neo-what? self-sufficiency was promulgated before King Bhumibol’s birthday speech on 4 December 1997. Localism, along with self-sufficiency and self-reliance, is a means then by which trans-national ideas may be contested. At another level, it is also a means by which villagers see themselves connected to national imaginings. Lets step back a bit. In a reprinted book, banned shortly after it first came out in Thailand, the revolutionary, royalist Thai-Lao (Isaan) political thinker named Am Bunthai [2543 (2000), Kridaakaan bonthii raabsuung: aandai rot-thaang-kaanmeuang diinak (โThe Successful Merit on the Plateau: To Read and Savour the Good Way of Politicsโ), first published 2476 (1933), Bangkok: Amarin Printing and Publishing Company] recalled a basic cultural identity for Thais based on the nostalgia of rurality and face-to-face smallscale community. Am was a scholarship-holding agricultural school teacher from Ubon Ratchanani who sought election to the new House of Representatives in the post-revolutionary government in 1933. However, he was arrested during the social and political upheavals the same year the book was published as he was associated with the failed Boworadet coup in the same year. Am, who died of mistreatment in prison in 1940, was a committed reformer, idealist and visionary concerned with improving civil society based on the virtues of endogenous rural Thai traditions. He emphasized the dynamic relationship between state and society and the importance of a multi-tiered system of participation and local autonomy. At that time he noted the importance of an integrated village-based culture (watthanatham chao-baan), traditional mutual assistance, and an alternative economics embedded in the wider social order. No one can delink from the wider global forces, something even the king acknowledged if you read his past speeches. It was Thaksin alone who was the only political leader able to put this concept into effective practice and show how rural folks can improve their lot through capacity building, empowerment and local-global market linkages-beyond mere rhetoric and pork barrelling of Chuan’s time…This is also why civil society hate Thaksin: they could not achieve a fraction of what he did in his first term towards achieving this end. Jealousies. NGOs & urban intellectuals could only talk the talk, but could not, and did not want to enable the villagers to walk by themselves as many were afraid of losing their patronages to certain amaart powers. Similar confusion within the Ministry of Interior’s then changing CDD administration and responsibilities. The pace of change was too fast for many at the centre but not fast enough for the peasantry at the turn of the century…
The high crime rate in upper New York or in Detroit does not mean that even 10% of the people, walking past those cities will be robbed or killed.
The fact that you have mingled with these people in that intersection does not mean those area are as safe as other typical areas in Bangkok.
The fact that the reds have harassed, threatened, and attacked Bangkokkians who they simply felt they disliked naturally makes many people here feel unsafe.
The fact that you are a farang and thus the inclination of Thais, no matter red or yellow, to give you a better treatment and the potential assumptions by them that you have a neutral or friendly political opinion further weakens your argument that it is safe to be among the reds and Bangkokian overreacted or egoistics.
I doubt that when Bangkokians say ‘bad people/violent place’ they mean you/they’re likely to get hurt going there. Only that it is much less safe.
Please do not use the very small piece of information to conclude on a very big picture.
You guys hate the sufficiency economy because “they” love it… and because it is a hateful idea to hard-core neo-liberals like yourselves.
In fact a devolution of nearly everything essential to the local level is exactly what the entire world, not just Thailand, needs economically, politically, socially, spiritually…
The far-right in Thailand surely does have its own “take” on the so-called sufficiency economy.. but you smarmy, self-satisfied neo-liberals make puke…not just want to puke. Excuse me.
Well, you guys can root for your “sides” in a civil war, It’ll probably be well-reported, in safety, from Australia. The better for you all to cluck-cluck, and tsk-tsk about.
I’d be a lot happier if the general Thai population would sand up and “just say no”!
No to these neo-nazi ISOC guys and the Democrat Party, who seem now to be inextricably melded and just to the left of Tul Lysenko and rest of the “enlightenment” at Chulalonkorn.
Um… My first comment didn’t come up. [We do sleep sometimes Jay. AW]
Anyway, it is too negative for me in the sense that the “term” try to attack the royalist, similar to the royalist and elites attack on Thaksin on Thaksinomics.
