Does globalisation act as an ethnocide?, by Olivier Ferrari and Jacques Ivanoff (IRASEC) Olivier...

The observations made here are the fruit of years of studying the Moken and their Moklen and Urak Lawoi cousins whose changes in lifestyle over time and remarkable cultural resilience we have witnessed. Three groups of Austronesian maritime nomads are spread out along the west coast of Thailand and Burma, forming the northern point of Austronesian migration. What do these observations consist of?

The Moken are sea hunters, Ko Surin (© 1986 / J. Ivanoff)

Turtle hunt; the turtle is the Moken's marine sister, Ko Surin (© 1974 / P. Ivanoff)

Today, people are seeking “authenticity”. Ethnologists and – more and more – the tourists in Thailand, who follow them in their quest for exoticism, deplore the disappearance of highlanders’ traditional costumes and Moken sea nomads’ wide boats, which give the islands of the Mergui Archipelago a “spiritual feel”. Similarly, the media, who spread the image of endangered groups, mourn the fate of Mlabri nomadism – the “spirits of the yellow leaves” of the Laotian-Thai border, and the blowpipes of the men of the forest. At the same time, another discourse has been established that NGOs and civil society must now help minorities possessing traditional precious but unsuitable savoir-faire to become integrated into the Nation for the benefit of all, but to the detriment of their culture. Thus, these “shamefully poor” people (as the Moken were described at the beginning of the last century and as they continue to be portrayed – even though their poverty, which allows for survival and egalitarianism, is ideologically expressed) are either destined to die out or Westerners and nations who have been freed from colonialism must “civilise” them to better control those on the margins of society and develop the remainder of the population that gives them the image of being under-developed. What is surprising is the persistence of this discourse despite the survival of the ethnic groups that everyone seems to want to see disappear since their “discovery”, but who insist on surviving, even if, demographically, they are in decline (which does not stop them from reconstituting and forming alliances with other). That which is exotic hinders new Nation-States and the exoticism of the first discoverers made way for ethnological analysis, followed by ethnic theories and, finally, the conclusion that they will inevitably diet out. Who has not personally witnessed a culture changing or the loss of its fundamental symbols? From these observations it would almost be too easy to deduce that populations die out.

Do the Moken sea nomads, Mlabri Laotian border nomads or even the Semang at the Malasian border still exist? If so, what are the indicators that enable us to immediately recognise these preservers of secular traditions that are so suited to the environment? It is important to establish what enables us to recognise an ethnic group and if we are willing to accept the change that we impose on such groups through development. The problem is that researchers, especially most anthropologists, have prematurely declared the death of ethnic groups because they can no longer simply adapt their methods to the world’s new pace – that of so-called unavoidable globalisation.

The Moken are nevertheless still sea nomads; Thai national parks that tried to have them put in prison or move them on to Burma, as well as researchers of Thai universities and UNESCO, recognise them. In Burma, the government also recognises them but under another name. However, the wide boats, nomadic symbols and pride are disappearing. Yet the spirit poles and “magic” dances are being replaced with changes in rituals and frescos representing the afterlife. A new definition of nomad activity must be given because although the Moken of Burma have abandoned their boats, it is also a way of coping with cohabiting with the tens of millions of Burmese fishermen who have come to their islands. They have invented “cultural exogamy”, used the border to segment their ethnicity, detaching themselves from the Thai Moken and becoming socially closer to the Burmese emigrants, with whom they consistently intermarry, as illustrated by Maxime Boutry in his thesis. These couples form new pioneer colonies and create new rituals, social codes and are easily integrated. The nomadic bedrock is not rejected but it is true that it is integrated in exchange for the loss of a certain exoticism. The Moken of Thailand dealt with this situation by bringing themselves closer to other sea nomads in the country – the Moklen and Urak Lawoi – and by joining this chaole (“inhabitants of the sea” in Thai) by adopting the structure of their rituals. It is this apparent cohesion among Thailand’s maritime populations that guarantees their survival in the country and alters their ethic identities. A state initiative, inspired by the model used to regroup the Hill Tribes (which was a failure),has set up projects to regroup “maritime minorities”. Nevertheless, although this was incorporated into the identity dynamics of these three groups of nomads, the Moken, unlike the Moklen and Urak Lawo, still pose insurmountable problems to Thailand in terms of nationality, while in Burma, they were recognised as a population in their own right. It therefore depends on whether the State chooses to interfere or not that determines if ethnic groups become an ethnologically integrated object in the globalisation process – the phenomenon researchers have come to use to explain their disappearance. In short, the local contemporary history of globalisation has revived these nomads’ activities that they are forced to created so as not to die out. A new movement on either side of the border has been born, which shows that ethnicity is in constant construction and even if elements of exoticism disappear, it does not necessarily mean this will be the case for ethnic identities. These perpetual changes are expressed in Frederik Barth’s work on inter-ethnicity but, as Maurice Godelier reminds us, it is engrained in history.

