Khrongkan annuang ma chak phrarachadamri: kansathapana phraratchamnat nam nai phrabat somdet phrachao yu hua (Royal Projects: The making of King Bhumibol’s Royal Hegemony ) (2007) by Chanida Chitbundid (ISBN: 9789748278575). This is a revision of the author’s Masters thesis, submitted to Thammasat University in 2004 (Faculty of Social Science and Anthroplogy), where it was chosen as the most outstanding thesis of the year. The book analyses the political function of the king’s royal projects.
In his discussion of Handley’s The King Never Smiles at the 10th International Thai Studies Conference, Craig Reynolds referred to this study as one example of critical Thai scholarhsip on the monarchy.
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Her original thesis is also available in .pdf format through the Thammasat political science library.
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A lot of the material in this thesis is available in English in the following publication :
Chitbundid, C, Thulathon, C & Eawsakul, T 2004, ‘The Thai Monarchy and Non-Governmental Organisations’, in S. Shigetomi, K. Tejapira and A. Thongyou (eds), The NGO Way: Perspectives and Experiences from Thailand, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization, Chiba, Japan.
Although some further editing would have been helpful, it is trully a wonderful source of information.
The evolution of the nature and especially the number of royal projects quite surprised me. So I did a little work based on the data presented in http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/1701/tab1.htm, which only span from 1952 to 1980 and is of unknown reliability. It appears the number of royal projects created per year first increased significantly in 1974 (1 yr after 1973….). It went from an average of 2 projects created per year between 1963 and 1973 to 18 between 1974 and 1976. Then, it ‘exploded’ after 1976 with an average of 69 projects/year between 1977 and 1980. The graph it makes illustrate very well the idea that royal projets were motivated, at least in part, by national security concerns.
When I compared this source of information with Chanida’s data, some discrepancy appeared, but the long-term trend looks the same. This might be due to Chanida’s use of a broader definition of ‘royal projects’.
Note also that you can get Chanida’s thesis in pdf format if you can get access to their network (this is not so hard to to).
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Could someone kindly post link to the pdf document please? Thanks.
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[…] several Prawes W. appearance and comments. Royal Hegemony by Chanida Chirbundid (see review at New Mandala: ) will shed some light to readers (who might already know the “network” connection) […]
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