upland farming results in forest destruction, soil erosion and water source degradation. By building up forms of “symbolic capital” the Karen can “struggle against hegemonic state discourses” (110) and by emphasising ethnicity they can create a “common fabric” (111) for a new identity that overcomes the sense of fragmentation brought about by modernity. In the lowlands of Nan province, farmers have become disillusioned with the economic fluctuations and ecological degradation of commercial monocropping which has been enthusiastically promoted by state agencies. Some are now reverting to more traditional forms of agriculture based on crop diversity and the cultivation of local rice varieties.

The fourth case study chapter proves the most challenging for the approach to flexibility that Yos has constructed. It is the result of a series of re-studies of northern Thai villages that had been previously described, since the 1950s, by Western and Thai anthropologists. All are lowland villages and most of them lie in the agricultural heartland of the Chiang Mai valley. A lengthy appendix contains invaluable village summaries and in the chapter itself Yos examines the main dimensions of transformation. The changes are unsurprising:  subsistence production has declined in importance; cash crops and fruit orchards are much more common; exchange labour still exists but wage labour is the preferred form of recruitment; many village households have people working in off-farm occupations; and village land has been sold to outsiders.  Overall, the market exerts a strong influence and economic calculations are more individualistic, based on profit and loss. Here, a new type of flexibility comes to the fore. These farmers do not appear to be drawing, in any substantial numbers, on contemporary identities that emphasise forests, ethnicity, indigeneity or biodiversity. Their flexibility seems to be much more mundane: “peasant-workers, agricultural wage-laborer, urban peasants, transmigrant peasants, petty-producers and peddlers etc” (140). Yos is clearly open to these alternative forms of peasant identity and this is reflected, for example, in his emphasis on rural-urban penetration, new strategies of livelihood adaptation and the emergence of different “sub-classes” of peasants. But he seems much more ambivalent about this explicitly modernist array of identities than he does about the more traditionalist adaptations of the Lua, the Karen and the bio-diverse rice farmers in Nan:

Throughout the past 40-year period Thai peasants have been coerced into increasing dependence on external political, economic, technological and cultural forces. We are witnessing the emergence of marginal peasants who are flexible, diverse and self-contradictory in identities and social roles. It’s like being both peasants and labourers at the same time – acting as wage labor in the agricultural sector, being urban peasants, international laborers, small-scale traders, hawkers, etc. The Thai peasantry is being caught in the state of “peripheric capitalism” that now propels them into a path of change not dissimilar to that experienced by the peasantry in Western Europe. Far from being idle receptors of capitalist penetration, however, the peasants are fighting back in various forms under varying socio-political conditions and contexts. (141)

So, it seems that forms of flexibility based on wage labour and market engagement are the result of coercion and external pressure. This type of flexibility gives rise to identities that are marginal and contradictory and seemingly unsustainable. Identity that is authentic and autonomous arises out of “fighting back” – it is a product of resistance. But how the peasants in northern Thailand’s rural heartlands are fighting back is not made clear. The reader is left with a sense of a modern peasantry with an incomplete identity; partial peasants stuck between the forest and the capitalist market.

Flexible Peasants is successful in mapping out what might be called a niche identity. In the highly diverse social, economic and spatial landscapes of northern Thailand there should always be a place for individuals and communities who chose to pursue alternative livelihood paths. As the rural economy develops and diversifies even further, the potential for these alternative niches to flourish will increase. More rural people, like Chusak, the bio-diverse farmer described in chapter 4, will be able to invest their earnings from wage labour into eco-enterprise. Moral and financial support for such initiatives will be guaranteed because they are consistent with middle class and urban desires for a particular style of “traditional” rural livelihood. Since the military coup of September 2006, images of local sufficiency and moderation have been used in an attempt to dampen rural aspirations for economic and political inclusion. Ironically, this anti-democratic promotion of local sufficiency may give the communities that Yos describes some more room to manoeuvre in pursuing their alternative economic visions. Other encouragement may come from international forest-protection initiatives aimed at mitigating climate change. Local communities who can successfully position themselves as forest conservationists may be able to capture a small share of the global carbon market. There are some fascinating paths of alternative rural development opening up, and Yos’ re-conceptualisation of the peasantry in terms of “forest conservationist, indigenous person and genetic manager” has contributed a lot to our understanding of directions that are being pursued in northern Thailand.

