Last week I was talking to a woman in a rural village in Chiang Mai province. She had eloquent views on the subject of sufficiency economy. For her it meant “khon jon yuu pen khon jon, khon ruay yuu pen khon ruay” (the poor stay poor, the rich stay rich). To this she added an interesting insight. She said that the policy was, in effect, discouraging rural people from seeking higher education (rian sung). In her view urban Thais felt threatened by the influx of educated rural youngsters into the labour market (her own daughter had recently graduated and obtained urban employment). Sufficiency economy, in her eyes, was an attempt to shelter urbanites from the educational and occupational competition generated by hardworking and diligent rural students. An interesting contribution to the sufficiency economy debate.
The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich
February 4th, 2007 by Andrew Walker · 40 Comments
Tags: Sufficiency Economy · Thailand
40 responses so far ↓
1 Vichai N // Feb 4, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Awwww shucks Andrew Walker!
You went all the way the boondocks and chased around the villages of Thailand for days (or is it weeks?) to trace one woman to give THAT interpretation of HMK’s Sufficiency Economy? Surely she could have told you too what she thought of Thaksinomics.
After all now Thaksin has come out at Time magazine openly praising his Toxinomics versus HMKI’s Sufficiency. And right on time your village woman gave her wonderful view on that very subject.
I really believe you are not earning your ’sufficiency stipend’ from the paymaster Andrew Walker.
2 nganadeeleg // Feb 4, 2007 at 1:50 pm
The distortion continues….it seems vested interest contributes to the distortion (on all sides).
Poor stay poor, Rich get richer is the way of the world – irrespective of whether the country is democratic, capitalist, globalized or not.
I fail to see how hard working and diligent rural students is in any way incompatible with the sufficiency theory of moderation, reasonableness, immunity etc.
Any proponents of the sufficieny economy who argue otherwise should be taken to task and exposed as hippocrits.
3 Vichai N // Feb 4, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Why did you NOT challenge that wonderful village woman why she believed ‘Sufficiency Economy’ was meant to discourage the rurals from seeking educational or job advancement at the cities?
As an eminent anthropologist and academician Andrew Walker your curiousity should have been peeked by such eloquence coming from the boondocks.
And yet you were sufficiently sated by THAT woman’s suffiency reply . .
knock knock anybody home? Andrew wants your learned opinion on this subject of Sufficiency . . . . .
4 Srithanonchai // Feb 4, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Surely, sufficiency economy, at an individual level, doesn’t support initiative and expanding one’s opportunities. After all, it stresses to be content with the modest means one has.
5 Hew // Feb 4, 2007 at 2:36 pm
HMK’s sufficiency economy does not exactly encourage people to have “ideas above their station”.
6 Vichai N. // Feb 4, 2007 at 2:38 pm
The villagers are much smarter than Srithanonchai or Andrew Walker give them credit for. That village woman gave Andrew the reply he was begging for . . that was smart to get rid of the pest.
When it comes to feeding the stomach and getting the children basic education and other tools to reach their potential and to encourag their children to excel, mothers don’t refer to Sufficiency Economy or Thaksinomics but to sweet common sense.
But anthropologist Andrew Walker will trek all the way to the boondocks in search of the Holy Grail.
7 nganadeeleg // Feb 4, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Srithanonchai: Being content with your modest means, does not mean you cannot try to improve (with moderation, reasonableness, immunity).
I have not seen HMK advise people do do nothing and show no initiative.
8 hpboothe // Feb 4, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Mr Vichai – are you surprised at Mr. Walker’s sad excuse for research? It’s only because “Thai studies” is such an academic backwater that this sort of thing is taken remotely seriously. If looked at through any serious critical lens, there neither “Thaksinomics” nor “sufficiency economy” stand up to scrutiny. “Sufficiency economy” is a mishmash of platitudes that can mean anything you want it to mean on an operational basis whereas “Thaksinomics” was raft of debt-based schemes to boost rural money supply that ignored a wealth of global experience in rural development efforts. Neither have any hard data to back up any of their claims. Given the wooly and vague pronouncements of “sufficiency” this is understandable, and UNDP reports notwithstanding, no one would give it a second thought were it not for its origin in the unassailable figure of HMK.
