Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss 
Chris Baker has reviewed my new book, Thailand’s Political Peasants, for the Bangkok Post. Here are some extracts. The full review is available here.
[Ban Tiam], the subject of Thailand’s Political Peasants, is a community of 130 households in the west of Chiang Mai province. It is not a village in the old sense. The families grow rice, maize, and garlic, but they make most of their livelihood elsewhere. About a quarter have a business. Two-fifths do some work for government. A third have a family member working in Bangkok or farther afield. …These …. changes have converted villagers into what Walker terms “political peasants”. Prosperity has endowed them with new needs and aspirations.
Dealing with the power and patronage of the state is key to fulfilling those needs and aspirations. While Thai villagers were once believed to be remote from politics, and some imagine that still to be true, Walker is bent on exploding that notion for ever.
But the new rural politics has its own unique character. Walker suggests that a good way to understand this character is to appreciate how villagers deal with the gods and spirits that determine good and bad fortune in everything from health to harvest. These spirits must be seduced by offerings and flattered with rituals so that their considerable powers are tamed and directed to benign ends.
Bureaucrats, politicians and big agribusiness groups are much the same. They have powers that can either bring good or do harm. They must be seduced by offerings and flattered with rituals too. This means courting the locally powerful, but also becoming involved in electoral politics in the locality, province and nation.
“The central element in the political strategy of this middle-income peasantry is to weave the power and resources of the state into the economic and social fabric of village society.”
Walker borrows the term “political society” to describe the result. In contrast to “civil society” which is full of rules and institutions, political society is all about connections, manipulation, bargaining, deals, expediency – a kind of free-for-all, more like all-in wrestling than rule-bound Olympic boxing. …
Possibly the story would look a little different if told from the perspective of the northeast or the migrant communities of the capital or even Chiang Mai city. Possibly the term “peasant” is misleading. Possibly Walker focuses too much on economic variables to the almost complete exclusion of the cultural dramas of politics. But there is no doubt this book is a landmark that will be required reading for anyone trying to understand Thailand’s new politics, and a stimulus for debate and controversy for some time to come.
Watching “Seven Samurai” years ago was a revelation to me in understanding Asian peasantry. They may not have the social position or the big guns but they learn how to manipulate a social structure using what they have to ensure long term survival. Darwinism in action.
With the advent of media communications in the 60’s, the western influenced and financed “hearts and minds” policies managed to maintain the sakdina status quo. The advent of global communications has been a game changer managed successfully by Thaksin to date. In the long run I suspect they take what he offers, and a lot more besides…
0
0
I think I’ll pass AW’s peasant book.
A story about peasants who’re living nearly well, who are not paying (and not being chased for) his taxes, who are modern and who eagerly look forward to positively engaging (not confronting or assaulting) his political boss(es) will be plain dull reading.
I prefer reading about starving angry peasants being squeezed for more taxes who will be led to rebellion by a Jatuporn, or a Robin Hood.
0
0
Thanks Vichai. Good point – peasant stereotypes are often much more appealing than reality. AW
0
0
Ah yes indeed. The noble savage is never quite so noble when viewed close-up, and the primitive community that has ‘secret’ knowledge about medicines or spirituality never quite does.
Its all a part of the human quest to impose meaning on things and to find a non-existent rationale for stuff.
Some folk follow a rich guru who dresses in orange, others follow a kleptomanic ‘king’
Who can tell which is better?
0
0
To be truthful AW, in the final analysis we all of ‘peasant stock’ are we not?
You overly romanticize the peasant as if their lives are improving when in truth the modern peasant is probably more miserable that a peasant of 100, 50 years or 25 years ago. I surmise a guess that because of the ‘materialistic’ lure (sophistication?), today’s Thai peasants are more up to their necks in debts than their fathers or grandfathers ever were.
