Women abilities

Abigaël Pesses (1)

1 IRSEA - Institut de recherche sur le sud-est asiatique

This article, based on an ethnographic investigation among Karen communities aims at questioning the role assigned to tribal women in the development policies made in Thailand, and at exploring whether and how the different projects focussing on women's participation in development since the eighties have contributed to extend their activities, mobility and power. By confronting the various concepts and practices of development targeting women from local actors, state institutions, religious representatives or environmentalist NGOs, I intend to show how, from the level of village community to nation-state, women abilities are utilized to serve contrasting cultural or political understandings that emphasize the safeguarding of cultural and ecological patrimonies menaced by the industrial civilisation. On the one hand, women are engaged in the promotion of tribal folklore in the frame of tourism and the cultural national display. On the other hand, they participate in the contest of state development policies by rehabilitating an indigenous corpus of knowledge of which they are partly the holders according to gender division of labour.

Cet article, fondé sur une investigation en milieu montagnard nord-thaïlandais, interroge le rôle attribué aux femmes karen à travers les discours et les pratiques de développement dont elles sont les cibles de la part des institutions, des ONG et des missionnaires bouddhistes et chrétiens.

Mots clés: sustainable development; NGO; Thailand; gender; swidden agriculture; missionnaries; decentralization

Mots clés: Développement durable; décentralisation; participation; groupe de femmes; missionnaires; ONG; essartage; Karen; Thaïlande

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Abigaël Pesses. Women abilities. Taï Culture, 2007, 19, pp.183-196. ⟨hal-00370757⟩