Border
Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand
A talk
and presentation by Dr. Janet C. Sturgeon
The
full text of Janet’s talk and presentation
Border
Landscapes
looks at Akha access to resources and land use as influenced both by
their
location on international borders, and by their incorporation into
modernizing
nation-states. Today I’m covering
the
second part, the intersection of Akha and state landscape visions in China and Thailand,
and hence the title of my talk
“Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha Land
Use in China and Thailand”.
I began to design this research project on
shifting
cultivation in the mid 1990s, when there was tremendous public concern
about
loss of tropical forests. The media and
many scholars blamed shifting cultivation for much of this forest loss. I knew from working as a program officer in
environment
and development that the major culprits in tropical forest loss were
Ministries
of Forestry and timber companies, and that shifting cultivators were
often
blamed unfairly. It seemed to me that
one way to open up our understanding of shifting cultivators, their
reputations, and their complicated experience with modernizing state
policies
was to do a comparative study. By
comparing one of the handful of upland groups that live in both China and Thailand,
I could look at historically related peoples across international
boundaries,
and across the regions of East and Southeast Asia. So I set out to trace the encounter between
shifting cultivators and the state under the dramatically different
political
regimes of China
and Thailand.
I chose Akha because of their differing
reputations
in China and Thailand. In China, Akha are regarded as
the
“most developed” among shifting cultivators, and as
reasonably conserving of
the environment. In Thailand,
by
contrast, Akha are thought to be forest destroyers, and the “hill
tribe” with
the most entrenched backwardness. To
figure out what produced these differing reputations, I selected an
Akha
village called Mengsong in China,
and one called Akhapu in Thailand.
This research traced Akha access to resources
and
land use over the past 50-60 years. During
this time Akha farmers and the forests
around them became
enclosed within national boundaries and the mental landscapes of policy
makers
in China and Thailand. What I discovered was Akha knowledge and
practice of what I call landscape ‘plasticity’, which I
will describe in detail
in a minute. Practices of shifting
cultivation invoke understandings of time and space that are both more
mutable
and more long-term than those of state agents, with their dreams of
mapped and
categorized landscapes meeting annual production goals.
State-allocated property rights and maps with
delineated land uses enable planners to predict annual harvests and tax
receipts. What I found in these
comparative cases was a clash of imagined landscapes between villagers
and
government administrators. These clashes
or contradictions relate to notions of time, space, and productivity. But these clashes played out very differently
in China and Thailand,
as I
will show.
Let me outline my talk for you.
First I’ll introduce landscape
plasticity,
with examples of how it works. Next
I’ll
compare land uses in the 1950s with those in 1997 when I finished field
research. Following this, I’ll
present
case material, first in China,
then in Thailand,
to show how the intersection of state and Akha landscapes resulted in
the very
different 1997 outcomes. And last
I’ll
offer a summary explanation for the divergent trajectories and a
capsule
version of my findings.
I want here to describe and give examples of
what I
mean by landscape plasticity, and show why it is so useful in
considering
villagers' strategies. For much of the
past 2,000 years, Akha farmers have lived in the mountains that now
link China and
mainland Southeast Asia, and have
relied on shifting cultivation in hilly, wooded
sites to grow upland rice and a rich array of vegetables.
Shifting cultivation entails fairly rapid
changes in the landscape as forests are cleared for fields, fields are
cultivated for one or two years, and then allowed to regenerate into
forests. Fields at different elevations
may have separate
rice varieties as well as distinct combinations of vegetables
intercropped with
the grain. Depending on household labor,
changes in weather, and infestations of pests, Akha farmers can open
fields of
varying size in different micro sites. While
aware of the length of fallow time
needed to restore fertility to
cultivated fields, Akha can also vary the length of fallows depending
on the
natural fertility of the site, and upon changing production demands. This successive use of various sites for
somewhat
different purposes enables Akha to envision the landscape as an
extensive
setting with multiple possible trajectories for future use.
In addition to cultivating upland rice in
swiddens,
Akha in both villages also manage wet rice fields, raise large numbers
of
livestock, hunt wild game, and collect myriad kinds of wild fruits,
vegetables,
and medicinal herbs in surrounding fields and forests.
