ABSTRACT
Over the last decade economic development in the form of rapid and destructive forest exploitation has begun to transform the landscape of Ratanakiri, a remote province in northeast Cambodia. In pre-modern Cambodia, forests were not a contested resource. The logging has had dramatic repercussions for the indigenous highland peoples who are largely dependent on the forests to meet their subsistence needs. The response of the highland villagers toward the logging therefore has to be situated within a wider context of power relations and the constraints imposed by their own social and economic situation. The more overt resistance or negotiation has tended to occur when logging teams arrive without a license and appear to have no official approval for their activities. It can be argued that state efforts to shift perceptions of identity from the colonial subject to the Cambodian citizen in line with the process of nation-building have had a transformative effect on highland peoples.
