ABSTRACT
Upland shifting cultivators such as the Hmong (referred to in Chinese as the Miao) and the Yao of southern China and northern Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand have frequently been criticized for their apparent disregard for, and destruction of, their forest environment. Shifting cultivation itself is often treated as a purely agrarian system, with no necessary or beneficial relationship with the forest. Yet since the early pioneering work of Conklin and Geertz in the Philippines and Indonesia, it has been generally realized that in comparison, for example, with wet rice monoculture, in ecological terms, the most distinctive positive characteristic of swidden agriculture is that it is integrated into and maintains the general structure of the pre-existing natural ecosystem into which it is projected, rather than creating and sustaining one organized along novel lines and displaying novel dynamics. (Geertz 1963)
