Plastic landscapes, plastic identities: Akha identity on the threshold of definition

Abstract

In his study of communities in upland Southeast Asia, James Scott cites the practice of shifting cultivation as being reflective of state evasion. The Akha tribe of Northern Thailand destabilises this correlation, and demands a more nuanced notion in which identity is actively negotiated between state intervention and traditional landscape plasticity. While historically employed as a method of state evasion, shifting agriculture has become enmeshed in Akha ritual performance as a signifier of identity. While Scott claims that shifting agriculture implies a divorce from state interaction, the Akha employ subversive agriculture techniques and adopt state policies according to highly localised conceptions. According to Forsyth and Michaud, hill people capitalise upon their capabilities within a shifting political and economic context—with the Akha adopting a system of composite swiddening and invisibly subverting state land use policies. Under a system Janet Sturgeon conceptualised as ‘landscape plasticity’, forests can become swidden fields and then revert back to forests as the Akha assert their agency to sustain mutable landscapes that incorporate both present and future use. Thus, the Akha negotiate boundaries of topography and modernity to subvert state intervention and adopt a plasticity of landscape and identity.