Atmospheric Zomia: Revisiting Upland Southeast Asia under Anthropocene Conditions

Abstract

This engagement revisits Willem van Schendel’s (2002) and James C. Scott’s (2009) depiction of Zomia under Anthropocene conditions. Zomia is a vast area of 2.5 million square kilometers, where approximately 100 million minority people lives. Historically, these ethnic groups have relied on altitude and the friction of the terrain to escape the authority of modern states and remain ungoverned. Since the late-nineteenth century, however, the area has increasingly been enclosed by these states, which has led to greater control of the populace through different kinds of economic policies and biopolitical apparatuses. With reference to recent concerns with uncontrollable upland burning, massively extractive plantations, and regionwide material itineraries (Jensen 2021; Sangkhamanee 2021) of smog over the northern Thai provinces (PM 2.5 refers to particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller. They are a significant concern in the context of air pollution due to their ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and even enter the bloodstream). I offer a perspective on one remote part of Southeast Asia, which considers it as a critical zone where many entanglements together redefine the ontological composition and cross-boundary effects of the area. This Anthropocene anarchism does not quite match Scott’s (2009, 7) Zomian image of human-centered ungovernability of ethnic groups, and state inability to govern such ‘shatter zones.’ Rather, as a consequence of Plantationocene (Barua, Martín, and Achtnich 2023; Chao 2022a) and Capitalocene (Haraway 2015, 2016; Moore 2016, 2017) entanglements, fine dust particles embark on material itineraries that transform the area and produce effects from the plantations and all the way back to the state-centers. In this manner, atmospheric Zomia traces new ecological lines between state territoriality, capitalism, and life on the fringes of Southeast Asia (Cassaniti 2022).