Author: Andrew Walker
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299288234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
When a populist movement elected Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister of Thailand in 2001, many of the country’s urban elite dismissed the outcome as just another symptom of rural corruption, a traditional patronage system dominated by local strongmen pressuring their neighbors through political bullying and vote-buying. In Thailand’s Political Peasants, however, Andrew Walker argues that the emergence of an entirely new socioeconomic dynamic has dramatically changed the relations of Thai peasants with the state, making them a political force to be reckoned with. Whereas their ancestors focused on subsistence, this generation of middle-income peasants seeks productive relationships with sources of state power, produces cash crops, and derives additional income through non-agricultural work. In the increasingly decentralized, disaggregated country, rural villagers and farmers have themselves become entrepreneurs and agents of the state at the local level, while the state has changed from an extractor of taxes to a supplier of subsidies and a patron of development projects. Thailand’s Political Peasants provides an original, provocative analysis that encourages an ethnographic rethinking of rural politics in rapidly developing countries. Drawing on six years of fieldwork in Ban Tiam, a rural village in northern Thailand, Walker shows how analyses of peasant politics that focus primarily on rebellion, resistance, and evasion are becoming less useful for understanding emergent forms of political society.
Author: Andrew MacGregor Marshall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783607807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
'Perhaps the best introduction yet to the roots of Thailand's present political impasse. A brilliant book.' Simon Long, The Economist Struggling to emerge from a despotic past, and convulsed by an intractable conflict that will determine its future, Thailand stands at a defining moment in its history. Scores have been killed on the streets of Bangkok. Freedom of speech is routinely denied. Democracy appears increasingly distant. And many Thais fear that the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej is expected to unleash even greater instability. Yet in spite of the impact of the crisis, and the extraordinary importance of the royal succession, they have never been comprehensively analysed – until now. Breaking Thailand's draconian lèse majesté law, Andrew MacGregor Marshall is one of the only journalists covering contemporary Thailand to tell the whole story. Marshall provides a comprehensive explanation that for the first time makes sense of the crisis, revealing the unacknowledged succession conflict that has become entangled with the struggle for democracy in Thailand.
Author: Pasuk Phongpaichit
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
In the last few years, Thailand has emerged as one of the world's most dynamic economies. Yet Thailand is still little known and sparsely written about. This book is the first full-length overview of Thailand's economy and politics. It is based on a wide range of sources in both Thai and English. Its focus is on the second half of the twentieth century, set in a deeper historical context of Siam in the Bangkok era. It plots the transition from rice economy to emerging industrial power, and from absolutist monarchy to one of Asia's most open and lively democracies. The book will be useful for students, interesting for the general reader, and challenging for specialists.
Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814459607
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
What did the 2006 military coup show us? It demonstrated that the crux of the Thai crisis is far more serious and much wider in scope than had previously been thought. The monarchy is surely not a victim in the protracted conflict, but the root cause and continuing factor that has eroded Thai politics. The coup set in motion more prejudicial uses of the lèse-majesté law, and in the process, has led to more political prisoners. It has also shredded the military into several segments, turning generals into desperate royalists who continue to live off the monarchy in order to survive. Issues of violence in the Thai south and the Thai-Cambodian dispute became greatly intensified in the age of militarized politics. The coup also produced unique colour-coded politics and created crises of legitimacy. This book is a collection of essays that reflect developments in Thai politics in the post-coup period.
Author: Federico Ferrara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107061814
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
This book traces the roots of Thailand's political development from 1932 to the present, accounting for the intervening period's political turmoil.
Author: Somchai Phatharathananunth
Publisher: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
"This book is for anyone wondering whatever happened to Thailand's vanished Marxist insurgents or interested in understanding the forces behind the mass demonstrations of peasants that periodically descend on Bangkok. Specifically, the book investigates the struggle of an important social movement in Thailand, the Small Scale Farmers' Assembly of Isan (SSFAI), and examines the role of civil society in the process of democratization.
