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Wrestling Beetles and Ecological Wisdom: How Insects Contribute to the Cosmopolitics of Northern Thailand *

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Wrestling Beetles and Ecological Wisdom: How Insects Contribute to the Cosmopolitics of Northern Thailand * Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 2, September 2011 Wrestling Beetles and Ecological Wisdom: How Insects Contribute to the Cosmopolitics of Northern Thailand * Stéphane Rennesson** In Northern Thailand, a game that builds upon an uncanny cooperation between human beings and rhinoceros beetles (xylotrupes Gideon) has developed at a high level of refinement and institutionalization. Beetle-fighting is even being widely presented as a marker of the local identity and a local ecological wisdom. In this paper, I will show how it is not so much the coleoptera that symbolize a harmonious connection built by human populations with their natural environment, but rather a question of what happens in the intimate relationship between human beings and insects. Following the way players build on the great alterity between them and the insects, this article will address how the technical and conceptual handling of the beetles shapes pragmatically an original cosmology. It will pay specific attention to the ways players try to connect with their coleopteran by projecting human traits on them and adopting their communication mode. Through these, we can examine how beetles force humans to reflect on their engagement in the world, up to the point where it brings this game onto the stage of political ecology. Keywords: Northern Thailand, beetles, cosmology, ecology, cybernetics, analogy, nature, culture, pragmatism In the campus of Chiang Rai Rajabhat University, one can visit a “museum of life” (phiphithaphan chiwit, พิพิธภัณฑ์ชีวิต). Designed at the end of the twentieth century by local academics, it aims to celebrate the traditional way of life of “Northern Thai people” (khon müang, คนเมือง). Interestingly the museum is structured in two parts where two different practices are exhibited. These practices, thought to be representative of the “Lanna (Thousands of rice fields) culture”—the local culture that flourished in the ancient Principalities situated geographically in the northern part of the contemporary Kingdom * This article is based on three fieldworks. The main one was carried out with Emmanuel Grimaud and Nicolas Césard, with whom I co-authored four articles (2008; 2011; 2012a; 2012b) and an ethnographic film (2013). ** Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC), French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), 179 Wireless Road, Lumphini, Phrathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2019, pp. 3–24 DOI: 10.20495/seas.8.1_3 3 ©Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University 4 S. RENNESSON of Thailand—consist of: the fishing of the famous “Mekong giant catfish” (plaa bük, ปลาบึก, pangasianodon gigas) in the Mekong River; and the fighting competitions of Rhinoceros beetles (xylotrupes Gideon), locally called kwaang กวาง่ , maeng kwaang แมงกวาง่ or maeng khaam แมงคาม. The Mekong giant catfish and Rhinoceros beetles are notably highlighted due to their dramatically decreasing populations: both species are endangered because of the rapid development of the region. It is widely assumed that the building of numer- ous dams in the Mekong basin negatively affects the well-being of the giant catfish, whereas the Rhinoceros beetles are becoming scarcer every year because of deforesta- tion and the intensification of chemical use in commercial crops. The museum was thus designed to claim that the relations with the two species speak in favor of the local wisdom of a “harmonious relationship” (khwaam klomkleun, ความกลมกลืน, khwaam saamakkhi, ความสามัคคี) between human populations and their “natural environment” (singwaetlom, สิ่งแวดล้อม), as opposed to a more predator-like relationship in the western model of development. Through the fishing of the biggest and most sought-after fish of the Mekong River (known for its famously unmatched fat meat and its scarcity), one can understand the regional social life. Fishing in itself is quite complicated and requires a certain level of cooperation among villagers to be effective, thus presenting a good opportunity to celebrate the village collectivity. Moreover, the giant catfish also symbolizes the nourish- ing role of the Mekong River, an idea that is discussed in Yos Santasombat’s book, The River of Life. But what about the beetles mentioned earlier that are not even eaten? They cannot be considered utilitarian animals whose force or part of the body would be useful to people. Further, they seem to have no special aesthetic, religious, or ritual value. Neither are the beetles considered pests that pose a nuisance to the peasants. How, then, could they embody an ecological issue or any local predisposition to a sustainable way of life? Yet the local people emphasize the fact that contrary to the rest of Thailand, they do not eat the beetles but play with them (Cf. Fig. 1). In the local idiom, claiming to be