Like shifting cultivators elsewhere, Akha
base their livelihoods on a composite of activities that allow them to
shift
labor allocation as needed for subsistence, trade, and taxation.
Here I want to emphasize the knowledge form,
or
conceptual understanding of the landscape that underlies composite land
use
practices with long time horizons. Akha
have an intimate knowledge of micro sites across the landscape (spatial
knowledge), and also an understanding of the plasticity of land cover
over time
(temporal knowledge). These two aspects,
spatial and temporal, enable villagers to adjust quickly to changes as
well as
to strategize into the distant future.
Strategies involve the ability to imagine how
the
current landscape could be otherwise, or how parts of it could be
allocated to
new uses for a while, knowing that use could revert in the future. In Akha imagination and planning, not only
can forests become swidden fields and fields then regenerate into
forests, but
fields can also become pastures, and pastures can become forests again
at a
later date. In Akha experience, even wet
rice fields, usually deemed to be a permanent landscape feature, can
change
into pastures or even forests once again, given enough time. This understanding is based on memory and
experience, as well as daily practice. Landscape
plasticity stretches backward as
well as forward in time, as
previous uses and events are recaptured and reworked in current
contexts.
I first became aware of plastic landscapes
and the
extent of farmers' strategizing one day early in my field research when
I was
trekking with a small group of farmers. We
were covering all the land areas of the
Akha village in China. At one point, when we had stopped on a ridge,
they mentioned that the prefecture government planned to build a
reservoir that
would inundate much of the village forest we could see stretching out
in the valley
below. The dam for the reservoir would
generate electricity for lowland towns in both China
and Burma,
according to the plan. This was news to
me and I reacted with horror. The
villagers, however, reacted differently. They
pointed to areas of pasture that they
would regenerate into trees,
because forests were necessary for survival. They
would meanwhile move the pastures down
slope, taking out some
shifting cultivation fields. And they
would open more wet rice fields on their lowest elevation lands. At that moment, I had this sudden
understanding of these farmers' knowledge and practice of a processual
landscape. I also immediately realized
the conceptual chasm between their understanding and the usual state
vision of
set property rights on mapped landscapes for which annual production
estimates
are made. I began to realize the extent
and scale at which these farmers could imagine their landscape
differently and
plan the transition to a new mosaic of land uses. I
had previously pictured individuals or
households planning on the scale of a swidden and its various stages of
regeneration. But here were farmers
strategizing on a landscape scale, and planning for forests that
wouldn't be
usable for 15-20 years. They were also
planning actively how to manage for loss of land and forest due to
government
planning. From that point on, I focused
more on reasons for adjustments in land use.
By laying out comparative cases I will show
you that
an understanding of landscape plasticity is critical to making sense of
the
trajectories of change I’m about to describe, and the
dramatically different
outcomes in China and Thailand. I will
show that Akha farmers have used their knowledge of plastic landscapes
to
respond to markets, tax collectors, policies for property rights and
agricultural production, and development projects.
Akha use their complex knowledge of the
environment to meet an array of demands, and at times to manipulate
around
regulations that impede flexible planning. In
relation to current land uses, I will also
relate how individuals of
different age and gender have differing strategies, ones that represent
conflicting visions of what "Akha" land use or livelihoods ought to
be. Conflicting strategies come to light
all the time, but my point here is that every person I talked with
understood
the mutability of land uses and how to use this potential to their own
advantage.
Conditions
in the early 1950s, China
and Thailand
I'll begin now with conditions in the 1950s,
before
national policies really transformed villagers' practices.
At that time land uses in the two villages
were similar enough that I can describe them together.
In both research sites, farmers kept an area
of forest around the village large enough that it took about an hour to
walk
through it to their swidden fields. A
smaller ring of protected forest surrounded the village.
Villagers also kept an area of cemetery
forest and watershed protection forest where cutting anything was
forbidden. In certain areas, farmers
opened swiddens, or shifting cultivation fields, wherever they wanted,
large
enough to meet household needs for grain. Anyone
could open that area once it had
regenerated to forest in about
13-15 years. At that time, customary
access allowed for flexibility in relation to shifting cultivation
lands, and
also for enduring, set rules for areas of forest.