Gathering in the intertidal zone, St Matthew (© 1974 / P. Ivanoff)

Children in their natural environment, Burma (© 2004 / J. Ivanoff)

The border has essentially forced ethnic groups to separate and reconstitute themselves. With borders open to merchandise and illegal trafficking, States have given ethnic groups the possibility to play with nationalism, social affairs and identity. The border is an area of expression of socio-ethnic latencies, even more so because of the desire to control populations. The South of Thailand is Burmese and nomadic, Malaysian and Chinese, but not Thai. Two national and ethno-regional systems cohabit and thus seem to enable ethnic groups to adapt to development projects and the governments’ social projects, while maintaining ties with networks that still determine the flux of people, merchandise and power. This superimposition is the memory of the multi-vassalages described by Thongchai Winichakul and therefore imposes a history of gaps that nobody truly controls but that reinforce the identity tensions.

Borders become the last areas for dynamic confrontations between ethnic groups and States, giving sclerotic States back some much-needed flexibility. Ethnic groups create new identities; separate from each other; become allies with new arrivals, such as farmers and fishermen; build territories that go beyond the border, even incorporating it into the construction as a structural and strategic base – an essential aspect for the renewal of social and spatial dynamics. In return, these dynamics allow dominant central ethnic groups to take a stand on their ethnic fate and/or their future as citizens. All these issues remind us of the dynamics of relations between nomads and settled people, which are often confused with centre-periphery relations. Border territories are reconstructed, interlock and especially use centre-periphery dynamics to create new modes of spatial representations, which express inter-ethnic dynamics and provide new spaces for cultural expression.

Kabangs (wide Moken boats) on the Mergui archipelago (© 1957 / P. Ivanoff

The "lost" traditional craftmanship is still transmitted in spite of the tentatives to have the Moken settle down, Burma (© 2005 / J. Ivanoff)

Thus, although ethnic groups abandon certain cultural markers of their exoticism, they continue to survive and their capacity for resilience is strong. They adapt to the pretences of development, progressive tourism and other community-based projects, which nevertheless attempt to divide social regional realities into manageable units. It is necessary to recall that the killer waves of the 2004 tsunami, which hit the Moken first, did not kill a single one of them. Nevertheless, these several thousand nomads were subjected to harassment from NGOs and reconstruction projects to the detriment of their ethnic essence; since the catastrophe they have been the unfortunate witnesses and victims of the construction of new towns, prohibitions against living as nomads, obligatory schooling and the separation of couples. However, a number of years later, the nomads rebuilt their mobility system - millenarian for the Moken and a ritual for the Moklen. Today, globalisation and development; yesterday, colonisation, wars and slavery; these populations are living history and are constantly adapting their societies, ethnicity and even their ethnonym. It is not ethno-fiction, as Charles Keyes wrongly suggested, but identity dynamics in constant motion that we must understand today. Far from what Martine Ségalen and other researchers have claimed in the past, the death of ethnic groups is not planned, but depends rather on the ability of researchers to question their paradigms that destroys the perception of these groups. Once they have adapted to our own social and “global” realities, they will become poorly identified social objects in community projects idealised by the egalitarian arrogance of international organisations. Anthropologists tend to abandon their subject of study in an attempt to survive by adopting the credo of liberalism and national integration. However, they have not understood that globalisation is simply the contemporary establishment of a polycentric history, which gives ethnic groups new cultural objects to manipulate in new spaces. These spaces are no longer nations or micro-spaces of forgotten pioneer territories, but regional spaces in which inter-ethnic networks and ancient vassalage relations and hierarchies continue to function. This contemporary historical movement called globalisation - although it is actually just a new polycentrism invented by the liberal world - is simply, according to Godelier, the persistence of historical attacks which were used to create ethnic groups in the past. These historical (slavery, for example) or economic (international commerce) weapons have never stopped populations from organising their “ethnic choices”, to employ Geoffrey Benjamin’s terms. Slavery created a division between the Moken and the Moklen and Islam formed one between the Orang Laut and the sea nomads in Thailand and Burma today; slavery also created the Mlabri, who went from being slaves for “intermediary” populations (the Hmongs) to becoming autonomous populations; the Semang became a substrate but continue to haunt the spirits and the forests of the South of Thailand, while maintaining contact with their Malaysian neighbours who are subjected to measures of protection or discrimination.

