Conservation Against Conservation: Contesting Ways of Understanding Forests in Southern Myanmar

Abstract

In this thesis I seek to provide an understanding of how a specific rural community in Southern Myanmar, the Karen inhabiting the Kamoethway Valley, have come to identify as indigenous protectors of the environment, by paying attention to the strands of history that have produced the current conjuncture. In particular, I aim to show that, when faced with the prospect of exclusion by conservation, engagement with an explicitly environmental indigeneity remains a tactic of considerable nuance for marginalized communities. A central part of my argument will be that the forms of knowledge behind this tactical maneuver are multiple, drawing both upon local tradition and transnational discourses.