I don’t think Chula’s people were over react from the immage of red shirts created by mass medias. They were in the middle of the mob long enough to see, hear and fear from what they have seen by their own eyes and finally they were threat in their hospitals while they were working. I have heard lots of information from people in the incidence and I think it was well deserved to be scared. What would you feel if your little sisters were verbal sexual harrassed while they were in the white uniform.
I’m Bangkoknain who has parents from bannok as well. I think the judgement (from social network people and many others (or what you defined as yuppies, snops or whatever) toward the Red Shirts was not because they are bannok, poor , smelly or less educated. Rather they were not accepted by the way they behaved: -law breaking, violence, rude, mafia behaviors. We respect their right for peacful protest, expressing their polical, economical or social demand (which many other groups had done before e.g. famer mob, dam protester mob etc) BUT we cannot accept them (to be more preceisely the Red Leaders, their behind the scene manipulaters and their Red Guard ganster) for threating (verbal, mental and physical), breaking all the laws and many other uncivilized behaviors.
I believed that many others (including me) who do not support the Red also do not support the Yellow. They were both the embarssment of Thai history.
now semantics in this case are important! I assume this as another form of thai localism; or a guided democracy- orchestrated or guided of course by the elites in their own interests. The problem is that ordinary folk now know something about what democracy means in practical terms that affect their livelihoods, rights, and opportunities, because they have tasted it first-hand during the Thaksin’s government. Too late to shut the door now!
I think this is defined more as poking fun at an elderly, unwell man who is not in a position to defend himself, rather than worthy academic debate. Personally I think the King’s concept of sufficiency economy made sense when it was applied in its original sense to farmers who often suffered as a result of using all their land to grow cash crops, which could collapse in price, within leaving any land fallow to regenerate or digging a pond for irrigation. The idea was, admittedly, done to death and made to appear ridiculous by the Sarayud administration by peolple like Sarayud himself, whose knowledge of economics could be conveniently inscribed on the reverse of a standard size postage stamp. However, if you remember, Somkid Jatusripitak who interrupted a career as a professor of marketing to become Thai Rak Thai’s leading economic guru, also jumped on the sufficiency economy bandwagon and was appointed by the Sarayud government as head of a government commitee to teach sufficiency economics.
Thaksin’s early economic ideas also seemed to have borrowed heavily from the sufficiency economy concept. He was a harsh critic of the IMF’s conditions involving opening up the economy more to foreign investment and made it clear that he would rather depend less on foreign investment in order to protect Thailand’s wealthy business owners at the expense of ordinary consumers who were, as a consequence, denied employment and training opportunities and obliged to pay more for inferior quality goods and services. He also made a song and a dance of repaying the IMF early without drawing attention to the fact that Thailand derived no benefit from this since all IMF conditions had already been satisfied by the Chuan government. Interestingly he is now extolling the benefits of foreign investment, to countries as Montenegro, Nicaragua, Uganda and Cambodian.
“the protest areas are in some cultural respects a big improvement over jams of expensive cars and import luxury stores” >> Could not help but nod in ambivalent agreement at this remark.
You are obliged to withdraw claims of coinage. Thailand’s potentate created the concept from whole cloth and duly formulated all related terms. Just as he remains unrivalled as yachtsman, photographer, rainmaker and developer of biofuels, our liege lord possesses rhetorical powers that know no bounds. Some say he invented language itself. Only the nice words though.
[…] process, which is extremely taboo in Thailand. Please do head over and read it yourself. Also see The New Mandala’s analysis of the Economist article, as well as the lively discussion going on in the […]
[…] Nick’s photo set on The New Mandala entitled Bangkok or Bust, Part 1 is extremely interesting and has inspired a serious amount of disturbing vitriol in the comments. […]
I always used to think of what happened here as cargo cult democracy, cf. Richard Feynman’s cargo cult science.
From his commencement address at Caltech:
” In the
South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s
the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but
they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
Like the cargo cult, the stage props are all in place, the parliament, the constitutional court, the parties, the campagins, the political columnists discussing those campagins… and yet democracy never lands.