For the contrast with 1997, here I have a
schematic
map of Mengsong, China.
The ring of forest around the village is
still in place. The forested areas have
now been divided into collective forest and household forest. The protected forest right around the
village, the cemetery forest, and the watershed forest are still there. There are extensive areas of wet rice along
the river and part of the shifting cultivation lands have become
pasture. The point to notice is that this
map is not
that different from the 1950s—land uses and the areas designated
for them are
much the same. For Akha villagers,
outcomes in China
show that as of 1997, households with the highest cash incomes earned
10 times
as much as the poorest households. In
general, incomes were gradually increasing. No
one was really rich but no one was
desperately poor either. As for forests in
the village, overall they
showed considerable species richness, with 217 species found in my
sampled
plots covering an area of 4.2 ha. There
was an average of 16.8 species on 10-meter diameter plots.
Additionally, the species dominance found in
protected sites showed the presence of numerous slow-growing, old
growth
species found nowhere else on village land. These
are indicators of diversity and forest
age, and look reasonably
good for an area of shifting cultivation.
For Akhapu (an acronym) in Thailand,
the
1997 map shows that almost all the area of forest surrounding the
village is
now in tea fields allocated to households. As
in China,
there is extensive wet rice along the river. The
areas that were formerly shifting
cultivation lands have been
reclaimed by the Royal Forestry Department and reforested under RFD
control. There are two watershed
protection forests, one designated by Akha villagers and one designated
by the
RFD. The point to notice here is that
the map is very different from the one in the 1950s.
Tea has replaced the forest surrounding the
village. And the RFD has taken over all
the shifting
cultivation lands, now planted in trees for the state.
As for villagers in Akhapu, households with
the highest incomes earned 900 times more than the poorest households. A few people were really wealthy, while those
on the bottom were falling through the cracks. Looking
at the forests they managed, species
richness amounted to 87
species on a total sampled area of 9.4 ha. The
average species per plot was 7.4,
considerably less than in China.
On protected sites, there were fewer old
growth species, and many more pioneer species. These
are indicators of forests that were
frequently cut and sometimes
burned, and generally not in good condition.
So
what processes led to these very different outcomes?
Major
Factors Accounting for Outcomes in China
In China,
Akha became citizens as of the Revolution of 1949.
As a result, policies for property rights and
agricultural production were the same for them as for all other farmers
across China. Planners interpreted shifting cultivation as
a grain-producing system, meaning that Akha farmers were seen as
contributing
to national development. Most forests in China
since the revolution have been managed by local units, whether
communes,
production teams, or households. Policies
in general have kept people, land,
and trees together.
Mengsong, China
The Collective Period
Following the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the
first
major change in land use occurred during the collective period
(1958-82). Agricultural land was all
collectivized, as
were forests, tea, most bamboo, and all livestock.
State cadres reorganized villagers' labor to
produce grain for the state, as a means both to "modernize" local
farmers and give the government the resource to build an industrialized
economy. During this era, state cadres
turned villagers into laborers for the state.
The Period of Economic
Reforms
Beginning in 1982, national policies brought
the
collective period to an end. To
stimulate agricultural production, land that had been managed by
communes was
distributed to households. In 1982-83,
the household responsibility system was implemented for agricultural
land
across China,
including in Mengsong. The following
year, in 1984, forestland from communes was allocated to villages and
households for subsistence uses.
Together with the distribution of
agricultural and
forestland, land use regulations spelled out how villagers were to use
these
different kinds of land. A new state
vision of the landscape began to be implemented.
In line with the new state vision, each
household in
Mengsong acquired wet rice fields and areas for shifting cultivation
based on
the number of people in the household at that time.
Each household also received a certain number
of livestock and areas of tea. As for
forests, the village received about 33 ha for a collective forest,
which could
be used for house construction. In
addition, each household acquired about 1/3 ha of trees where they
could cut
fuel wood. At the same time, cadres from
the local forestry station, together with a committee of villagers,
designated
an area of protected forest around the village, as well as
acknowledging the
cemetery forest and watershed protection forest on the same sites
previously
protected by customary rules. In effect,
the forestry department co-opted customary rules on forestland. Many of the rules for protection have stayed
the same, but they are now enforced by the forestry station rather than
by
village elders. Indeed, villagers look
to forestry officials to punish offenders.
