1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910978245203321

Autore

Santikarn Alisa

Titolo

Indigenous Heritage and Identity of the Last Elephant Catchers in Northeast Thailand

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Amsterdam : , : Amsterdam University Press, , 2025

©2025

ISBN

1-04-077509-8

1-003-69794-1

1-04-078465-8

90-485-6200-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (260 pages)

Collana

Asian Heritages ; ; 9

Disciplina

305.895

Soggetti

HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- A Note on Transliteration and Thai Naming Conventions -- List of Abbreviations -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Heritage, Authority, and the Anthropocene -- 3 Formation of Attitudes Towards Indigenous and Ethnic Minority Communities in Thailand—from the Colonial Period to the Cold War -- 4 Constructing the Authorised Environmental Discourse : Territorialisation and Indigeneity in Thailand -- 5 Thailand’s Authorised Heritage Discourse : Identity, Nationalism, and “Good Culture” -- 6 The Kui in Thailand: Identity, (In)Visibility, and (Mis)Recognition -- 7 The Last Elephant Catchers : Cultural Endangerment and the Loss of Knowledge -- 8 New Spaces for the Enactment of Kui Culture : Heritagisation and (Re)Invented Traditions -- 9 Conclusion -- Glossary -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In 2019, when Mew Salangam passed away at 91, newspapers across Thailand described him as belonging to the “last generation of elephant doctors.” Mew was a member of the Kui Ajiang community in Thailand, an Indigenous group living in the Northeast known for catching elephants. Sometime beginning in the 1950s, this practice gradually came to an end. Indigenous Heritage and Identity of the Last Elephant



Catchers in Northeast Thailand examines how the end of elephant catching has affected the heritage and identity of the Kui Ajiang, offering an analysis that calls for close attention to the broader currents of Thai history and the development of Thai environmental and cultural heritage policies. Furthermore, the term Authorised Environmental Discourse (AED) is introduced in tandem with Laurajane Smith’s Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) to portray how heritage embedded in nature and culture reflects impacts of political authority and how a community responds to threats of loss and challenges to the authenticity of its traditions.