[…] – There is a long fiirst-hand account of the violence near Khao San by Nicolas Day at New Mandala: War at Khao San – Nirmal Ghosh on the Spiral of Violence in Bangkok yesterday. – The New York Times on […]
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“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
neo-what? self-sufficiency was promulgated before King Bhumibol’s birthday speech on 4 December 1997. Localism, along with self-sufficiency and self-reliance, is a means then by which trans-national ideas may be contested. At another level, it is also a means by which villagers see themselves connected to national imaginings. Lets step back a bit. In a reprinted book, banned shortly after it first came out in Thailand, the revolutionary, royalist Thai-Lao (Isaan) political thinker named Am Bunthai [2543 (2000), Kridaakaan bonthii raabsuung: aandai rot-thaang-kaanmeuang diinak (โThe Successful Merit on the Plateau: To Read and Savour the Good Way of Politicsโ), first published 2476 (1933), Bangkok: Amarin Printing and Publishing Company] recalled a basic cultural identity for Thais based on the nostalgia of rurality and face-to-face smallscale community. Am was a scholarship-holding agricultural school teacher from Ubon Ratchanani who sought election to the new House of Representatives in the post-revolutionary government in 1933. However, he was arrested during the social and political upheavals the same year the book was published as he was associated with the failed Boworadet coup in the same year. Am, who died of mistreatment in prison in 1940, was a committed reformer, idealist and visionary concerned with improving civil society based on the virtues of endogenous rural Thai traditions. He emphasized the dynamic relationship between state and society and the importance of a multi-tiered system of participation and local autonomy. At that time he noted the importance of an integrated village-based culture (watthanatham chao-baan), traditional mutual assistance, and an alternative economics embedded in the wider social order. No one can delink from the wider global forces, something even the king acknowledged if you read his past speeches. It was Thaksin alone who was the only political leader able to put this concept into effective practice and show how rural folks can improve their lot through capacity building, empowerment and local-global market linkages-beyond mere rhetoric and pork barrelling of Chuan’s time…This is also why civil society hate Thaksin: they could not achieve a fraction of what he did in his first term towards achieving this end. Jealousies. NGOs & urban intellectuals could only talk the talk, but could not, and did not want to enable the villagers to walk by themselves as many were afraid of losing their patronages to certain amaart powers. Similar confusion within the Ministry of Interior’s then changing CDD administration and responsibilities. The pace of change was too fast for many at the centre but not fast enough for the peasantry at the turn of the century…
Thongchai Winichakul on the Red “germs”
Juan Carlos,
The high crime rate in upper New York or in Detroit does not mean that even 10% of the people, walking past those cities will be robbed or killed.
The fact that you have mingled with these people in that intersection does not mean those area are as safe as other typical areas in Bangkok.
The fact that the reds have harassed, threatened, and attacked Bangkokkians who they simply felt they disliked naturally makes many people here feel unsafe.
The fact that you are a farang and thus the inclination of Thais, no matter red or yellow, to give you a better treatment and the potential assumptions by them that you have a neutral or friendly political opinion further weakens your argument that it is safe to be among the reds and Bangkokian overreacted or egoistics.
I doubt that when Bangkokians say ‘bad people/violent place’ they mean you/they’re likely to get hurt going there. Only that it is much less safe.
Please do not use the very small piece of information to conclude on a very big picture.
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
And Australia has a “sufficiency free press.”
I lay claim to that coining that one.
Thongchai Winichakul on the Red “germs”
At this point I still hope Ajarn Thongchai come back to respond to Somsak and the others.
I also hope to hear some responses from Federico Ferrara.
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
You guys hate the sufficiency economy because “they” love it… and because it is a hateful idea to hard-core neo-liberals like yourselves.
In fact a devolution of nearly everything essential to the local level is exactly what the entire world, not just Thailand, needs economically, politically, socially, spiritually…
The far-right in Thailand surely does have its own “take” on the so-called sufficiency economy.. but you smarmy, self-satisfied neo-liberals make puke…not just want to puke. Excuse me.
Thai military intelligence in action
Well, you guys can root for your “sides” in a civil war, It’ll probably be well-reported, in safety, from Australia. The better for you all to cluck-cluck, and tsk-tsk about.
I’d be a lot happier if the general Thai population would sand up and “just say no”!