Additionally, a long-term goal of both
forestry and
agriculture departments beginning in the early 1980s has been to bring
shifting
cultivation to an end. Teams from FAO
during those early reform years convinced Chinese policy makers that
shifting
cultivation was destructive to the environment. These
international teams marked the arrival
of particular landscape
visions for agriculture and forestry. These
visions embodied certain notions of time
and space, the ones
prevalent in development and passed on to state policy makers in many
governments.
In interviews with numerous villagers about
this
transition, I got a sense of exploration, as people combined memories
of
practices from previous times with new possibilities for production and
marketing. This was not a "return" to land
use
practices from the early 1950s, but a reworking of practice and
opportunity.
Farmers in Mengsong have responded readily to
new
policies, although not always in ways that policy makers and local
officials
would have predicted. Those households
who received shifting cultivation lands at lower elevations, on gently
sloping
land, opened wet rice fields in their swidden lands.
Their reason for opening terraces was not
efficiency of space for production, but efficiency of time. Villagers say that wet rice requires peak
periods of labor for planting, weeding, and harvesting, but at other
times
frees up labor for other purposes. Upland
rice fields, by contrast, require some
constant labor almost year
round. Once households had switched to
wet rice, women spent more time tending vegetables to sell, as well as
collecting mushrooms, medicinal herbs, and wild fruits prized in
lowland
markets. Men engaged in paid labor,
either locally in mining or in jobs in nearby towns.
By switching to wet rice, households could
spend more time increasing their cash income.
A second response to the opening of markets
was the
production of more livestock for sale and consumption.
By 1996, Mengsong as a whole supported 3
times the livestock it did in 1982. By
1989, most households had stopped opening swiddens in their shifting
cultivation fields. With the increase in
numbers of livestock, farmers began to burn larger stretches of their
upper
elevation shifting cultivation fields each year to provide new grasses
for the
grazing animals. By 1996, most high
altitude swidden fields had effectively reverted to collective use, in
spite of
their earlier official allocation to households.
Households have shifted from upland rice in
swiddens
to wet rice in terraces and many shifting cultivation fields have
become
pastures for increasing numbers of livestock. These
changes in land use were not necessarily
planned by government
agents, although the shifts all respond to policies encouraging
villagers to
participate more in the market economy. These
shifts represent Akha farmers' operating
in what Arun Agrawal
calls the "crevices in state power," here exemplified in the
maneuvering room opened up between requirements to produce for markets
and regulations
for set plots of land.
In talking with Akha farmers, it was clear
that in
their minds, shifting cultivation fields could become pastures, and
rules for
access and use could change accordingly. They
didn't see themselves as breaking rules. Their
understanding of landscape plasticity
was coming into conflict with state land use regulations.
While I was there, Forestry Station officials
informed me that the shifting cultivation fields that were burned every
year
for pasture would be reclassified as collective forest.
The land would still belong to the village,
but would have to be allowed to regenerate.
Gendered Approaches
In interviews with men about overall
trajectories of
land use change, they would tell me that all households stopped
practicing
shifting cultivation in 1989. People
rely on wet rice, they told me, and income from tin mining and
livestock. Interviews with older women,
however,
presented a different picture. Several
older women had begun in the past 2-3 years to open swiddens again in a
new
site. They planted upland rice and corn
with an assortment of vegetables. These
women said that they worried about household reliance solely on wet
rice and
tin. They grew corn to feed livestock
and help pay taxes. Upland rice could
serve as the staple grain and also pay taxes. Vegetables
could be both eaten and sold. This kind of
diversity of production and
purposes suited the older
women's vision of what land use and landscapes should be.
This background points to an ongoing
contradiction
between state policies and visions of a mapped and bounded landscape
under
regulated uses, and Akha use and practice of landscape plasticity. Set property rights and maps gave planners
the ability to understand and control agricultural productivity and
forest
protection, or at least that's the driving desire.
For Akha, the plasticity, or flexibility of
planning, also now included households sending out people in multiple
directions to sell cash crops and engage in wage labor.