That Thaksinomics has little to no empricial verification is entirely the fault of weak academics like Mr. Walker. No one would expect the originators to come up with objective evalution, and indeed they never have. They trot out figures of poverty reduction and rural growth as if their policies had anything to do with these gains as opposed to a rise in global commodity prices and general economic growth in the face of historically low capital costs and high liquidity. Lazy “researchers” take these at face value and support their “analysis” by interviewing various individuals who agree, because as we know, concurrence equals truth. Perhaps Mr. Walker’s funniest post was how the village fund program has been successful based on his observations of exactly one village!
The most objective and fact-based analysis of any of Mr. Thaksin’s programs that I’ve seen was a British Medical Journal report about the inevitable insolvency of the 30-B health care program – an outcome entirely predictable based on health financing trials in a wide variety of countries.
But what can you expect from someone whose entire political outlook is based on elections, however flawed, and nothing else, ignoring civil rights in the equation of democracy?
9 Pig Latin // Feb 4, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Vichai, has Andrew failed you before?
It’s ok, there are other professors who are much more disposed towards taking bribes for sufficient degrees!
10 nganadeeleg // Feb 4, 2007 at 8:47 pm
In defence of Andrew, I do not think he intended this post to be treated as his ‘research’.
FYI, a few days ago, I advised Nich that I liked Andrew’s previous article on what villagers had to say, and I suggested that it would be interesting to hear more about what rural and other ordinary thai folk thought about events in Thaland (as opposed to the many posters on this site, who are clearly not ordinary thai folk).
Nich indicated that he would pass on my suggestion to Andrew, which may have prompted todays post.
11 patiwat // Feb 4, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Andrew, would you mind sharing some details on this woman? Age and socio-economic status would help me interpret her statements.
12 patiwat // Feb 4, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Be careful, Adrew. Reactionary conservatives accuse respected academic of faking evidence while researching controversial issue, creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the academic’s integrity and the analytical perspective that he is advocating….
Don’t forget Michael Bellesiles!
13 Siam Sport // Feb 4, 2007 at 10:57 pm
This woman has a shrewd mind.
The have’s are likely to try to protect their position
from the envious have not’s.
Bangkok is not Thailand. One should never forget it.
Unfortunately some have convinced themselves that it was…
14 d. silang // Feb 4, 2007 at 11:07 pm
i have a feeling those who are howling the most about what that enlightened villager said are the very people she is referring to — those condescending, discriminatory, elite urbanites. you should thank andrew for taking the cudgel for this woman. and perhaps most of you should step down from your pedestals and feel what is happening in the ground. among us perhaps, only andrew is literally, blogging from the field. so kudos to you andrew.
15 Pig Latin // Feb 5, 2007 at 12:14 am
hpboothe you are quite hilarious.
Those taking cheap shots at Andrew know more about him than he (and we) do you, so please if you are any of the salt you make claim to be, enlighten us as to who you are, that way the readership knows what everyones motivations are… (paymasters or not, hahahaha)
16 PaGaGoNg // Feb 5, 2007 at 1:49 am
I think the term “sufficiency” is indeed very problematic although it seems to lean forward positive meaning. It is very abstract and subjected to various interpretations and again it also depends on whose standard of “sufficiency” and in what aspect. There is no absolute right and wrong here and that rural lady also has her very rights to express her opinion about it. I am sure the King has a very good intention when he proposed the idea of “sufficiency economy” but what happens on the ground could turn to be poles apart. And we should not take something like the idea of “sufficiency economic” for granted as a ready-made good recipe.
