'Hill Tribes' and forests : minority policies and resource conflicts in Thailand

Zusammenfassung: Compared with other Southeast Asian countries, Thailand appears to be one of the most homogenous states of the region. About 95 % of the more than 62 Mio. inhabitants are Buddhists, more than 90 % of them speak Thai, and more than 80 % are ethnic Tai. This is, to a considerable degree, the result of a process of nation-building linking 'national identity', since the establishment of the territorial state at the end of the 19th century, to Thai language, Buddhism, and Monarchy. This process of nation-building had to overcome considerable resistance of various ethnic and cultural minority groups. Policies towards these minorities have been, and still are, policies of assimilation, quite frequently resorting to oppression. Until the 1980s, Thai policies towards the ethnic minority groups categorized as 'hill tribes', predominantly living in the uplands of northern and western Thailand, was dominated by concerns about opium cultivation and communist insurgency. By the 1980s, deforestation and control of resources in the uplands became important national issues and the main concerns of 'hill tribe' policies. Since the beginning of the 1990s, strategies of territorial, social, and political exclusion towards these ethnic minority groups, increasingly referring to national sentiments and ideologies, are dominating conservation policies and resource conflicts in the uplands of Thailand. State agencies, like the Royal Forest Department and the Military, thereby try to secure and regain positions and power challenged in the controversies on settlement and use rights in national forest reserves during the 1980s and 90s. This paper will sketch these changes of concerns and strategies of ethnic minority policies in Thailand, concentrating on the shifts during the 1980s and 90s in the context of the controversies on deforestation and resource conflicts in the uplands.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Standort: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Umfang: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anmerkungen: http://www.sefut.uni-freiburg.de/pdf/WP_7e.pdf

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft
• Schlagwort: Forstpolitik ; Weltnaturerbe ; Karen ; Minderheitenpolitik ; Online-Ressource

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wo): Freiburg
• (wer): Universität
• (wann): 2000
• Urheber: Buergin, Reiner

Weitere Informationen

• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-opus-7682
• Rechteinformation: Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 25.03.2025, 13:53 MEZ