There had been a shift in the meaning of
“landscape” to include wage labor in a variety of locales,
some local, some
not. In a variety of ways, and with
diverse strategies, Akha farmers continued to produce landscapes that
were more
complicated than what state agents had in mind. Even
the conflicting strategies between men
and women added to overall
landscape diversity. These landscapes
remained somewhat "messy" in the official view.
In spite of their messy landscapes, Akha had
the
reputation among regional state administrators as the “most
developed” among
hill shifting cultivators. These state
agents said that Akha were entrepreneurial and willing to adopt new
crop
varieties. State and Akha visions had
merged to a certain extent, as Akha had responded favorably to policies
and
market opportunities. This accommodation
reflects a complex interaction, with state agents and villagers in
active
roles.
Majors
Factors accounting for Outcomes in Thailand
In Thailand,
Akha were designated as a "hill tribe," one of those peoples who were
interlopers and criminal users of state land and forests.
Most Akha were not citizens and therefore had
no legal property rights in land or forests. Shifting
cultivation was seen in Thailand
as a forest-destroying
land use practice. The Royal Forestry
Department (RFD) managed forests, and all forested land belonged to the
RFD. Forestry policies for the north of Thailand
had
separated forests from the people who lived in them.
Akhapu, Thailand
The KMT and Opium
In northern Thailand
in 1960, former KMT soldiers who had fled China
in 1949 were now fleeing from Burma.
About 30 of them settled in the Akha village
for 8 years. As a result of the KMT
contingent and their involvement in the drug trade, horse caravans
carrying
opium from Burma to
lowland Thailand
began
to use Akhapu as a rest stop. Villagers
would sell them livestock and grain. In
villagers' memories, this was a time of abundant production and huge
harvests,
a landscape of plenty.
Changes in Thailand
affecting Akha access and land use really began in the 1970s, and
proceeded
more rapidly than in China,
and in most cases represent constraints on the practice of landscape
plasticity. First of all, as a result of
escalating battles in the Shan
State of Burma,
large numbers of people fled to Thailand
to escape the violence. These included a
new community of Akha who moved en masse to Akhapu.
After a couple of years the number of
immigrants was so large that conflicts erupted over land.
The newly arrived Akha knew how to build wet
rice terraces. Shortly after arrival
they set out in teams to open terraces for all the new households. The older Akha watched for a while, and then
tried to copy them, but by then most of the suitable land had been
taken. The arrival of new Akha produced a
landscape
of conflict and reduced access.
In 1976, Khun Sa, perhaps the most famous of
the
so-called "drug lords" in the Golden Triangle, fled Burma to settle in the nearby Thai town
of Hin Taek. Khun Sa in effect took over this whole
district of northern Thailand
as his principality. He bought any opium
that villagers produced, and paid for grain. He
also took care of any households who fell
on misfortune. The Thai army chased Khun
Sa out of Thailand
in 1982, but villagers remembered him as being a "good lord,"
certainly preferable to the government of Thailand.
Two Kinds of
Tea--Development Projects
With Khun Sa gone, the Thai government
encouraged
one of the numerous international highland development projects to
include
Akhapu in its opium substitution activities. With
full endorsement from the Thai
government, these projects set out
to eliminate not only opium, but also shifting cultivation. In their place, the projects introduced
intensified production of cash crops on much reduced areas of land. In Akhapu, one of the most lasting project
outcomes was the introduction of tea. Quite
apart from the project, several former
KMT soldiers had returned
to Akhapu in the early 1980s to open a tea estate in one part of the
community
forest. The KMT entrepreneurs planted
expensive tea varieties from Taiwan
and Guangdong. At the same time, highland project staff
taught Akha villagers how to cultivate the local tea already growing in
their
forest.
The introduction of the tea company, together
with
village cultivation of tea, has had a number of effects on the local
economy,
access to land, and forest condition. First
of all, by simultaneously introducing
two kinds of tea in Akhapu,
the tea company and the project produced two kinds of people. Tea company owners, in collaboration with a
handful of wealthy Akha investors, sold high quality tea for about
US$40/kilo
to Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia. Farmers, meanwhile, cultivated
"local" tea, which sold for about US$2/kilo to a wholesaler in Chiang
Mai. This new landscape entailed marked
economic stratification.