No to these neo-nazi ISOC guys and the Democrat Party, who seem now to be inextricably melded and just to the left of Tul Lysenko and rest of the “enlightenment” at Chulalonkorn.
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
Um… My first comment didn’t come up. [We do sleep sometimes Jay. AW]
Anyway, it is too negative for me in the sense that the “term” try to attack the royalist, similar to the royalist and elites attack on Thaksin on Thaksinomics.
๐
Thongchai Winichakul on the Red “germs”
I don’t think Chula’s people were over react from the immage of red shirts created by mass medias. They were in the middle of the mob long enough to see, hear and fear from what they have seen by their own eyes and finally they were threat in their hospitals while they were working. I have heard lots of information from people in the incidence and I think it was well deserved to be scared. What would you feel if your little sisters were verbal sexual harrassed while they were in the white uniform.
I’m Bangkoknain who has parents from bannok as well. I think the judgement (from social network people and many others (or what you defined as yuppies, snops or whatever) toward the Red Shirts was not because they are bannok, poor , smelly or less educated. Rather they were not accepted by the way they behaved: -law breaking, violence, rude, mafia behaviors. We respect their right for peacful protest, expressing their polical, economical or social demand (which many other groups had done before e.g. famer mob, dam protester mob etc) BUT we cannot accept them (to be more preceisely the Red Leaders, their behind the scene manipulaters and their Red Guard ganster) for threating (verbal, mental and physical), breaking all the laws and many other uncivilized behaviors.
I believed that many others (including me) who do not support the Red also do not support the Yellow. They were both the embarssment of Thai history.
More Secrets, Trickery, and Camouflage
Would be good to get these books translated into English, wouldn’t it?
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
now semantics in this case are important! I assume this as another form of thai localism; or a guided democracy- orchestrated or guided of course by the elites in their own interests. The problem is that ordinary folk now know something about what democracy means in practical terms that affect their livelihoods, rights, and opportunities, because they have tasted it first-hand during the Thaksin’s government. Too late to shut the door now!
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
I think this is defined more as poking fun at an elderly, unwell man who is not in a position to defend himself, rather than worthy academic debate. Personally I think the King’s concept of sufficiency economy made sense when it was applied in its original sense to farmers who often suffered as a result of using all their land to grow cash crops, which could collapse in price, within leaving any land fallow to regenerate or digging a pond for irrigation. The idea was, admittedly, done to death and made to appear ridiculous by the Sarayud administration by peolple like Sarayud himself, whose knowledge of economics could be conveniently inscribed on the reverse of a standard size postage stamp. However, if you remember, Somkid Jatusripitak who interrupted a career as a professor of marketing to become Thai Rak Thai’s leading economic guru, also jumped on the sufficiency economy bandwagon and was appointed by the Sarayud government as head of a government commitee to teach sufficiency economics.
Thaksin’s early economic ideas also seemed to have borrowed heavily from the sufficiency economy concept. He was a harsh critic of the IMF’s conditions involving opening up the economy more to foreign investment and made it clear that he would rather depend less on foreign investment in order to protect Thailand’s wealthy business owners at the expense of ordinary consumers who were, as a consequence, denied employment and training opportunities and obliged to pay more for inferior quality goods and services. He also made a song and a dance of repaying the IMF early without drawing attention to the fact that Thailand derived no benefit from this since all IMF conditions had already been satisfied by the Chuan government. Interestingly he is now extolling the benefits of foreign investment, to countries as Montenegro, Nicaragua, Uganda and Cambodian.
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
Let’s not forget he also invented dams and floodgates- “by observing how a monkey fills its mouth with banana before swallowing”, so the story goes.
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
You may claim as the first person who introduce the term “sufficiency democracy” but the difinition MUST be negotiate.
I claim that my King’s speech in 2003 has introduce the “exisiting” of sufficiency in the democracy way of political governing.
