Title: "Identifications and the Use of Resources in French Guyana and Southeast Asia"

Authors: Justin Daniel, Chusak Wittayapak

Abstract: The project proposes to explore the way by which ethnic communities instrumentalize official and vernacular identifications to access resources and to become visible in the public space in Thailand and French Guiana. In both situations, processes of identifications and geographies of identifications are far more complicated with the configuration of nationalistic history, the making of modern nation-state, the political integration of Guiana within the French orbit and the hegemony of developmental discourse. The project takes the cases of Lao Puan and Khamu communities in Thailand, and that of Amerindians in French Guiana to illustrate how vernacular identifications have negotiated in contest with the ethno-spatial categorization of the Thai State and with the universalist pretension of the French State. Linkages of local history construction, fluid identities, and cultural resurrection as a repertoire struggles are specifically investigated in the context of growing concerns on environmental problems in modern Thailand and of that of distribution of power within the Guianan society. A special emphasis will be given to the answers found by the State and to the territorial public policies implemented in both countries.

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Papers (Background Texts)