17 Srithanonchai // Feb 5, 2007 at 2:35 am
nganadeeleg: seems to be about “sufficiency initiative”, then. Just sufficient and moderate. In the state sector, that has largely been achieved for a long time. In the private sector, people don’t seem to care about this concept. I also wonder whether there will be any “sufficiency police” that will decide whether this household or that company goes beyond moderation, reasonableness, and immunity. After all, people seem to have vastly different ideas about what–to them–is sufficient. To one person, a no-name watch will do; to another person, only a Rolex is sufficient.
18 New Mandala » Sufficiency economy, insufficient money // Feb 5, 2007 at 8:30 am
[...] on reactions to my previous post it seems that some New Mandala readers are alarmed that rural people in Thailand actually have [...]
19 hpboothe // Feb 5, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Mr Pig Latin – I’m glad my post amused you, but I’m not claiming to be anything at all. Is it a “cheap shot” to point out how a supposed “academic” employs shoddy research methodology and passes it off as a useful contribution to policy discussion? I’m sure Mr. Walker sees it that way. Notice how criticism of his scholarship is interpreted as disdain for rural voices (note responses 14 & 18). Such is the state of social science in Thailand, where random opinion backed up by nothing passes for policy dialogue – whether it’s coming from villagers or ersatz academics is of no consequence – they’re simply opinions, not reseached facts or considered analyses, and that people like Mr. Walker can’t tell the difference just shows how sad is the state of scholarship in the field. Good day to you sir.
20 anonymous // Feb 5, 2007 at 1:29 pm
“Last week I was talking to a woman in a rural village…”
Oh, a *rural* village, thanks for the clarification, professor. Urban villages can be so confusing.
“She had eloquent views…”
I also find people who agree with me to be eloquent.
“She said that the policy was, in effect, discouraging rural people from seeking higher education (rian sung)”
Because of course she conducted a field survey on a socioeconomically controlled sample set both before and after the coup to come to this conclusion, otherwise you might conclude that this may be based on her immediate circle and not representative – but the professor wouldn’t be so dumb as to make that mistake.
“her own daughter had recently graduated and obtained urban employment”
n=1, QED – nice field research, professor.
” An interesting contribution to the sufficiency economy debate.”
And not at all one woman’s opinion based on personal experience which may or may not be representative of anything in particular. Hey professor, my foot hurts, and I live in post-coup Thailand, therefore the coup has caused foot pain in Thailand. Can you present a paper on that at your next conference? You can quote me, “jaep mak mak”.
21 Andrew Walker // Feb 5, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Thanks for the feedback. I am very happy to report “opinion” (did I ever say it was fact?) because “opinion” is sociologically important. But for those who think that rural people vote with their pockets and not with their brains, this can be hard to accept.
22 Pig Latin // Feb 5, 2007 at 1:48 pm
hpboothe, I think that you are forgetting that this is a blog and not a research paper. That you assume this to be passed off as useful policy discussion when it is simply a post regarding two peoples opinions only highlights hypocrisy in that you are making assumptions, yet critisising the entire academic state of Thai studies for doing so! Are you in Thai studies yourself?
Good day to you sir!
23 Bearling // Feb 5, 2007 at 4:38 pm
External imposed sufficiency would be oppression, wouldn’t it?
So a sufficency policy could only come as either voluntary self-improvement or “external encouragement”. Since we are talking about policies – meaning laws or government actions – the interesting part is the “external encouragemetn”. How do you encourage someone? Through rewards, penalties and education.
Rewards:
What is the reward of self-sufficiency? As far as the commentators go – personal happiness. However, that is a rather abstract concept and not very easy to communicate. Ideally, you could point at societys and people who achieved exactly this. I don’t see any. Maybe some of the policies supporters could point them out?
Penalties:
Penalties could be the ceasing of government aid. I guess you could say that if everyone cares about himself that everyone is being cared for. That however, sounds more like super-capitalism than anything else.
Education:
Sounds good – getting people to help themselves through better education. After all, self-sufficiency requires people to be able to look after themselves (on a personal or community level).
What that could mean:
- No fees for public schools and universities, to educate people and make them immune to possible populist agendas.