He said “ัโฃะัโะณัโโัโฃะัโะฝัโะัโะซัโะัโะัโะณัโะฝัโะัโะงัโโัโฃะัโะัโะปัโะตัโโัโะฒ ัโะคัโฃะัโโัโะฉัโะทัโโคัโะัโโัโะัโโัโะณัโะฑัโโัโะฉัโะัโฃะัโะฑัโโกัโะฎัโะฝัโฃะัโะฎัโโกัโะฒัโะัโฃะัโะปัโะฑัโโัโะฝัโะฉัโะัโโัโะฉ ัโะฎัโโฃัโะคัโะฆัโโขัโะัโะณัโโัโะ ัโะธัโโัโะบัโะฅัโะณัโฃะ ัโฃะัโะธัโะณัโะนัโะ ัโะธัโโัโะบัโะฅัโะณัโฃะัโะัโฃะัโะฑัโโกัโะณัโโัโะ ัโะธัโโัโะบัโะฅัโะณัโฃะัโะฎัโะฝัโฃะัโะฎัโโกัโะฒัโะัโฃะัโะปัโะฑัโโัโะฝัโะฉัโะัโโัโะฉ ัโฃะัโะฑัโฃะัโะัโโัโฃะัโะฉัโะัโโัโะงัโโัโฃะัโะปัโฃะัโฃะัโะตัโโัโฃะัโะงัโโัโฃะัโะซัโะปัโะฑัโะค ัโะงัโโกัโฃะัโะฎัโโฃัโะคัโะฉัโโกัโฃะัโะฅัโโัโะตัโฃะัโะฝัโะฑัโฃะัโะปัโฃะัโฃะัโะัโฃะัโโัโฃะัโะัโะทัโฃะัโโ ัโฃะัโะปัโฃะัโะฎัโะฝัโฃะัโะฎัโโกัโะฒัโะัโฃะัโะฑัโฃะัโฃะัโะัโฃะัโฃะัโะธัโะณัโะนัโะ ัโะัโโคัโะ ัโฃะัโะซัโฃะัโะฉัโะัโะทัโโัโะฑัโะัโโคัโะค ัโฃะัโะปัโฃะัโะบัโโัโะฑัโโัโะณัโะฆัโะงัโโัโะฝัโโัโฃะัโะณัโะฝัโะฒัโโฃัโฃะัโฃะัโะคัโฃะ ” (paragraph 41)
http://irrigation.rid.go.th/rid15/ppn/Datebook/Datebook2546/King%20Birrhday%202003.htm
Basicly, he said that there are ideas of “sufficiancy” in government, education, politics and so on.
So you know that, during those years Thais tend to put sufficiency into many things hmmmm…. almost everything.
๐
Thongchai Winichakul on the Red “germs”
#77
“the protest areas are in some cultural respects a big improvement over jams of expensive cars and import luxury stores” >> Could not help but nod in ambivalent agreement at this remark.
Anderson’s article can be freely downloaded (as part of the entire issue of BCAS) at http://criticalasianstudies.org/assets/files/bcas/v09n03.pdf
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
You are obliged to withdraw claims of coinage. Thailand’s potentate created the concept from whole cloth and duly formulated all related terms. Just as he remains unrivalled as yachtsman, photographer, rainmaker and developer of biofuels, our liege lord possesses rhetorical powers that know no bounds. Some say he invented language itself. Only the nice words though.
The Economist stomps on some media taboos
[…] process, which is extremely taboo in Thailand. Please do head over and read it yourself. Also see The New Mandala’s analysis of the Economist article, as well as the lively discussion going on in the […]
“Bangkok or bust, Part 1” in Thai
[…] Nick’s photo set on The New Mandala entitled Bangkok or Bust, Part 1 is extremely interesting and has inspired a serious amount of disturbing vitriol in the comments. […]
“Sufficiency democracy” – my contribution to political science vocabulary?
I always used to think of what happened here as cargo cult democracy, cf. Richard Feynman’s cargo cult science.
From his commencement address at Caltech:
” In the
South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s
the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but
they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.”
Like the cargo cult, the stage props are all in place, the parliament, the constitutional court, the parties, the campagins, the political columnists discussing those campagins… and yet democracy never lands.
War at Khao San
[…] – There is a long fiirst-hand account of the violence near Khao San by Nicolas Day at New Mandala: War at Khao San – Nirmal Ghosh on the Spiral of Violence in Bangkok yesterday. – The New York Times on […]
The Embassy and the ABC
I don’t think the embassy had much choice, even though they knew what the reaction would be.