Resistance and Flexibility. Facing Tourism in a Hmong Village of Northern Thailand
Author(s):
Michaud, Jean
Format:
Conference presentation
Publisher:
1994.
Language:
English
Abstract:
Social change in lineage societies in Southeast Asia is first determined by authoritarian state policies designed to control national minorities. In the case of northern Thailand, along with state interventionism, the providing of facilities for trekking tourism has become an additional factor of change in many highland villages. Focus here is on how this tourist demand relates to the social change process already taking place & how similar or different villagers' reactions are to tourist business & the transition to cash cropping. Data collected in a Hmong village, 1991-1993, reveal that after 12 years of increasing tourist presence, the economic attractiveness of the tourist business is astonishingly negligible. It is, in fact, limited to Hmong marginals unable to make their livelihood from agriculture, principally for reasons of opium addiction. Far from being considered backward by villagers, traditional agriculture is still the most popular & profitable economic activity. The facility with which the Hmong have adapted their traditional economy to modern market imperatives, in sharp contrast to the general indifference manifested toward tourists & tourist business, is atypical in tourism literature. Explanations for this particular case must be sought in the resiliency of Hmong ethnic identity & social organization, founded in a nomadic household economy & an animistic worldview, & remarkably capable of adaptation.