Racialization and Citizenship in Thai Forest Politics

The first part of this article argues for the usefulness of the concept of racialization in understanding the intersection between identity and resource politics in Southeast Asia. The production of space through cadastral mapping, forest reservation, and community forests has all been racialized to the degree that these spaces are also associated with naturalized and essentialized ethnic identities. The second part explores the tension between racialization and citizenship in Thailand. Racialized ethnic minorities have used community forestry as a vehicle for claiming both more secure resource rights and for formal and substantive citizenship rights. The community forest movement in Thailand is not exclusionary on the basis of ethnic or indigenous identity, because of how it is based in expanding citizenship rights. Reliance on environmental stewardship criteria to justify resource rights could mean that upland peoples are subject to limits not experienced by lowlanders, whose activities have tremendous impacts on the environment.

[1]  N. Peluso,et al.  Genealogies of the Political Forest and Customary Rights in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand , 2001, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[2]  A. Stoler,et al.  Between Metropole and ColonyRethinking a Research Agenda , 1997 .

[3]  A. Tsing,et al.  Representing communities: Histories and politics of community‐based natural resource management , 1998 .

[4]  Donald S. Moore,et al.  Subaltern Struggles and the Politics of Place: Remapping Resistance in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands , 1998 .

[5]  G. Wijeyewardene.  Thailand and the Tai Versions of Ethnic Identity , 1990 .

[6]  Peter Vandergeest,et al.  Property rights in protected areas: obstacles to community involvement as a solution in Thailand , 1996, Environmental Conservation.

[7]  Pinkaew Laungaramsri.  The ambiguity of "watershed": the politics of people and conservation in northern Thailand. , 2000, Sojourn.

[8]  J. Brosius.  Green dots, pink hearts: displacing politics from the Malaysian rain forest. , 1999, American anthropologist.

[9]  P. Kunstadter.  Ethnic Group, Category, And Identity: Karen In Northern Thailand , 1979 .

[10]  M. Sioh.  Authorizing the Malaysian Rainforest: Configuring Space, Contesting Claims and Conquering Imaginaries , 1998 .

[11]  T. Li.  Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot , 2000, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[12]  ndrew,et al.  The ‘ Karen Consensus ’ , Ethnic Politics and Resource-Use Legitimacy in Northern Thailand , 2002 .

[13]  A. Tsing.  Becoming a tribal elder and other green development fantasies , 1999 .

[14]  Bruce Braun.  Producing vertical territory: geology and governmentality in late Victorian Canada , 2000 .

[15]  S. Pigg.  Inventing Social Categories Through Place: Social Representations and Development in Nepal , 1992, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[16]  T. Li.  Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia's Forest Zone , 2001, Modern Asian Studies.

[17]  Peter Vandergeest,et al.  Mapping nature: Territorialization of forest rights in Thailand , 1996 .

[18]  S. Hall,et al.  THE SPECTACLE OF THE ' OTHER ' , 2003 .

[19]  Tim Forsyth,et al.  Science, myth and knowledge: Testing himalayan environmental degradation in Thailand , 1996 .

[20]  Thongchai Winichakul.  The Quest for “Siwilai”: A Geographical Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Siam , 2000, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[21]  J. Fawcett.  Legal Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-Colonial Laws , 1976 .

[22]  N. Peluso,et al.  Territorialization and state power in Thailand , 1995 .

[23]  K. Talbott,et al.  Balancing Acts: Community-Based Forest Management and National Law in Asia and the Pacific , 1995 .

[24]  K. Pelzer.  Thailand; aspects of landscape and life , 1964, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[25]  K. Anderson.  The Idea of Chinatown: The Power of Place and Institutional Practice in the Making of a Racial Category , 1987 .

[26]  A. Ganjanapan.  THE POLITICS OF CONSERVATION AND THE COMPLEXITY OF LOCAL CONTROL OF FORESTS IN THE NORTHERN THAI HIGHLANDS , 1998 .

[27]  T. Li.  Introduction; Marginality, Power and Production: Analyzing Upland Transformations , 1999 .

[28]  A. Walker.  The 'Karen Consensus', Ethnic Politics and Resource-Use Legitimacy in Northern Thailand , 2001 .

[29]  Janet C. Sturgeon.  Practices on the periphery : marginality, border powers, and land use in China and Thailand , 2000 .

[30]  D. Conradson.  Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference , 1998 .

[31]  P. Laungaramsri.  The ambiguity of watershed : The politics of people and conservation in Northern Thailand. A case study of the Chom Thong conflict. Comments and discussion : Chapter II: Southeast Asia , 2000 .

[32]  David Feeny,et al.  Farmers in the Forest. , 1979 .