ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: In this article, we aim to outline the emergence of territoriality in state power in Thailand, formerly called Siam. In particular, we examine the use of what we call internal territorialization in establishing control over natural resources and the people who use them.
This paper argues that conflicts in the northern Thai highlands are a clear case of the politics of environmental discourse in the sense that conservation has played a role in lending legitimacy to both government agencies and ethnic communities in their struggle for the control of forest resources. Underlying such conflicts is the official line of negative thinking about ethnic minorities in the hills by associating them with various vices, namely as enemies of the forest, opium producers, and a threat to national security.
Throughout Vietnam's long histoty, the central elite and peripheraI farming communities have been legaIly and culturally divided. This dichotomy was never as complete as the famous injunction that "the emperor's writ stops at the village gate" infers. InitiaIly, during the period of French colonisation and more recently since the introduction of doi moi (renovation) economic reforrns, central authorities have attempted to unify land management with universaI normative law.
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