The introduction of tea changed access to
land as
households planted tea bushes in adjacent areas of forest.
Once planted, the household would claim the
tea land as well as the bushes as belonging to them.
Over time, more and more households planted
tea in the forest, so that at the time of my stay, the entire
understory of the
community forest was planted in tea. A
forest that until recently had been managed by these communities had
become household
land. Tea in effect nailed down land
use, and limited access to the household. This
step represented loss of plasticity for
both use and access.
The third outcome of tea planting was changes
in
forest condition. On tea company land
there were no longer any trees, since the expensive varieties required
constant
sunlight. For the local tea, people have
gradually cut many of the trees in the tea fields.
The local tea likes partial shade. Where the tea is intensely managed, the tea
fields looked like tea fields, not a forest. As
a result of this "development project," an
area that had
until recently been primary forest was now becoming a tea plantation
and a
degraded forest. As is common in
development plans, the new landscape involved sedentarized production
of a cash
crop. Farmers themselves had crafted the
new access rules to protect the newly valued tea.
At the same time as the introduction of tea,
agents
of the Royal Forestry Department came to Akhapu to designate sites for
forest
protection, including a watershed protection forest.
Unlike in China,
forestry officials in Thailand
failed to recognize that villagers already had a watershed protection
forest. The RFD protected site was in a
completely new area. The foresters also
did not acknowledge the cemetery forest or another sacred site as
"protected," and as an odd consequence, I found that villagers didn't
think of themselves as "protecting" any areas of forest.
Their customary rules forbid any cutting in
these sites, but that didn't amount to "protection."
Government
Action
In the 1990s, there was a major state
reforestation
effort to celebrate the 50th year of the king’s reign,
which was
1996. This was a national reforestation
campaign, and the target for the north of Thailand was 1.3 million ha. Accordingly, all areas of shifting
cultivation in the north were slated for reforestation.
All this land had in principle belonged to
the RFD since 1988. As elsewhere,
forestry officials appeared in Akhapu to reclaim their land. Villagers in Akhapu were paid the equivalent
of $2/day to plant trees, but the land was no longer theirs to use. This project affected villagers' access to
resources, and scope for using their knowledge of landscape plasticity.
Reforestation for the king brought several
rapid
changes in access, land use, and labor allocation in Akhapu. At the time of my research about half the
fields had already been planted in trees. A
handful of wealthier villagers, who relied
mostly on wet rice for
grain and tea for income, were little affected by the change. Poorer households, who constituted the
majority, were losing their subsistence. People
scurried to find work in the village or
in town.
Another result of reforestation was that most
households had sold off their livestock. Because
of the tea bushes in the forest,
villagers could no longer let
their livestock graze there without supervision. With
reforestation, villagers could not
pasture their cattle on swiddens in the off-season.
Livestock, which had previously been a major
source of household income, had rapidly become an encumbrance to unload.
A final result of reforestation was that the
RFD was
literally taking the forest out from under Akhapu.
Their community forest was moving toward
becoming tea fields amid sparse tall trees. Their
shifting cultivation lands, meanwhile,
had been reclaimed and
replanted in tiny pine trees by the RFD. The
Thai state was managing to separate
forest-dependent people from the
forest, literally, cutting Akha off from the source of multiple
potential
livelihoods.
The result of both the two kinds of tea and
reforestation was a serious loss of scope for the practice of landscape
plasticity. There was no longer much
room for villagers to adjust land uses to their own purposes as needed. The flexibility open to them was for
household members to find an array of arrangements for wage labor. An affinity for complex landscapes had been
translated into an affinity for a complicated patchwork of paid jobs. The time scale was foreshortened to immediate
plans.
Strategies by Age and Gender
As for strategies differing by gender, most
men in
Akhapu, except for the elderly, spoke Thai and could look for work
either
locally or in town. Most women, on
the
other hand, didn’t speak Thai. Many
women
liked working for the tea company, since the work was local and didn't
require
Thai. These strategies were not
contributing to landscape plasticity, however. Villagers had rapidly
lost
access to much of their land with its multiple potential uses, and were
devising new strategies in the spatial and temporal arenas available to
them.
