The Art of Not Being Governed – Revisited

As one ventures further east from the high Himalayas where the elevation declines, vegetation takes a foothold making farming once again viable. This arc of hills and mountains spanning the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, has attracted migrants from a colourful array of ethnic backgrounds. Historically living with a high degree of autonomy, they have until recently managed to skirt the edges of lowland centres of power.  

With this unit of the Karen National Liberation Army guerrillas, armed with Kalashnikov’s and old carbine rifles, we marched along mountain ridges into the interior of the self-declared nation of ‘Kawtoolei’ comprising the extent of Karen held territory. It had taken me some while to gain permission for this journey from leader of Karen forces, General Bo Mya, who presided over the jungle base of Manerplaw, on the Thai-Burmese border.

Having at the outset passed through the Burmese army’s frontline on a speeding long-tail boat, we had taken to mountain paths and spent long days walking the hilltop ridges from one village to the next.

This was 1991 and already the Karen ethnic group had been in armed conflict with the Burmese government since Burma’s 1947 independence from its British colonists. One of our Unit expressed the bitterness shared widely across the Karen nation, that promises made by the British colonial administration, had not been honoured by subsequent Burmese government’s.

As we passed Karen farmers on the trail they regularly provided reports of the whereabouts of the Burmese soldiers, who tended to stick to the valley roads and rivers. All the villages were receptive to our arrival, providing food and supplies, always without a request for payment. This ethnic war effort was pulling together in a fight to evade capture and pursue self-determination.

The Karen are not alone in their efforts and still today ethnic groups on Burma’s mountainous periphery such as the Kachin, continue their armed struggle with the distant central government for control over their land, culture and livelihood. Now that democratic elections have to some extent been respected, the dreaded ‘Tatmadaw’ Burmese army no longer takes orders from the military junta generals, but from a democratically elected government led by Aung Sung Suu Kyi, known as the ‘Lady’ who for years led the people’s struggle for democracy.

Further afield, spanning regional borders across mainland Southeast Asia, a similar story of struggle for contested landscapes is continuing to play out, while the infrastructure of modern development makes inroads into the fabric of the hitherto largely natural landscapes.

In his 2009 book ‘The Art of Not Being Governed – an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia’, James C. Scott, a Professor at Yale University in the United States, challenged modern notions of statehood in the region. Overturning conventional wisdom, he argued that for millennia the upland peoples had been playing a cat and mouse game with lowland states and concentrations of power. 

Scott describes the huge area of uplands about the size of Europe that spans the continent: “One of the largest remaining nonstate spaces in the world, if not the largest, is that vast expanse of uplands, variously termed the Southeast Asian massif and, more recently, Zomia.”

He argues that elevation of the topography is a key factor determining the reach of lowland states. And to some extent this remains the case despite the growing penetration of surfaced roads and communications infrastructure into the uplands. For the jungle base of Manerplaw, it was the purchase of military planes from the Chinese and the arial bombing that followed in the mid 1990’s that finally forced its residents to scatter. Not that it spelled the end of Karen resistance – far from it.

“Everything we know about the hill Karen – their historical fear of slavery, their self-image as an orphaned and persecuted people – suggests that their social structure and swiddening were designed to keep them at a safe distance from captivity.” Says Scott about this ethnic group.

Pulling apart and debunking historical assumptions applied to the hill people, Scott rewrites the history books in their favour. As he is keen to point out, with a strong oral tradition and little or no written language of their own, hill-tribes have often been misunderstood. All too often outside observers: rulers, colonialists and more recently development workers, have written histories of them, in mostly negative terms.

Scott however views this lack of written language as a pragmatic choice contributing to a complex strategy, which has enabled socially fluid hill populations to evade the imposition of bureaucracy by lowland administrators.

Historically a defining feature common to lowland centres of power in the region is irrigated rice cultivation: “virtually all the pre-modern state cores in Southeast Asia are to be found in ecological settings that were favourable to irrigated rice cultivation.” Says Scott.

Irrigated rice had various characteristics that rulers still favour. Scott explains how grain is relatively easy to transport as it has a “high value, per unit weight and volume, and can be stored for relatively long periods.” More importantly for state governments it is relatively easy to measure the area in cultivation, and to estimate or weigh harvested volumes. If required it is easy for state armies to appropriate grain in storage. All these characteristics make it an easy staple to tax.

The people of the uplands like the Karen traditionally use shifting ‘Swidden’ systems for their rice cultivation, which depends on rainfall in contrast to the irrigated lowland rice paddy systems. Scott explains how the “shape –shifting,” propensity of the hill people to move their settlements at a moment’s notice, has regularly confounded centres of power, be they lowland governments or colonial administrators.

Historically at least this favoured agricultural method of shifting-cultivation is often attributed as a key reason for their nomadic tendency to move-on. Convention views assume that once forested land cleared for cultivation has become depleted of nutrients and exhausted, the community is forced to move on to find fresh land.

This however is an oversimplification. If shifting cultivation, or ‘swiddening’ is done in rotation, leaving fallow fields to regenerate in-between burning, the system can be sustainable. Population pressure in recent years has in some areas caused the rotations to reduce in length, leading to shorter fallows and hence reducing the time available for fields to regenerate. Such prolonged rotations are often singled-out as the cause of deforestation in the hills, despite myriad other pressures.

