Beyond Ockham and Opium in the Northern Thai Highlands : Further Philosophising about Projects in the Applied Anthropology of Development and Foreign Aid
Douglas Miles, James Cook University
During 1966-68 I resided in the Yao village of Pulangka, in the rugged mountains of northern Thailand, near the Laotian border. On assignment from the Australian Government and the Thai Ministry of Social Welfare, I undertook a fine-grained field study of the sustainability of the shifting agriculture practices of the Yao. The aim was to determine, from economic, demographic and environmental viewpoints, the feasibility of phasing out opium production – something that the Yao themselves agreed was inevitable and indeed necessary. Without warning, in February 1968 the Royal Thai Army implemented in Pulangka the then-current policy of destroying such villages and planting landmines in and around them in order to discourage continued residence and cultivation of crops. This brutal tactic, of course, rendered the established swidden system of mixed cropping, including poppy, permanently unsustainable. This paper also discusses the more sophisticated strategies adopted by the Thai military more recently to suppress opium production, including the commercial clear-felling and denuding of jungle regions where poppy is grown in shifting cultivation (my photographs will illustrate the appalling desolation, erosion and other ecological damage that has already been caused). Finally, and in view of the massive upheavals suffered by these Yao swidden farmers, I pose some more philosophical questions about the relevance of detailed, fine-grained fieldwork observations on the sustainability of certain agricultural practices, given the fact that powerful political and military forces were and continue to be such a drastic determinant.
