Shifting frames for local people and forests in a global heritage: the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization

Focusing on the case of the World Heritage Site and Wildlife Sanctuary Thung Yai Naresuan, the paper sketches the interdependences of international and national forest and conservation policies in Thailand since the middle of the 19th century. In the context of Thailand’s globalization and modernization, these policies resulted in a coercing conservationism which focuses increasingly on the so-called ‘hill tribe’ ethnic minority groups. The shifting cultural and political framings of the area that became a national wildlife sanctuary and a ‘global heritage’ reflect external economic, political, and ideological interests. The people of the Karen ethnic minority group who live in the sanctuary are conceived of as a disruptive factor and never have had a chance to participate in these framings. After the designation of the area as a World Heritage Site, the remaining villages face increasing pressure from the Royal Forest Department which is trying to remove them with the help of the Military. Drawing on the different vested interests and the relativity of cultural conceptualizations, the paper questions the external framing, pointing to three major problems that are raised with regard to Thung Yai, but are symptomatic of modern conservationism at large: inconsistencies between normative claims and political practice; distortions of scale between conceptions designed at different levels of social space from the local to the global, and; the problem to reconcile conflicting cultural patterns and conceptualizations. The paper argues for a reframing of the conflict to conceive the Karen in Thung Yai as an integral part of the ‘global heritage’.