My great grand father, I was told, had a small paddy land (it is still there in my brother’s care) plus he augmented his income as a sort of blacksmith forging metals by hand for gates, staircases etc. His son (my father) detested farm nor smith work and moved to the city, did many odd jobs to support himself while he studied, worked himself to be court lawyer then a small judge. My father hated being a peasant and made a huge effort to make sure his sons won’t be.
A peasant who hates being a peasant is good sign. A peasant who likes his life as a peasant is either lazy, dumb or just drunk most of the time.
0
0
Frederick the Great said, “Had I the good fortune to be born an ordinary person, I would never be a lawyer. It is better to have only one shirt for one’s back and to be an honest man.”
0
0
I think your “guess” about peasants being more miserable 50 or 100 years ago would be just that. By any measure health, welfare, living conditions, access to clean water, life expectancy, economic opportunity……. lives have improved for thai farmers. Their children aren’t dying of malnutrition and diarrohea for a start.
0
0
Yes I was guessing Matt. And if your “…By any measure health, welfare, living conditions, access to clean water, life expectancy, economic opportunity……. lives have improved for thai farmers (peasants)” is the truth … then that must mean the violence, the spleen and the boiling hatred by the Thai Red Shirts had been misplaced, unwarranted and due to misdirection and outright lies by their leaders? Because what Thailand had/has been witnessing these past few years and continuing were/are clearly the Thai peasants in revolt.
0
0
I think that Thai peasants are definitely angry and frustrated in a lot of cases. This is not however in my view because they want to return to their past conditions or that they feel they were better off 50 or 100 years ago. They want to feel they are getting an equal share of the benefits of Thailand’s economic growth and modernity now in the present. The improvements they have experienced in their standard of living while substantial they may see as being small compared to that experienced by urban Thais.
0
0
‘. . . Angry and frustrated’ tinged with touches of covetousness at neighbors with larger/greener yards describes not only Thai peasants Mr. Matt but the whole human universe. Peasants who are living well and much improved (than their fathers/grandfathers); are not oppressed and with all the freedom in the “pursuits of happiness” do NOT rise up in revolt (w/ bombings, killings and arson) out of envy and covetousness. Not Thai Buddhist peasants …
They are being manipulated and lied to (by their Red leaders) … the Thai Buddhist peasants to embrace the Red Shirts ideology of hatred is what is happening in those Red villages.
0
0
I have a large number of relatives who could be loosely described as “peasants”. Some of them are lazy, dumb and drunk some of the time. Most of them are, unsurprisingly, smart, aware and industrious.
I know a number of educated Thai academics. Some of them are lazy, dumb and drunk some of the time, which is also unsurprising.
0
0
I agree, the people I know out here meet the same descriptions, you cannot lump all of the people in a class together with a generality.
0
0
What I have learned about Thai villagers is how well they cope with very little they have..a pity people who have a lot still think they need more…this is a world problem ..
Jayzee summed it up well .. the villagers need water/elect/gas/healthcare kept at low rates and a fair rice price for their efforts then Thailand will benefit.
The new generations should then have a chance.
0
0
” … and a fair (rice) price for their efforts …” is Rock’s golden wish for the Thai peasants.
Good grief Rock! Don’t you realize that’s what the whole world is wishing for? But too bad (but good for consumers) … ‘the market dictates and the market is not usually fair’.
Define “fair price” anyway. By the law of economics, competition quickly grows in skewedly inefficiently priced products (agricultural or otherwise) to make them ‘fairer’ (meaning not overly remunerative).
0
0
I believe (ahem) that people (peasants or otherwise) who are lazy and drunk most of the time lack a zest in life, that elusive inspiration to jump high up early from their beds every mornings ready to do battle. Only ‘sincere avarice’ could give that zest.
President Obama, like a true academic, continue to defame avarice as ‘poverty of ambition’. ‘Poverty of ambition’ my ass! I suspect President Obama had not met any of New Mandala’s ‘political peasants’.
0
0