Tree hugging revived: the environment, development politics, and religious social protest in Thailand
Document Type Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
In this thesis, I wish to explore these issues by examining the gap between the dominant rhetoric and the ground-level reality. I have chosen to portray the effects is a specific way; focusing them through a "lens," which I have chosen to be the environment. Within the "environmental arena," I focus on the specifIc issue of deforestation in order to expose its accompanying social and economic problems. Why, one might ask, do I choose such as seemingly convoluted route? Why is deforestation such an allencompassing problem anyhow? Why wouldn't rice farmers welcome the huge new open spaces? Why are the villagers so concerned, and the government and technocrats so deaf to their pleas?
This paper has been withdrawn.