However, Flexible Peasants is less successful in re-conceptualising the transformations in mainstream rural society. The scale of transformation emerges clearly in the book. The survey data demonstrates, for example, the importance of wage labour even in the poorest and most remote communities. The economic flexibility of the peasantry is on display. But how this economic flexibility informs contemporary identities is much less clear. I think there are two related reasons for this ambiguity and lack of clarity. First, as I have noted, there is a tendency to tie authentic peasant identity too closely to resistance. As a result identities are selectively described in anti-hegemonic terms. Second, there is a reluctance to acknowledge, except in passing (140-141, 169), the enormous benefits that modernisation has bought to the rural population in Thailand. Yos writes that economic trends over the past four decades have resulted in “little to no improvement in peasant incomes” (116). But in the early 1960s, 96 percent of rural households fell below the poverty line; by 2002 the figure had plummeted to 12.6 percent. In 1960 almost 15 percent of children in Thailand died before they reached the age of 5; in 2007 less than 1 percent died. And in 1960, life expectancy in Thailand was 55; in 2007 it was 71. Much of this improvement in quality of life can be attributed to the provision of infrastructure, the expansion of government services and the proliferation of more productive economic pursuits in the market economy. This has encouraged the formation of new forms of peasant identity based on the desire for more complete integration into administrative and commercial systems, not resistance to them. This rural sentiment for inclusion is what Thaksin Shinawatra tapped into so successfully in his populist electoral campaigns. A political party promoting indigeneity, forest conservation and genetic diversity may attract some niche support but it would pose no electoral threat at all to a Thaksin-esque campaign for local economic development and resource mobilisation.

I am fascinated by this administrative change, and not least because I know the area (in the far west of Chiang Mai province) pretty well.  That entire northern portion of Mae Chaem district was isolated from the Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son mainstream until quite recently. It is a predominately Karen part of the province and has long been described, in short-hand, as “Wat Chan”.  I guess it will take some time before they start consistently using the new administrative designation.

It may also be worth noting that back in the 1990s there were various anti-logging protests at Wat Chan.  They caused something of a stir.  I can’t imagine there will be much local opposition to this new name (and the administrative promotion it represents) but you just never know.

In this post I want to raise a related issue. While this new(ish) rural economy is very diverse, it also seems to be somewhat hollow. In some (many?) rural areas it seems to be characterised by a profound lack of private investment. My perspectives on this is, I admit, strongly influenced by my very localised research in Ban Tiam, a village in Chiang Mai province. In the district of which Ban Tiam is a part, private enterprise is dominated by local construction contractors and they are hardly “private” because they primarily live off a stream of government contracts. Beyond that, private enterprise extends to shopkeeping, restaurants and money lending. Contract farming is also making some inroads.

A relatively low level of private investment in rural areas may be natural, even inevitable. But I get the impression that while many rural households in Thailand are moving away from agriculture (both out of choice and necessity) a good number of them are failing to get a firm foothold in other, more lucrative, sectors of the economy. In Ban Tiam it is the pipeline of government projects, programs and salaries that underpins much of the local economy.

In many parts of the world, rural industrialisation has been identified as making an important contribution to sustainable poverty alleviation and rising living standards. Does anyone have any good suggestions about data sources (or research) on the extent of private sector investment in rural areas of Thailand?

The national “basic needs survey” reported that in 2008 rural people derived 58 percent of their income from off-farm employment and enterprise (Table 49 in this report). In Ban Tiam, a northern Thai village where I have been working for the past 7 years, the basic needs survey results suggest that the proportion of off-farm income is 73 percent, considerably higher than the national average. There are certainly problems with this sort of data collection, and I think that the Ban Tiam survey significantly understates cash-crop income, but the movement of Thailand’s rural economy away from agricultural pursuits is clear and survey results are borne out by a range of local studies. (I would be very interested in hearing about other data sources on this important issue.)

However, many rural households are not making a simplistic transformation from agrarian to non-agrarian lifestyles, or following the path of proletarianisation predicted for them by many old-style scholars of agrarian transformation. In fact, as Jonathan Rigg and others have argued, they are developing economically diversified and spatially dispersed livelihood strategies in which agricultural and non-agricultural pursuits are intertwined. As a result, rural households are increasingly multi-functional and multi-sited, combining an economically and spatially stretched out portfolio of livelihood activities.