respectful of that mere life form is a way to show a higher level of “civilization” (khwam jaroen, ความเจริญ). However, that strategy of differentiation is still thin, all the more because games involving insects can be found elsewhere, especially in Asia. In Japan for example, all kind of bugs are enrolled in games (Laurent 1997), notably Japanese rhinoceros beetles (allomyrina dichotoma), which are a cousin species of the one in ques- tion here (Hoshina and Takada 2012; Takada 2012). But coming back to our xylotrupes Gideon, it has to be specified that they are found all over Southeast Asia, in Southern Australia, and in the Solomon Islands. Many kids throughout these regions play with insects, notably beetles, especially rhinoceros beetles which are among the favorite Wrestling Beetles and Ecological Wisdom 5 Fig. 1 An Advertisement for a Competition That Met Someone’s Interest (Stéphane Rennesson) bugs alongside stag beetles, for example. However, from the information gathered on the subject, it is only in Northern Thailand that the human–coleoptera relationship has reached such a level of refinement and institutionalization. The great development of the rhinoceros beetle fighting game could support the claim made by all the players I met in Northern Thailand during my fieldwork—especially Khun Pairat, the chairman of an international association of kwaang fighting which he founded himself in the early 1990s—that only “people of Northern Thailand” (khon müang) know the “true and deep nature of the rhinoceros beetle” (thammachaat thae khong kwaang, ธรรมชาติแท้ของกวาง่ ). In that regard, the museum gives insights on the life cycle of the animal and the material culture that emerged from the institutionalization of the game. Visitors can thus appreciate the craftsmanship and the imagination of the locals in their designing of equipment meant to breed, take care of, and play with beetles. Yet it is still difficult to frame the real significance of Pairat’s assertion—how the idea of life links, ecologically speaking, people’s and beetles’ own existences. It actually fails to suggest how the numerous competitions of chon kwaang (ชนกวาง่ ) can stir passions among 6 S. RENNESSON a fair part of the regional masculine population every year between September and November, which is the span of time during which these horned beetles finally emerge from eight months of growth in the soil—from eggs laid by their mothers, to adults ready to breed when they break out in the open air. It especially seems to come short of explain- ing how a game can build a bond between human beings and animals like beetles, such as being eligible to advocate a true ecological stake for local people. As an anthropologist, the main reference in the field of animal fights is the interpre- tative approach Clifford Geertz (1972) put up to analyze Balinese cockfighting. Following Geertz, the game embodies at least a part of what being a Balinese is. Considering Thailand, it is also worth considering the work of Stanley Tambiah (1969), who commit ted a famous and comprehensive study on animal symbolism in Thailand. Both represent authentic landmarks to think how animals have a high potential for identification pro- cesses, and how they may be used as screen on which to project human, sociocultural issues. These works did influence the very existence of this study. Yet, since kwaang amateurs insist on the intimacy one needs to build with their coleopteron for them to be competitive, it may prove too limitative to consider the animals as embedded in a human game and manipulated as symbols in a cultural context to which they are alien. The lines that follow will hopefully show that it is not so much a matter of animal symbolism as it is a question of what each actor of the game brings with him in the playful device. As such, the argument will build on and contribute to the recent development of multispecies studies that consider that humans are only one living form entangled in a web of com- munication and meanings (Candea 2010; Despret 2013; Haraway 2008; Helmreich 2009; Kohn 2007; Raffles 2010; van Dooren et al. 2016).1) Following the players themselves, we shall thus be particularly attentive to the central piece of the game: the rhinoceros beetle and the specific communicational challenge they impose to human players. As it has been demonstrated elsewhere, their random behavior is the keystone of the game (Rennesson et al. 2011; 2012a; 2012b). By expanding the scope of scrutiny, not only observing technical and conceptual handlings of the kwaang during the fight, it will also question the broader meanings of the claim by the players that “they know the deep 1) Lewis Henry Morgan could be regarded as a remote precursor of the multispecies studies that started to flourish from the beginning of the twenty-first century. Strangely enough, it is one of the forefathers of social anthropology who conducted the first comprehensive monography of an animal to prove that every form of animal life shares a common principle of free intelligence. In 1868, Lewis Henry Morgan published The American Beaver and His Works.
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