Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how human futures with rivers are constituted in northern Thailand in the aftermath of natural disasters like floods and amidst the imminent threat of state dam development plans.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how human futures with rivers are constituted in northern Thailand in the aftermath of natural disasters like floods and amidst the imminent threat of state dam development plans. In 2011, Thailand's rivers demonstrated their irrepressibility in unprecedented floods that crippled major economic sectors, inundated broad swaths of the nation, and displaced over 8 million people at least temporarily. The floods compelled the government to design a 350 billion baht (US $11.5 billion) water management plan including 21 new dams that would irrevocably alter the Thai waterscape and the human lives and livelihoods tied to it. In the face of imminent displacement, raw mai opayop or "we will not move" has become a galvanizing mantra for a collection of communities on the Yom River as they boldly resist the construction of a large-scale dam that would displace them and drown their rice paddies, orchards, and a protected golden teak forest. In this paper, I examine how community laws, animist spiritual practices, and global climate change discourses converge to form local strategies for resistance. I argue that through these resistance strategies, people on the Yom River not only make political and physical claims on the future of Thai rivers, but also constitute themselves as global citizens whose potentialities and vitalities emerge through their entanglements with local waters.