Research
Research
Embedded Files
Abstract:
In rural, upland northern Thailand, Indigenous Karen (Paganyaw) communities have long practiced diversified subsistence cultivation and forest-based livelihoods. Yet state conservation policies and tourism-led development are reshaping these agrarian systems and livelihoods.
This paper explores how one Karen (Paganyaw) community in Chiang Mai province reconfigures its livelihood strategies amid the decline of swidden cultivation and the rise of elephant tourism as a new rural economy. Beyond subsistence cultivation, villagers are seeking to diversify their households and personal income by participating in this new economic sector. We argue that the transition out of small-scale agriculture into tourism is not a neutral market choice but responds to the same political-economic pressures that have historically displaced swidden systems.
Drawing on 32 qualitative interviews, this ethnographic research examines diverse forms of Indigenous involvement in the elephant tourism supply chain crucially determined by non-capitalist social relations and kinship networks. By identifying the socio-economic conditions – land and capital ownership, and familial and social networks – that result in socially-differentiated and stratified allocation of benefits from elephant tourism, it disenchants the notion of a monolithic ‘community’ yet reveals one empirical case of how Indigenous peoples navigate shifting economies and sustain meaning in their livelihood.
Eco Business' coverage about the research
Straits Times' coverage about the research
I am the co-author of a peer-reviewed research article, titled "Nature, Disappeared: Anti-environmental Values in Singapore’s History Textbooks, 1984–2015"(2021).
The paper examined the environmental narratives taught in Singapore history textbooks. Since Singapore does not currently have an environmental education curriculum, the mandatory history curriculum taught in all government schools is a rich site of inquiry for studying the environmental education that schoolchildren gain from history textbooks.
Our results show that Singapore's history textbook narratives mostly portray people as independent from the environment. Students also learn that the environment matters less today than in the past, as narratives of the environment are largely found in textbook pages portraying Singapore’s past (the years before independence).
These findings are significant as they exacerbate the modern Singaporean’s inability to recognize their embeddedness within and influence on the nonhuman environment in this moment of climate crisis.
Summer Field School Research (South Sulawesi, Indonesia)
Summer Field School Research (South Sulawesi, Indonesia)
In the hills of South Sulawesi, a village called Limapocoe had become a site of complex land conflicts.
We ventured out to Jambua, a hamlet in Limapocce, to explore how land conflicts and migration have shaped the livelihoods of locals. Upon our arrival, there were a few things in the village that caught our attention: there were few young people in Jambua and there were several abandoned houses throughout the village. We found that many individuals resorted to migration as a strategy for livelihood. They had to, because State forest boundaries have put restrictions on many of the villagers' lands, claiming that all the trees—planted by the villagers—were a part of the protected forest. Many villagers migrated far. For some, it has been over 40 years since they left home.
We used participant observation, walking ethnographies and semi-structured interviews to engage with villagers.
Joyful moment captured
Preparing sugarcane, a delicious and sugar snack for the elephants
Typical elephant care program at elephant sanctuaries
MA Thesis (in progress):
Selling Elephants to Save Them: Re-valuing Elephant Labor in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Selling Elephants to Save Them: Re-valuing Elephant Labor in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Abstract:
Political ecologists have demonstrated how tourism benefited from neoliberalism’s renewed faith in market forces, decentralization, economic diversification, commitment to non-traditional exports including tourism, and the roll-back of state control. Tourism geographers have demonstrated that international ecotourism development seeks a spatial fix for capitalism in novel, relatively undeveloped areas of the world, contributing to the commoditization of nonhuman nature. Yet, we know much less about the critical role of tourists and tourism operators (including elephant camp owners, tour guides and tour agents) in perpetuating neoliberal solutions in biodiversity conservation and ecotourism. This is because tourism discourse and literature, tainted by colonial and patriarchal perspectives, portray hierarchical binaries between the tourists and the ‘toured’, identities that coincide with ‘helpers’ and those ‘in need of help’ (Sin and Minca, 2014). It is imperative to understand the co-construction of the elephant camp experience by numerous tourism actors in producing, representing and selling neoliberal nature in ecotourism “for” environmental conservation.
This thesis investigates how captive Asian elephants are re-valued in neoliberal nature, based on the empirical case of Chiang Mai, Thailand. It will examine how local hosts construct elephant camp experiences that reflect the logics of commoditization and neoliberal natures, and how these spatial and social constructions of elephant tourism shape tourists’ experiences and representations of elephant camps. The study focuses on the newer tourist group of Mainland Chinese tourists who are increasingly shaping global ecotourism trends as the world’s largest source of international arrivals and spenders. Participant observation, ethnography and 33 semi-structured interviews with elephant camp owners, tour guides, tour agents and tourists were conducted in May to August 2025 when I participated in 20 elephant tourism experiences.
This project considers how privatizing and commodifying nature for ecotourism reproduces harm even when driven by good intentions. Yet I found elephant tourism sites to be layered, politically charged and often contested geographic spaces that are far from ‘fixed’. Therefore, I posit that equity and conservation outcomes can be improved for both the communities who live and work alongside elephants and for the elephants themselves.
Page updated
Report abuse