These historical dynamics still exist today since globalisation continues to impose the reconstitution of groups while the establishment of borders brings new dynamics to populations - a new ethnic instrument to demonstrate their resilience. In short, the ethnic groups still have a lot to teach us so that we can change our perception of them.

Changing cosmology: mosaics (new religious representations for the Moken) (© 2004 / J. Ivanoff)

Spirit poles with representations of Burmese militaries (© 2004 / J. Ivanoff)

Jacques Ivanoff

CNRS Researcher at the Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (Irasec, Bangkok), he works on Thailand and Burma and, more generally, on the nomad populations, their oral traditions and their cultural resilience. He is now focusing on understanding the ethno-regional forces and the ethnic structures of the border people.
He participated to numerous international projects. He is at the origins of a great number of international co-operations and collective books. He has published around ten books and fifty articles and was involved in several television documentaries and TV and radio shows (Thalassa, Geo, National Geographic, etc.).

Olivier Ferrari

Visiting researcher at the Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud Est Contemporain (Irasec) and at Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute (Cusri, Bangkok).
He works on maritime nomad populations from Thailand and, more specifically, on the ritual structures on which their nomadism and their interrelations are based, as well as their Thai, Sino-Thai and Malaysian Muslim neighbours. Ethno-regionalism – a characteristic of the South of Thailand – is at the core of his work, which is also present in other research, especially anthropological approaches to environmental and development policies. Through his work, he participates in many international projects (mainly between France, Thailand and Switzerland), publications and conferences.

For more information on the subject:

J. Ivanoff 1999 The Moken Boat: Symbolic Technology, White Lotus Press, Bangkok, translated by Francine Nicolle, 171 p., index, app., gloss., 3 maps, 84 b. & w. pictures, 59 color pictures, 32 drawings.

J. Ivanoff 2001 Rings of Coral. Moken Folktales, White Lotus Press, translated by Francine Nicolle, 490 p., 11 colors and 20 b. & w. illustrations by Luca Gansser, gloss., bibliogr., index, 10 maps and tables.

J. Ivanoff 2002 (with T. Lejard and in collaboration with L. and G. Gansser) Mergui et les limbes de l’archipel oublié. Impressions, observations et descriptions de quelques îles au large du Ténasserim (Mergui and the limbo of the forgotten archipelago. Impressions, observations and descriptions of several islands off the Tenasserim), White Lotus Press/Kétos-Anthropologie maritime (Paris), Texts by Jacques Ivanoff and Thierry Lejard, 234 p., 163 color and b. & w. pictures, 49 figs. (maps, drawings by L. Gansser), 2 original paintings, bibliogr.

J. Ivanoff 2004 Les naufragés de l’histoire. Les jalons épiques de l’identité moken (History's castaways. The epic markers of the Moken identity), Les Indes Savantes, Paris, introduction by Georges Condominas, 593 p., 5 indexes, glossary, 13 annexes, bibliography, 10 maps, 2 tables, 21 diagrams, 15 b. & w. pictures, 111 color pictures.

O. Ferrari, Narumon Hinshiranan, Kunlasab Utpuay and J. Ivanoff 2006: Turbulence on Ko Phra Thong (Phang Nga Pronvince, Thailand), coll. Kétos Anthropologie maritime/SDC (Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development), 183 p., 155 pictures, 8 drawings, 12 maps, 8 tables, 14 genealogies.

M. Boutry et Olivier Ferrari (2009) Des catastrophes naturelles au désastre humain: conséquences et enjeux de l'aide humanitaire après le tsunami et le cyclone Nargis en Thaïlande et Birmanie (From natural disasters to human tragedies: consequences and stakes of humanitarian aid after the tsunami and Cyclone Nargis in Thailand and Burma). Carnets de l'IRASEC, n. 10, 116 pp.