The Visibility of Selected Governance: The Daily Governance of the Smilan Moken Ethnic Group Under Protected Areas, Tourism, and Digital Intervention

Abstract

Marine protected areas are often promoted as institutional solutions that align biodiversity conservation with tourism development and the cultural recognition of Indigenous peoples. Yet, when governance becomes highly visible—through infrastructure, signage, schooling facilities, and identity administration—justice does not necessarily become more achievable in everyday life. This article examines how environmental justice can remain fragile under a dense assemblage of protected-area regulation, tourism economy, and digital mediation in the Moken community located within Mu Ko Surin National Park. Using a qualitative design based on field observation, limited semi-structured interviews, and analysis of governance artifacts, the study develops two analytic concepts: selective governance and layered accessibility. Findings show that institutional presence frequently prioritizes what is measurable, displayable, and administratively legible, while shifting key livelihood costs onto households through travel time, opportunity loss, procedural opacity, and unequal capacities to activate rights. In this context, injustice appears less as outright exclusion and more as the erosion of lived time, the contraction of choice, and the weakening of intergenerational futures. The article concludes by proposing evaluative criteria for protected-area governance that move beyond inclusion metrics toward usability, temporal continuity, and capability-based accessibility.