Neither the “sufficiency economy right” nor the “community culture left” in Thai public life has come to grips with the social, economic and political implications of this profound transformation.

The advertisement sets out all of the details:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks candidates for an assistant professor (tenure-track) position with a specialization in Hmong studies or related highland societies in Southeast Asia and/or adjacent regions. Appointment to begin August 2010. Ph.D. required. Previous teaching experience at the college/university level desirable but not required. Duties include teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level, conduct scholarly research in area of expertise, and perform university and professional service as appropriate. The successful candidate will be expected to do collaborative work in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and participate in program activities. The tenure home for the appointment will reside in a department appropriate to the candidate’s discipline, i.e., social sciences or arts and humanities. To ensure full consideration, applications must be received by December 1, 2009. Applications and three letters of reference, in PDF format, should be sent via email to Dr. Michael Cullinane at mmcullin@wisc.edu and Professor Kris Olds at kolds@wisc.edu. For additional information, see http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/pvl/pv_062881.html and http://hmongstudiesmadison.wordpress.com/. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an equal opportunity employer and encourages women and minorities to apply. A criminal background check may be required prior to employment.

… from Phil Hirsch’s review:

There is much that is exciting and refreshing in this book. Any analysis that takes sacred cows of environmental knowledge by the horns, for example the notion that trees somehow create (rather than consume) water, is to be welcomed. The inadvertent marginalisation of the very same groups that many NGOs are seeking to empower is a similarly poignant message. The more inclusive, open and openminded approach to the creation, employment and questioning of environmental knowledge that is recommended in the closing chapter is similarly to be applauded, although the very same forces that are the subject of much of the book’s critique clearly need to be overcome in ways that the analysis leaves largely unaddressed. …

At a more fundamental level, the authors’ demonising of environmental narratives raises questions regarding the target of critique. From their work elsewhere, both the authors could be expected to be among the first to recognise such narratives to be an integral, and normal, element of society-environment relations. At a quasi-functional level, moreover, such narratives are a crucial part of building coalitions for collective action to address real problems. Where the narratives become a problem in themselves is when they take phoney science and victimise innocent groups who are marked out as culprits. Clearly this use of narratives is what the authors have in mind as their own main target, but the exposition in the book tends to dwell on narrative per se as the evil to be expunged from environmental science, politics and policy.

… from Oliver Pye’s review:

The book is full of detailed case studies and draws on a large amount of research to uncover the complex reality of environmental change in the North. By examining different but interrelated issues, the authors carefully dissect a narrative that simplifies them into one “environmental crisis.” The interdisciplinary approach, using knowledge from natural sciences in a creative way informed by social sciences as well as a combination of empirical studies with a more abstract level of analysis makes this a thoughtful work. A key theme of the book is a view of upland farmers as rational human beings who make informed decisions about how they manage their land and who have a right to grow crops and a right to development.

In order to back up their own “narrative” of the existence of one converging and false narrative of environmental crisis, however, Forsyth and Walker often overstate their case. In their discussion of the climatic effects of forests, for example, they neglect the effects of evapotranspiration on local and regional climate. In the chapter on agrochemicals they talk of a “backlash against agrochemicals” (181), which is a grossly exaggerated warning given the hitherto niche existence of organic farming. Rather naively, they claim that “agrochemicals have played a role in supporting vulnerable livelihoods, encouraging the transition away from opium production, and reducing pressures to clear forested areas for cultivation” (182). Later, however, they reveal that thousands of upland farmers have been seriously poisoned by agrochemical use. In general, the authors seem to have a bias against environmentalists, as shown by their attack on James D. Fahn’s book, A Land on Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom (Basic Books, 2003).

… from Pinkaew Laungaramsri’s review:

The thesis put forward by the book is undoubtedly thought provoking. Its critique of environmental knowledge is a must read for scholars, policy makers, and NGOs who are involved in environmental issues. However, the book is not without problems. Framing environmental politics only through lenses of ‘narratives’ has certain limitations. As environmental narratives are by no means produced in a vacuum but developed out of the specificity of cultural politics and historical context, it is this particularity that the book pays little attention to. The authors’ critique of NGOs and scholar activists as being non-critical of the dichotomy between forest and agriculture, antithetical to upland commercialisation, and perpetuating the Edenic narrative of pristine forest is overstated. While works cited to support this critique are outdated, recent research and publications by NGOs and social scientists relating to issues of dynamics of right and access to agricultural land and changing forms of farming in the uplands are unfortunately missed out from this book. Fixed description and division of the so-called ‘people-oriented’ versus conservationist positions also obscures complex and diverse strands of thinking that might not necessary fit the two sets of ideological camps defined by the authors.