Comparison
So what does this comparison tell us? Here I show a chart with the major factors
causing the differences in China
and Thailand
side by side. In China,
Akha
were citizens and property holders, and shifting cultivation, at least
in the
collective period, was seen as contributing to national development. Over the past 50 years, forests have been
managed by local units, including households. In
general, policies kept people, land, and
trees together. In Thailand,
where Akha were among those peoples who had been categorized as "hill
tribes," they had become the embodiment of problems in the
north--forest
destroyers who didn't deserve land in Thailand or to become
"Thai." Their land use, shifting
cultivation, was
cast as environmentally destructive and therefore criminalized. Forests, meanwhile, were managed by the RFD. Policies in the north separated people from
the forests around them.
As far as the scope for using landscape
plasticity
is concerned, policies in both countries were trying to sedentarize and
simplify land use in ways that undermined flexible practices. In China, however, the village
land
area was the same as in 1958, and there were still areas for shifting
cultivation, wet rice, pastures, and tea, as well as forest sites for
both use
and protection. Even within land use
regulations, there was still considerable room for moving land uses
around to
suit new purposes. There was also,
curiously, more room in the official administrative imagination for
Akha to
have useful knowledge about managing trees. This
created space, not only for Akha
practices, but also for discussion
about how new government plans should be implemented.
The spatial and temporal scales of Akha
planning were still expansive. As a
result, Akha landscapes in China
represented state property lines and Akha complexity—a negotiated
outcome.
In Thailand,
as I have shown, there had been rapidly diminishing scope for Akha use
of their
ecological knowledge of managing plastic landscapes.
Villagers had lost their shifting cultivation
lands, and their community forest had effectively been allocated to
households. For the most part, people
were busy looking for wage labor to offset loss of land.
In Thai official imagination, there was no
room for Akha knowledge about managing forests, nor room for discussion. Protected forests for the RFD were
established on completely new sites with no reference to customary
practices. The resulting landscape
reflected considerable coercion in implementing state plans—an
enforced
outcome.
Let
me encapsulate the findings of this study:
The encounter between state and Akha
landscape
visions has played out differently depending on state definitions of
upland
peoples and forests, and the maneuvering room available from policies
ensuing
from these definitions.
A comparative reading of Akha landscapes
indicates
that where state policies and practices have enabled landscape
plasticity, both
Akha and their forests fared well. This
was the case in China. Where state policies have disabled landscape
plasticity, Akha and their forests have fared poorly.
This was the case in Thailand.
I have presented a clash between conflicting
landscape visions, and the outcomes for those who practice processual
landscapes. There are numerous broader
implications for landscape plasticity. State
visions in many parts of the world, and
among many development
agencies, project a spatial landscape that is mapped and divided into
properties
under set regulations for use. These
landscapes are simplified so that state officials can manipulate and
control
them. The one direction of movement is
toward fewer crops and increased productivity. The
time frame of these visions is annual,
with production measured in
yearly increments. Forests are similarly
mapped and categorized, with uses and protection spelled out to suit
state
purposes.
The vision involved in plastic landscapes, by
contrast, is complex spatially and mutable over time.
Indeed, the practice of shifting cultivation
increases biodiversity and creates more possibilities for future
manipulation. These landscapes involve
long periods of time, flowing from past uses under those now dead, and
stretching into imagined futures. The
mosaic of land uses includes cash crops and other commodities as well
as
subsistence goods. The production of
goods is carefully calibrated in relation to state demands and market
possibilities.
An important broader issue here is that any
landscape vision, whether of state agents, researchers, or upland
farmers
includes notions of time, space, productivity, and even morality. What is the desired and good future? For whom? By
using the lens of landscape to open up all
these issues, I find that
these comparative cases have kept pushing me to think more carefully
about the
meanings of national visions, differing perceptions of landscapes, and
the
process of negotiation between state and local visions and practices. Using these tools, I have traced Akha
negotiation
of their landscapes and livelihoods under dramatically differing state
regimes
in China and Thailand.
After fielding many interesting questions,
the
meeting adjourned to the Alliance Cafeteria where members of the
audience
engaged in more informal discussions with the speaker over drinks and
snacks.
<< Back
to Meeting Diary
|
