Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand

2. Mountains, Rivers, and Regulated Forests

2 Mountains, Rivers, and Regulated Forests Mountains and valleys dominate the upper northern provinces of Thailand and this basic geography resonates in many aspects of the region’s social organization, economics, and culture. The earliest Thai settlements (or muang) were located in intermontane valleys at Chiang Saen, Chiang Rai, and Chiang Mai where irrigation systems supported abundant rice production on the flat riverside plains. The cultivated appeal of these lowland muang was clearly evident to early European travelers in the region: Imagine a number of lovely villages clustering among their coconut and areca palms, in a beautiful wide valley surrounded by forests and hills, the glistening yellow paddy-stalks bright in the afternoon sun, with the black backs of the buffalo moving lazily about; the homely red of the little oxen, and the moving islands the elephants make whisking the paddy in their trunks; with the village sounds drifting down the quiet air—the distant drum at the monastery, whose grey roof stands above the other houses, or the far-off “poot-poot” of the “poot-bird” in the jungle . . . and you have an idea of the lovely scene which spread before us that evening as we emerged from the hills. (Smyth 1895:17) Smyth’s bucolic description taps into a potent thread in northern Thai cultural orientation. These lowland settlements, both in their small and large forms, were the meritorious centers of chiefly power, religious devotion , and economic accumulation. As a number of writers have demonstrated , in the sociospatial symbolism of northern Thailand the lowland 27 muang represents civilization, cultural development, and agricultural sophistication: “the Northern Thai place a definite moral and aesthetic value on human settlements, in contrast to uninhabited country. All beauty lies in human settlements” (Davis 1984:82; see also Turton 2000 and Stott 1991). Not surprisingly these lowland settlements are culturally valued as the natural and appropriate home of the “Thai” people who live there, thus generating one of the most popular forms of ethnic self-labeling among the Thai of the north—khon muang (people of the muang). This description of the lowland plains of northern Thailand contrasts strikingly with the traditional cultural vision of the hills. The hills were the wild and forested spaces of sparse settlement where malevolent spirits roamed uncontrolled and where European travelers such as Smyth (1898:109, 171–72) cursed the “rough forest country” and “singularly stupid . . . spirit-worshippers” who lived there. In northern Thai culture the lowland muang was spatially and symbolically distinct from the upland pa, a word formally translated as “forest” but which continues to carry with it the older connotations of wildness, cultural paucity, and a lack of domestication. In the word couplings that Thai speakers enjoy so much, pa is readily paired with thuen (pa thuen), a word that signals illicitness or illegality as in illegally cut timber (maay thuen), illegally distilled whiskey (lao thuen), or even an illegally slaughtered pig (muu thuen) (Stott 1991:144). The pa is a dangerous place, best approached with caution. This sense that the upland forested zone lies outside the civilizing control of the lowland muang is an important theme that runs through much of the discussion in this book. Of course, for many in the modern world, the traditional values accorded to the upland pa have shifted. For some, the forest has come to represent a desirable contrast with the rampant commercialization and crass modernity of the lowland cities. The forested uplands can now be a place of peace, solitude, and refuge. For many, the wild pa has been transformed into thamachat, the modern Thai word for “nature” that carries a sense of abundance and pristine order without the disturbance of human influence (P. Cohen 1984b). The uplands are also the site of natural resources (sapyakorn thamachat) that are now officially recognized as being crucial to the welfare and prosperity of the lowland muang. And for some others the cultural savagery of the residents of the uplands has been transformed into cultural diversity, indigenous ecological knowledge , and self-sufficient values that, perhaps, indicate a way forward for 28 Mountains, Rivers, and Regulated Forests a nation in crisis. These, then, are the different visions of the forested uplands that have emerged as part of recent Thai experiences of modernity . The distinction between muang and pa remains, but the wildness of the pa has taken on much more desirable connotations. So, while...