Introduction: Negotiating modernity, themes and ideas

Abstract

The seven papers in this Special Issue draw on local involvement with the forces of capitalism and globalisation, as specific examples explore smallholder resource management and commodity production, together with tenure, migration, ethnicity and identity. The six case studies, all based on recent fieldwork, range across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. They are followed by a general paper which looks more closely at the ideas of capitalism as expounded in the recent writings of Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002) and Hernando de Soto (2000), then examines the relevance of these ideas to the region. In addition to each other’s papers, contributors drew particularly on work by Li (1999, 2002a, 2002b); Rigg (2001); Rigg and Nattapoolwat (2001); and Schrauwers (1999). One important theme is the interface between forests and farms, examined in the first paper by Walker, who emphasises the disjuncture between images of traditional practice and commercial reality in North Thailand in the context of community forestry legislation. He coins the term ‘arborealisation’ for a discourse which privileges forests over agriculture. NGOs and others, attempting to counter government restrictions on upland farmers, have promoted the image of such farmers as forest dependent, communal shifting cultivators. Such an image, he feels, does a disservice to present forest villagers, who are individually managing their land for commercial production, their livelihoods linked to the market and to urban areas. The emphasis placed on their forest management continues to deny their legitimacy as agriculturalists and may exacerbate their legal problems with the state, as many lack formal tenure. Barney’s paper, using case studies of smallholder reaction to plantation forestry from Thailand and Sarawak, suggests the need for modification of an NGO-supported discourse of unproblematic resistance. The Sarawak case concerns an indigenous dispute over a pulp plantation on Native Customary