These are the sort of thoughtful and critically engaged reviews that add much to the pleasure of academic writing.

[This post is an introductory comment to Doug Miles' detailed review of Hjorleifur Jonsson's Mien Relations: Mountain People and State Control in Thailand. The full review is available here.]

“Now where did I leave my jolly pith helmet?”

I commend this book for initiating a shift of paradigm in research concerning the Yao of southern China and the Southeast Asian highlands .The author speculates on the “racialisation of Thailand’s ethnic landscape” since the beginning of the 20th Century. He introduces that insight by reference to the “proto-ethnographers” of the The Siam Society’ (1920-64) whose headquarters in Bangkok once provided access to the “ most English of gentleman’s facilities” in the royal capital and to a cloak room large enough “to shelve every pith helmet worn to an entire AGM quorum” (pers. com 12/4/68 from Mr Donald Gibson, British Consul, Chiangmai). Jonsson further develops his case as a critique of the later field research conducted among the Kingdom’s mountain minorities by Western anthropologists affiliated with the government’s Tribal Research Centre (Institute) TRC(I) ( 1965-1989) . Investigation into the operations of the TRC’s still extant successor, The Tribal Museum (1997- ) extends that theme.

The book argues persuasively that the Thai Kingdom has harnessed expatriate expertise to promote public conceptualisation of uplanders as the “un-Thai” and to legitimate processes whereby such highland populations have become subject to draconian state controls including military eviction from the jungle terrain of Phrachangnoi where Yao used to hunt, harvest opium poppy and cultivate grain swiddens by techniques of shifting cultivation.

For example, the Royal Thai Airforce forced Yao out of the mountainous Phrachangnoi Subdistrict and into the lowlands by bombing their forests, farms and villages . These attacks began in 1968 and were followed immediately by deployments of the Royal Thai Army ( 3rd Region) which seeded the habitat of the evacuees with landmines that prevented the return of all but the most foolhardy throughout the subsequent forty years.

Several of Jonsson’s older informants were fugitives from the horrors of this violence . About 250 of them made it from the village of Pulangka to the fringes of Chiengkam, the closest Thai town. The camp of miserable bush shelters they originally established there has now developed into an outersuburb of 24 imposing longhouses each owned by a Yao kin unit (peo) whose memebers to-day total about 800. Such observations are basic to the book’s enquiry into the opposition by urban Yao to recent state legislation (1996) which purportedly enforces conservation of high altitude forests and protection of endangered fauna. The book illuminates the desperation with which a marginalised minority has resorted to arson to destroy the headquarters of a newly created wild life sanctuary which a government decree has recently established within that territory. But there are flaws in the scholarship of both the reading and the fieldwork from which the author has generated these provocative perspectives .

In this paper I do more anthropologically than simply review Jonsson’s book and that is because New Mandala has provided me with the rare opportunity to detail two of the major discourses in the experience on which I draw in responding to the volume. First, what I write is as much about the nitty-gritty of the anthropological fieldwork which I myself have conducted among Yao in Thailand during the last 40 years as it is an assessment of a monograph by an anthropologist reporting on his research while living more recently with these these people. I will appreciate any response from professional colleagues and other readers especially to two of the propositions through which I take issue with Jonsson:

• That the Yao are most approporiately conceptualisaed as subjects of their own theocratic state which transcends national boundaries rather than as one of the stateless tribal minorities with which national and academic authorities have typically classified these people; and
• That far from disintegrating through suburbanisation and removal from the rural context in which they had developed, their bilaterally extended families (peo) have thrived and become infrastructurally crucial both to the prosperity they have regained and to the retention of their ethnic group’s overall cohesion.

I also present myself to the reader as someone whose experience happens to enable him to assess the significance of Jonsson’s work in relation to the various and changing intellectual prioirities whose hegemony over more than 25 years has collectively determined what Yao Studies have tended to be. It is in regard to this multidisciplinary enterprise that I propose the concept of “bibliophilia” to explain how a dominant discourse of religious philology has marginalised anthropology in scholarship about the Yao for nearly three decades. Hence, I applaud the volume for clearing a pioneering path into a new paradigm of research about this minority in Thailand.

