Malee Sitthikriengkrai. Suffering, healing, and the contestation of power and knowledge : a case of lead contamination in Klity Lang Village, Kanchanaburi province . Doctoral Degree(Medical and Health Social Sciences). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2007.
Suffering, healing, and the contestation of power and knowledge : a case of lead contamination in Klity Lang Village, Kanchanaburi province
Abstract:
This dissertation is an ethnographic study on the social suffering of the Pwo
Karen villagers of Klity Lang village, Kanchanaburi province, due to the lead
pollution in the Klity stream. It focuses on two main research questions. The first
question examines what the context of suffering is when it is produced and
reproduced. The second question explores the resistance, negotiation, and contestation
from the Pwo Karen in their attempts to overcome their social suffering. Participant
observations and informal and formal interviews including documentary methods were
employed for this study.
This dissertation has three parts. The first part covers the Klity Lang village
history, and in part relates to lead minerals, the floating lead mine, and lead
contamination in Klity stream. The second part deal with the medical profession’s
definition of the tragedy, loss, and illness suffered under the epidemiological concept
as defined by the lead-level in blood tests and surveillance. It examines medical
knowledge, which is a form of power causing the illness sufferer to be powerless. The
third part looks at the contestation and resistance of the Karen, which has been
supported by non government organizations (NGOs) including the media. It gives
narratives on illness definition and representation together with the villagers’
suffering. Furthermore, it criticizes the government’s failure to solve the problem. This
dissertation extends the conceptual framework of Foucault on power/knowledge which
explains how medical knowledge has the power to control people as a “docile body”,
and how it can also produce resistance from people. This dissertation examines how
the medical profession performances produced both the “docile body” and resistance
from the villagers. It explains further why the Karen failed to contest and resist
successfully against the medical profession’s knowledge