Author: Herbert P. Phillips
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520378687
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247
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Book Description
Readers interested in the psychology of non-Western peoples will find this volume provocative in both descriptive and theoretical detail. The first book-length study of Thai psychological life, Thai Peasant Personality describes the members of a peasant community whose dominant personality traits are aimed at the maintenance of their individuality, privacy, and sense of self-regard. In addition, it offers suggestions for handling many of the theoretical and technical problems crucial to cross-cultural personality research. Basing his research on two years of fieldwork in the Central Plain community of Bang Chan, Herbert P. Phillips offers a systematic analysis and comparison of two kinds of data: observations of the villagers’ overt behavior in workaday social encounters, and their subjective responses to a special psychological test. Readers will find particular value in his discussion of the design, translation, and implementation of psychological research methods in non-Western cultures. Phillips analyzes the central role of affability and play in the villagers’ daily contacts, their use of politeness as a “social cosmetic,” and the implications of this cosmetic for the inner lives of the Thai. He examines the villagers’ readiness to become involved with others and the links that tie them together over time. He demonstrates how the individualistic tendencies of the Thai intrude on the stability of interpersonal relationships and how all social interactionin Bang Chan is set within a framework of cosmic unpredictability, with human volition only one of several indeterminate and uncontrollable factors in life. This “loosely structured” system of social relationships is seen to have its roots in early childhood, with strong support from both Hinayana Buddhist doctrine and the sociologically simple and undifferentiated nature of Bang Chan society. In presenting the psychological test results, the author examines the villagers’ attitudes toward authority, dependency, and aggression; their anxieties and reactions to crises; and their dominant drives and wishes. These various issues are linked to the theoretical problem of conformity and to the basic human need for privacy and psychological isolation. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.
Author: Robert F. Zimmerman
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814377392
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
This paper examines the three-year attempt by the Thai people to establish a viable democratic political process. It focuses on the primary reasons for their failure: excessive right-left student activism, political polarization, intellectual-academic irresponsibility, status quo conservative and communist inspired subversion of the political process, ineffective civilian political leadership, excessive number of political parties, the impact of communist success in Indochina, and US foreign policy twards Thailand during this period. The paper also examines basic attitudes and patterns of action of traditional Thai political culture that may have indirectly contributed to the failure of democracy in Thailand. A central theme of the paper, however, is that old Thai bureaucratic polity that governed Thailand from 1932 to October 1973 collapsed because its political process could not cope with the rise of new economic and social pressures tht its earlier development 'successes' created. Thailand, in short, is seen as a case study of the hypothesis that long term economic development and political stability cannot occur and be maintained without corresponding development of the political structure and process that ultimately will develop and define the policies and processes most conducive to steady economic and social progress.
Author: Katherine Ann Bowie
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231103916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
In the 1970s, the Thai state organized the Village Scout movement to counter communist insurgency. The movement was soon used to thwart growing demands for democratic reform, recruiting five million members to become the largest mass organization in Thai history, and, mobilized by the military-controlled media, helped topple a civilian government and restore military rule. This book bridges both the macro and micro levels of analysis to place the dynamics of a national political movement within a richly detailed account of its working at the village level.
Author: Christopher John Baker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107420210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
A History of Thailand offers a lively and accessible account of Thailand's political, economic, social and cultural history. This book explores how a world of mandarin nobles and unfree peasants was transformed and examines how the monarchy managed the foundation of a new nation-state at the turn of the twentieth century. The authors capture the clashes between various groups in their attempts to take control of the nation-state in the twentieth century. They track Thailand's economic changes through an economic boom, globalisation and the evolution of mass society. This edition sheds light on Thailand's recent political, social and economic developments, covering the coup of 2006, the violent street politics of May 2010, and the landmark election of 2011 and its aftermath. It shows how in Thailand today, the monarchy, the military, business and new mass movements are players in a complex conflict over the nature and future of the country's democracy.