- Cheap credits allowing children regardless of their origin to go to school and pursue a higher education (how about especially at Kasetsart, after all agricultural know-how is quintessential for farmer self-sufficiency)
How to finance it?
Credits to finance consume are probably a major faux pas for self-sufficiency advocates. The biggest credit of that kind probably exists in the form of credit cards. They are also being held responsible for the rise of the national debt-level. How about a fee or tax on financial institutes.
In short: Tax credit cards to finance farmer education.
Sounds good in theory, will never work in practice. The reason why people will hate it, is the same why self-sufficiency will never work: It’s easier to debate something than making sacrifices for it. I don’t see the political powerful miiddle and upper earning classes accepting 2% higher prices on their purchases because of this.
24 Jon Fernquest // Feb 5, 2007 at 5:56 pm
“She said that the policy was, in effect, discouraging rural people from seeking higher education (rian sung). In her view urban Thais felt threatened by the influx of educated rural youngsters into the labour market (her own daughter had recently graduated and obtained urban employment). Sufficiency economy, in her eyes, was an attempt to shelter urbanites from the educational and occupational competition generated by hardworking and diligent rural students.”
1. To a certain extent this woman is projecting her specific problems onto what is a rather bleak job market for anyone, rural or urban, without money, power, and connections. This has nothing to do with sufficiency economy.
Also rural schools are often backwaters, like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. One of my wife’s rural teachers humiliated her many years ago by cutting her in front of the whole class. They had only a cold mutual stare for each other when they bumped into each other on the street one day recently.
2. There has always been deep-seated racism against people from Isan and the Akha, or people with darker skin. When you mention Isan or Akha in class, a couple of students will mumble Lao or I-kaw and everyone will laugh. If this woman’s daughter has smooth white skin, long black hair, and a pleasant laugh, her work prospects will increase significantly, for all the wrong reasons.
Just like the myriad forms of plagiarism that a teacher encounters, if they bother to look closely, and that school administrations never seem very concerned about, in fact will probably blame the teacher for because they discovered it, racism seems to be a non-issue in Thai universities. Flaunting of the dress code though….
As a university teacher, what initially seems likes wonderful diversity, you soon realize is, in the mind of the student, an embarrassing identity that must be concealed at all costs.
Granted, it is difficult for rural students to break into the more sophisticated urban work scene. It takes a long time for alumni to set up networks that help graduates get jobs. That’s why universities have internships, many of them in the city.
Also there is just some atrociously low quality teaching and useless curriculums out there along with Thai teacher classloads that would truly boggle westerners.
I know reforms have been made to increase teaching quality, like limited time contracts, the keeping of work portfolios to document contributions, exams for continued employment even very late in one’s career (exams providing objectivity but also possible irrelevance, I’ve seen gifted senior Thai teachers who just left rather than deal with this).
However, bowing your head in humility and defeat, and allowing those senior in the hierarchy to step on you, will always be prized more than contributions that might upset the tenuous hierarchy of power. This is nothing new.
“Research” means “foreign money” and field trips, hotel rooms, buffet lunches, not publications in local or international journals.
When I first came to Bangkok from the provinces, I was surprised to find out how many of my adult students were born, raised, and lived in Bangkok their whole lives. This was very different from Seoul, Korea, for instance, where a large fraction of people there came from provinces around the country.
On the bright side, it is a whole lot easier to be a small business-person in Thailand than it is in the west. One might say that almost everyone in Maesai, for instance, is a small shop owner.
None of this is going to change overnight.
25 anonymous // Feb 5, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Mr Pig Latin – Yes, you’re right of course, I *did” assume that Mr. Walker’s comments were an attempt at useful policy discussion – especially as this random comment was presented as “An interesting contribution to the sufficiency economy debate.” Silly me, so sorry.
Mr Walker – How wonderful for us that we have you to sift through the opinions of people you meet so you can decide whose opinion is “important” and thus worth reporting vs. whose is not. How marvelously non-elitist of you. Keep up the great work.
