Headless Mountain: Poverty Traps Associated with a Long-standing Fight Against Stone Mining of the Khaolaoyai-Phajandai Conservation Group
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Abstract
This paper analyzes key issues related to Khaolaoyai-Phajandai Conservation Group’s long-standing battle against stone mining capitalism. It presents 10 case studies by using a qualitative research method. The study found that their nearly 30-year opposition against the mining management policy has trapped themselves in cross-generational poverty, especially those from poverty-stricken and fragile households due to the deterioration of natural resources producing their food security. They have also lost chances for seeking income and time to care for family members. Having lost their family heads through assassinations has even more reduced their potential to overcome poverty, while giving in to the mining encroachment make them suffer from explosions and indented head of the mountain. This mountain is the symbol of “this place”, having long represented their presence and community identities, which have been being destroyed. Their emotional distress has become a crux of social suffering that is intertwined with economic distress, all of which have already been transmitted across at least three generations.
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