ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Isan (Thai-Lao) farmers in Northeast Thailand express themselves within the notions of Thai Buddhism as well as international environmentalism in order to negotiate the terms of interaction between themselves and forest resource management authorities. 1 Every time Ban Nong Wai Ngam people of Ubonrachatani province of Northeast Thailand interact locally with forest officers on an everyday basis around issues of forest protection, conservation and management, they produce new oppositional arguments and use them in disguised and open resistance to hinder the spread of commercial eucalyptus plantations. They invert the terms and categories of forest authorities and structure them to assert their own rights to pursue their traditional patterns of resource use, and also to make their voice heard beyond the reaches of the local community. The central argument is that local environmentalism is resistance ideology which in itself is dressed in conservationist terms (e.g. Turton 1984; Scott 1985).