26 Suntorn // Feb 5, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I wonder why sufficiency economy is promoted and encouraged in backward countries like Thailand and Bhutan. Look at China, a former communist country, has never practiced sufficiency economy but now its economy is no. 4 in the world after the US, Japan, and Germany. Something is wrong here….
27 fromthefield // Feb 6, 2007 at 1:16 am
Quoting anonymous
“How wonderful for us that we have you to sift through the opinions of people you meet so you can decide whose opinion is “important” and thus worth reporting vs. whose is not. How marvelously non-elitist of you. Keep up the great work”
Hey man, come on! Go to the field yourself then let us know about Thai people opinions! We are open to any other discourse! This is just one examle, maybe you can find contradictory ones…so just do it! Leave your office and your self-sufficiency vison of the world!
28 Vichai N // Feb 6, 2007 at 3:12 am
Wonderful!
That was Andrew Walker’s village mother and the earth moved in this forum.
If you hear my maid’s or driver’s opinions, there will be an earthquake.
I just get this nagging suspicion that there is some charlatan posing as a scholar trekking the boondocks and impressing the insufficients with his outraged epithets directed at the oppressing urbans.
29 21Jan // Feb 6, 2007 at 11:24 am
I think a most people in this forum will agree that there is a lot of racism towards people of Northeastern descent and towards ethnic minorities. They are especially disadvantaged in terms of access and quality of higher education – and even if they complete their studies at a well-known university they still won’t get the better jobs because of their descent. So what we might need is some kind of Affirmative Action but this would scare the living daylights out of the Bangkok middle class and they would furiously defend their privileges.
30 fall // Feb 6, 2007 at 1:36 pm
The most brilliant government policy, if not understand by the people, would fail to gain support. It is simple as that.
What can be say from the woman’s opinion is that, junta have not successfully promote understanding of “sufficient economy” AND its implication to direct IMPROVEMENT of standard of living to their main rural target group. Every media are so busy with making the foreign and many urban elitist/middle class “understand” the concept and assume that with royalist stamp, it is acceptable by rural farmer, whom it apply directly.
But have anyone even bother to stop and ask if rural farmer are indeed want to live in a “sufficiency” economy?
31 M79 // Feb 10, 2007 at 8:42 am
Any word that come out of the mouth of this cunning old man is ambiguity, don’t waste your time think about it, can cause brain damage.
32 hpboothe // Feb 14, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Mr Fromthefield (#27) asks me to “go to the field yourself then let us know about Thai people opinions! We are open to any other discourse! This is just one examle, maybe you can find contradictory ones…so just do it!”
No, this is exactly the problem. Having armies of “researchers” collecting random anecdotes with no systematic method only leads to a cacophany. Why would I (or anyone else) want to add to that? If you or I or Mr Walker or anyone else is seriously interested in obtaining a representative view of rural Thais, we ought to define our populations, put together a validated survey instrument, and implement it. As a self described “anthropologist” invovled in development issues, I had expected this from Mr. Walker, but instead I find the usual anectodal reportage covered with questionable extrapolation.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
33 Srithanonchai // Feb 14, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Come on, HP: stop talking and just do it!! (the representative sample; but, please, a survey is no analytical approach of which you are so fond, for which reason you will have to come up with some theory and then some hypothesis first; you’ll know the methodological details, I assume)
34 Srithanonchai // Feb 15, 2007 at 2:21 am
HP: One more remark concerning cacophony. I am not so sure what you are talking about. Maybe, you suffer from an undercomplex processing capabilities of your mind. But seriously, how much of a problem really is “cacophony”? Just to deliberately pick a field of anthropological study that has yielded a number of works during the past few years: provincial-level politics. Here, you will encounter works on Ayutthaya, Songkhla, Phetchabun, Nakhon Sawan, Khon Kaen, Chachoengsao, and Suphanburi. But there is no “cacophony.” Rather, these works complement each other from different perspectives in different socio-political settings, and they thus contribute to developing a general model of Thai provincial political structures and local-national linkages. All of them are case studies, and their authors know their trade well. Being case studies, they cannot avoid the occasional anecdote. However, first, the anecdotes are validated by their context, both in terms of the research methodology, and the overall case description and analysis. Second, I always prefer an insightful anecdote to a representative research artifact, because the former can lead us to more purposeful inquiry, while the latter ends up being useless.
