Assembling Wildlife into the Politics of Multispecies: the Plow Karen subaltern's Speaking

Abstract

The Plow Karen in Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary has experience infighting for traditional living right from the point of political relationship with the authorities of Thailand that the Plow Karen is considered subaltern. The challenging academic question is "Can The Plow Karen speak from the subaltern status?". The author writes prudent ethnography to the point the Plow Karen has relations in communication with multispecies of wildlife and finds information that the Plow Karen desires to communicate and has relation in communication between self and wildlife, and also has politics of representation. Then the author considers academic matters in subaltern studies and multi/ trans species ethnography and finds that the Plow Karen has devised new traditions to be a device for harmonizing themselves with Thai society for achieving their political objective and it is assimilating to Thai cultural and counteract from being dominated and oppressed. Moreover, the Plow Karen has also changed the negative relationship with foresters, to be colleagues and it lead to the assembling of wildlife cosmology with sophisticated regulations by official conservationists for cultural co-existence with the forest.