Shifting cultivation was examined first by ecological anthropologists from the mid
1950s. These studies usually featured low human population densities, poly cultural
cultivation, and maintenance of both forest species and fallow periods long enough to
allow forest regeneration to take place (Fujisaka 1991). Detailed anthropological
studies, starting with the work by Conklin (1954, 1957 as cited in Cairns and Garrity,
1999:38) in the Philippines, built a much more favorable assessment of shifting
cultivation.
The presented evidences are that it is a rational farming system in the context of the
constraints and opportunities inherent in remote upland areas and they pointed to its
long history as evidence of sustainability. They argued that shifting cultivation is a
land use practice that reflects 1) indigenous knowledge accumulated through trial and
errors, 2) an intricate balance between product harvest and ecological residence, and
3) an impressive degree of agro forestry (Cairns and Garrity, 1999).
Shifting cultivation appears in much of the literature on farming in the tropics as a
distinct group of farming, often associated with specific ethnic groups especially
living in upland areas of Southeast Asia (Mertz et al. 2009). Geertz (1963) illustrates
two types of agricultural system making special reference to Indonesian agricultural
practices that constitutes two types of ecosystem swidden (shifting) and swash
(permanent). He brings out the characteristics of shifting cultivation and these are
high diversity index, cycle of nutrients of between living form, and closed-cover
architecture. He gives a very good description of these characteristics in detail in his
monograph ‘Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia’.
In regard to shifting cultivation, Schneiderman (2010) forwards the concept of
‘Zomaia’ making supporting to the ‘ungoverned nature’ of shifting cultivators
contributed by J. Scott. Schneiderman (2010: 289) writes, “the applicability of the
Zomia concept for social scientific studies of the Himalayan region, with a focus on
the central Himalayas while for both empirical and political reasons the terms Zomia
itself may not entirely appropriate to the Himalayan Massif the analytical imperative
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