As part of an informal agreement between the UWSA and the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military), the UWSA leaders agreed to wage battles against the army of infamous drug baron Khun Sa and subsequently the Shan State Army (SSA). Wei was involved in significant battles against both of these armies. According to Wei however, Wa soldiers were often unenthusiastic contributors to the battles, realising that they were closer ethnically with their opposition than with the Burman-dominated military that their leaders were collaborating with. In Wei’s experience it was not unusual for battles to involve soldiers firing over the heads of their opponents. While the Yangon regime had co-opted the UWSA in its fight against the Shan, it seems that Wa identity could not simply be bought.

Given the significant proportion of their revenue that the UWSA derives from trade in narcotics, it is usually Wa soldiers that are called on to make the long and dangerous journeys trafficking drugs to the Thai border. Wei was deployed within small teams carrying packs filled with yaba (amphetamine) pills, to trek from WSR2 to southern Shan state where the drugs would be taken on into Thailand.

Contributing to the disenchantment of Wa soldiers has been an increasing influence on power in the UWSA by ethnic Chinese who are attracted by the business opportunities in WSR2, and who make the most of their connections with rebel leaders. The UWSA is now largely Chinese-speaking, and the key figures in it are an ethnic mix of Wa and Chinese. The rise to power of this “borderlands mafia” led regular Wa soldiers to question their leadership’s sincerity in campaigning for Wa autonomy.

The balance of power in the organisation has important implications for the assertion of Wa identity. When questioned regarding the accuracy of perceptions that the Wa are little more than drug producers and traffickers, Wei Yu Hua puts the blame squarely on “Chinese businessmen”. Whether Wei makes a distinction between Chinese in the Wa leadership, and those that dominate the business community in Panghsang, the de facto regional capital, is not entirely clear. It seems likely however, that such actors are seen by many Wa as closely related.

Adding to this discontent during the 1990s, increasing numbers of Wa soldiers were sent by UWSA commanders on suicide missions in order to inflict major damage on their enemies. This issue, among others, led Wei to desert the UWSA and escape from Myanmar to the Chiang Rai province of Thailand.

In the diversely populated hills of northern Thailand, Wei was able to work alongside people from Karen, Akha and Lahu ethnic groups. He was eventually able to settle down in a village officially labelled “Lahu” by Thai authorities, although in reality its makeup defied any simplistic categorisation. Wei married a Karen woman, also a refugee.

Such is the stigma surrounding the Wa in Thailand, that Wei is perfectly willing to identify himself as Lahu to government census collectors, Karen and/or White Karen to inquisitive foreigners and even some local Thai, and only rarely as Wa. In addition, Wei has learnt to speak Thai and Lahu languages, in addition to Wa and Chinese.

In Myanmar the Wa are politically represented by the United Wa State Party (UWSP), the political wing of the UWSA. The party asserts a unique Wa identity, in contrast to the other ethnic groups in Shan state and the Burman majority. However, while there is a clear expression of ethnic rights at a group level, it is important to recognise that people may be willing to adopt alternative or multiple identities at an individual level, which may even seem contradictory. This plays out in the case of an individual such as Wei Yu Hua, who has interacted with a range of people in different countries, and adopted different identities in different situations. At the same time, Wei maintains a fundamental difference between the Wa and the Burmans is worth fighting for.

Some scholars have called for distinguishing between the “internal and external sovereignties of a State”. This may involve “using the term ‘internal sovereignty’ to mean ‘effective [State] control of a territory’ and noting that ‘external sovereignty’ – recognition by international community – is the basis on which a State is considered sovereign” (Dean 2005: 811). In the context of observations regarding the formation of Wa identity, it becomes clear that internal sovereignty may be as important in the everyday lives of the Wa as external sovereignty. It seems important then, to examine the legitimacy with which the UWSA/UWSP enacts its internal sovereignty in the region.

It is also clear that representative organisations such as the UWSP may not be accurate and legitimate ambassadors for the group, even with regard to the assertion of group identity. While the organisation may have been founded with the intention of defending ethnic rights, some have more power than others in shaping the agenda. The subversion of the international border has increased interaction with the region of China in which forty percent of the Wa population lives, and has led to a significant level of influence of non-Wa over the activities of the UWSP/UWSP. Given that it is the UWSP that has so far been, and will most likely continue to be engaged in negotiations with the Myanmar government, it would be reasonable to consider these issues in any analysis of the negotiations.