 Scott however cites many other economic, social, political and religious reasons for communities to move, and analyses their motivations through the lens of freedom from slavery and oppression. He explains at length that the reasons underlying their selection of shifting agriculture are as much about evading political control as they are about efficiently producing food. A concept he terms, “escape-agriculture.”

“State rulers find it well nigh impossible to install an effective sovereignty over people who are constantly in motion, who have no permanent pattern of organisation, no permanent address, whose leadership is ephemeral, whose subsistence patterns are pliable and fugitive…” Scott explains.

“The technique is seen by lowland officials, including those in charge of development programmes in the hills, as both primitive and environmentally destructive.” Scott says, and highlighting the stigma attributed to swiddening by dominant ruling cultures continues:  “By extension, those who farm this way are also coded as backward. The implicit assumption is that, given the skills and opportunity, they would abandon this technique and take to permanent settlement and fixed field (preferably irrigated rice) farming.”

The “escape” advantages of swiddening involve, “poly-cropping, staggered maturities of crops, and an emphasis on root crops that can stay in the ground for some time until harvested. For the state or a raiding party, it represents an agricultural surplus and population that is difficult to assess, let alone sieze.”

Describing  the hidden qualities of the humble potato at evading capture he says: “After they ripen they can be left in the ground for up to two years and dug up piecemeal as needed. There is thus no granary to plunder.”

The violence and oppression of the state from which hill people flee remains a very real issue. Though now the land available for migration has diminished while at the same time generally the power of the state has continued to increase.

The Chong ethnic group from the Areng valley in the Southwest Cardamom mountains of Cambodia, still partly practice shifting cultivation in their valley, until recently isolated. The Areng river presents the lifeblood of the nine mile long valley, surrounded by steep hills of dense tropical rainforest.

Together with nature activists the Chong repelled a scheme to build a hydro-electric dam on their river which would have submerged the valley villages and farmlands. The struggle became a national rallying cry as the realisation dawned on Cambodians that this struggle was essentially about saving one of the last forested areas in the country. A country that until twenty years ago, had some of the most extensive tropical forests, remaining in the region.

Prime Minister Hun Sen was installed to power by Vietnam forces and spent years trying to dislodge remnants of the retreating Khmer Rouge from their jungle hideouts. Including in the Cardamom mountains. He remains frank that no hiding place can be left for opposition to his increasingly unpopular regime. The corrupt kleptocratic elite under his leadership, is at the heart of the illegal logging and deforestation frenzy that has environmentally and socially ripped apart the country in recent decades.

Scott’s largely historical analysis still carries some relevance for our understanding of current struggles: “For early state elites, the periphery – seen frequently as the realm of “barbarian tribes” – was also a potential threat.” He says.

The awarding of over 200 hundred Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) each of at least 10 thousand hectares in size, has been deeply unpopular policy in a country where the majority of the population still lives off the land. Sold off to the highest bidder, often to powerful cronies within the elite and to international corporations, the land is explicitly designated for intensive industrial agriculture.

Demarcation of the ELCs has paid no regard to the existing inhabitants, nor the status of the land. National Park forests, Indigenous peoples communal forest areas, everything is up for grabs. The tragic story being played out is causing deep fissures in society as an estimated half a million farmers and forest dwelling people are forced either to stand and fight for their land or to move on.

In the Areng valley the current road upgrading is being debated. In many senses it makes life easier, with regular transport to commercial centres for supplies now feasible for most of the year. Still the tropical rainy season has a major impact, washing away much of the seasonal road improvement building. In addition power cables are being erected alongside the road, causing encroachment into the forest. People raise concerns that such conveniences may also hold hidden threats to their forests as poachers arrive from outside, and an increased presence of state authorities threatens their relative autonomy.

Last year the Chong people, perhaps emboldened by their victory against the dam, embarked on the process of pursuing recognition for their indigenous rights (under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which Cambodia is a signatory), with United Nations support. The Cambodian Government refuses to recognise the existence of ethnic groups, let alone the concept of Indigenous Rights.

Scott makes no claim that his analysis can be applied to today’s circumstances characterised as all pervasive:  “At a time when the state seems pervasive and inescapable, it is easy to forget that for much of history, living within or outside the state – or in an intermediate zone, was a choice, one that might be revised as the circumstances warranted.”

The increasing penetration of state control over the land, is a crucial difference to Scott’s historical past where population density was low enough for hill peoples to move away from the reach of dominant state control and into largely uninhabited spaces where land for cultivation was plentiful.

However it would be wrong to suggest that this is a defining factor. For the Chong people, the experience of being galvanised into active struggle has led to a heightened level of self-empowerment. So as well as the land they are now pursuing recognition of their indigenous rights as a supplementary means of maintaining their traditional autonomy.

Likewise the growing numbers of young student activists in Cambodia who have campaigned in support of the Chong, are opening up new spaces of activism on the internet, which like their forefathers inhabiting land spaces, allows some agility to be able to act while evading the constant shadow of state oppression.

Originally published in, The Land Magazine, Issue 21.