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ABSTRACT
In north-central Cambodia, Indigenous minority communities along with the Prey Lang Forest are rapidly transforming market-independent ecologies toward market-dependent existences. Through this transition, maintaining access to resources, to status and to politically advantageous connections remain the ‘hinges’ around which other epistemic propositions revolve. The prowess required to capture these vital elements of social life directly from the potent forest is not the same as that required in a market-dependent environment. The two worlds of practice are connected in an intimacy that only consumption can create, and as the market eats the forest the stark difference in social organisation emerges as a point of contention on multiple fronts. In this space, ‘Indigenous’ propositions about ‘reality’ gain purchase, even as ‘Indigenous’ economies are at best constrained, but often foreclosed by market relations. This collision prompts new political and economic possibilities and new classifications for contestation. Drawing together ethnographic data and epistemology at the ‘ontological turn’, this paper investigates two classificatory anomalies: Indigenous capital accumulation and a silent earth.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The ethnographic incidents described here occurred mostly between 2018 and 2023. I also draw on data from earlier research in the region, which forms part of a long-term collaborative research relationship with Kuy members of the Prey Lang Community Network. We have traveled together through all regions of the forest collecting ethnographic, GIS and oral historical data on forest crimes, climate change, changing economies and traditional practices in Prey Lang since 2014. I come for research twice each year (except during covid lockdowns) and research continues with or without me. We share field notes and geo-data through an online database and have weekly discussions. All research was conducted in Khmer. Research has been funded by: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [grant number W 07.68.416] and the UK’s Department for International Development [grant number 07.68.416] (2014-17 Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change (CCMCC) research programme); Council for American Overseas Research CAORC – RA-235021 (2017); Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan MOST 108-2410-H-004-003-MY2 (2018-2020); MOST, Taiwan MOST 110-2410-H-004-147 (2021-22); East-West Center (2022); Wenner-Gren Gr, ERG-40 (2022-24); National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan: 111-2410-H-004-119 (2022-23); Approved by National Chengchi University Ethics board: 2019-20: NCCU-REC-201901-I004; 2021–24 NCCU-REC-202105-I033.
2 Interview, Feb. 2017 Kratie.
3 The extent to which this proposition about unique human sentience is tangled in seventeenth-century European anxieties about scientific experiments, sovereignty, religion, magic and property will not be unpacked here (see, Asad Citation2003; Bauman Citation2023; White Citation1967), but these are foundational to the extractive economy, Indigenous capitalists and the propositions that make things natural or ‘supernatural’.
4 Interview, activist youth 27, Kratie province Jan 2023.
5 Words from both men recorded in fieldnotes taken February 2016, Kratie.
6 Interview, company manager, June 2018; community activist, July 2019.
7 Group Discussion, June 2019.
8 Fieldnotes, Jan 2020.
9 Interview with local logger, April 2020.
10 not provided to maintain anonymity.
11 Who despite their entanglement with capitalism continue to recognise the potential for agentive acts emerging from sentient land and water. This happens to a much lesser extent than it did 10 years ago, but also to a much greater extent than was predicted 100 years ago by the captains of industry, academics and bureaucracy.