The ambiguous nature of identity creation poses interesting questions for the nature of power relations in a country like Myanmar. For instance, if a political resolution to the tension between the Myanmar regime and the UWSP resulted in the establishment of an official Wa “autonomous” area, what would be the implications for the assertion of a unified Wa identity? How much autonomy should the UWSP enjoy from Naypyidaw, and how much influence should it have in the day-to-day lives of Wa people? While it is clear that at a group level, many ethnic groups are keen to express their opposition to the state, it is equally clear that individuals may be flexible in their identification with ethnic identity.

It seems that structures of state, as necessary as they are, can only ever be approximations of localised identity. In this regard, it seems fair to maintain scepticism in relation to claims by those with power or influence who may assert the right to speak on behalf of a particular group. It is also important to consider the implications of identity formation for arrangements of state, be it by central or regional authorities.

Note: The name Wei Yu Hua is a pseudonym.

Reference

Dean (2005), ‘Spaces and territorialities on the Sino―Burmese boundary: China, Burma and the Kachin’, Political Geography, v.24, pp.808-830.

A few comments on the CPI-adjusted graph.

• First, the long term trend (the green line) shows that, in real terms, there has been an incrase in garlic prices since the early 1980s. (In a previous comment I said that my initial calculations had showed no change in real prices – but I had made some errors in preparing the graph.)
• Second, the peak in real garlic prices that occured in 2006/2007 (after the agricultural trade agreement with China) is not as high as the peak that occured in the mid-1990s, but it one of the highest peaks recroded in this data.
• Conversely the trough in real garlic prices that occured in 2008 is not as low as the previous troughs that have occured in 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1998.

I have also received the following comments from Benchaphun Ekasing of Chiang Mai University:

I would like to show you the graph and figures on production and import of garlic 2001-2006 (see below) I have in my file. Production data were from the Office of Agricultural Economics and import data were from the Thai Customs Department. Garlic imports, mainly (90%) from China were reduced from 47.8  thousand ton in 2005 to 28.99  thousand ton in 2006. This was coupled by a fall in domestic production which was reduced from 107 thousand ton in 2005 to 81 thousand ton in 2006. Some 45  thousand ton or nearly a third of use was absent in 2006 explaining price hike. Since 2003, garlic imports have constituted about a third of total use in Thailand, while imports were negligible before 2001. The fluctuation in imports since 2003, in my opinion, explains much of the garlic price variations – so I am not convinced about your theory of garlic roller coaster, at least since 2002-3 because things have not been the same for garlic since the 2003 Thai-Chinese FTA. I nevertheless don’t know why in 2006 there was a reduction in garlic imports from China when domestic production was also reduced through government policies.

Thanks very much Benchaphun! Does anyone have any thoughts on why imports dropped so much in 2006? 

As you can see there is an established pattern of price fluctuation with peaks and troughs roughly every four years. Many people have blamed low garlic prices experienced in (some) recent years on the agricultural trade agreement with China. I have marked the date of the agreement came into force on the graph (October 2003). Prices did fall after the agreement, but as the longer-term data shows this was consistent with a well-established pattern. And from the second half of 2005, prices climbed dramatically reaching an unprecedented 58 baht per kilogram in late 2006.

This increase is partly a result of Thai farmers shifting out of garlic production. They were encouraged to do so by the Thaksin government’s subsidy scheme which paid farmers a modest amount (1,500 per rai) to shift from garlic to other crops (especially contract crops). Farmers accepting the subsidy had to agree to permanently abandon garlic production on the relevant plots.

But rising prices are irresistible and many of these farmers have returned to garlic production. In Ban Tiam (the village in northern Thailand where I have been working since 2002) a good number of farmers made excellent profits on garlic in 2006 and 2007. But they, and many other garlic producers, were hurt by the dramatic fall that occurred in 2008. By the time the garlic from the 2007-2008 growing season was ready to be sold, prices had slumped to around 20 baht, or lower. Protesting farmers targeted the agricultural trade agreement with China as the cause of their woes. But it seems more likely that the low prices of 2008 were caused by an increase in domestic garlic cultivation as a result of rising prices. To what extent the longer-term cycle of rising and falling prices is caused by farmers moving in and out of the garlic market is something I will be investigating.

My guess is that prices will be good, improving solidly again in 2010.