35 hpboothe // Feb 15, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Srithanonchai: Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of anecdotes. I love stories and hearing about interesting things going on in different places. It’s all good fun. But it ain’t science, and we should understand the difference, especially when we’re using case studies and field stories as inputs into policy making.
The blind man examining the elephant’s knee will never be able to tell you what the elephant looks like, regardless of how “in depth” their knee examination is. Neither will “in depth case studies” of the trunk or tail. Even all together, the compilation will not necessarily tell you if this is a typical elephant or some aberration. For that you need numbers and systematic inquiry. In the absense of that, you simply have differing opinions.
As regards provincial level politics, for example, you mention that there are a pile of case studies that “contribute to developing a general model” (ie, a hypothesis). Such a hypothesis, or competing hypotheses, could be tested for validity, by selecting a random sample of rural polities and seeing if the predictions of the hypotheses hold true, or if not, what the confounding variables are. Have you seen such a study? If so, I’d love to read what it says – because thus far, all I see are “in-depth case studies” of individual villages (or even individual individuals, as in the case of this post!), and a consequent extrapolation to generalities – and that’s the end of it. This should be the beginning of investigation, not the end. So where is the continuation?
To me, adding more observations to the pile without ever meaningfully examining what has already been observed is a cacophony – but of course your taste may differ.
Best regards,
HPBoothe
36 Srithanonchai // Feb 15, 2007 at 8:39 pm
As I said earlier, why don’t you just stop talking and start suggesting something constructive to the research community?
There might be some reasons–practical, methodological, and others–that the studies you want to see have not yet materialized. For example, if there already is a good degree of qualitatively produced validity, few researchers–and even fewer supervisors of PhD theses–will be prepared to waste their and their students limited time by merely confirming, this validity, perhaps even at a lower level, by using yet another method, i.e. an analytical or quantitative approach.
But now that you have accepted in your post that qualitative studies have provided you with a valid research question (and where else should this have come from otherwise; sucking one’s thump would not have worked, I guess), why don’t you get down to business, and do the research yourself? You seem to be brilliantly equipped to do so. So just do it, and try to impress those who think that they have seen the light already by outshining them. Or are you merely just another of these empty talkers? Or, perhaps, you are afraid that you won’t be able to add anything meaningful to the work that has already been produced by research means that you hate so much?
Just one tip for your work: a survey won’t do; you will need some more sophisticated method of data gathering for this sort of project. If you need some more advice while developing your research design, just post your questions on this blog.
37 hpboothe // Feb 15, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Why don’t I conduct field investigations? Why, because I’m not an anthropolgist or a political scientist or a sociologist or any such -ist. Is the academic community so thin-skinned than a request for methodological validity yields nothing but cries of “if you don’t like what we do, then do it yourself”? Sadly, I have rent to pay and a family to feed, but if you’re willing to support my quantitative fieldwork, I’d be glad to take your money. Say the word and I’ll open my PayPal account.
I’m not sure what you mean by “qualitative studies have provided you with a valid research question” – what question? “how does rural politics work” is not a hypothesis. You mentioned that there was a “general model” – what is it? Whether that general model is valid or not IS a hypothesis. And it should be tested. But no one can test what doesn’t exist.
You also mention “a good degree of qualitatively produced validity” – ummm…what does that mean; that is, how does one “qualitatively validate” something? I understand p values and signifcance testing, but this is something new to me. Can you explain?
Finally, you appear to have a bizarre antipathy to the word “survey”. I hope you realize that “survey” basically means “collecting data”, or perhaps you do realize this and you feel that data collection has no place in our understanding of things?
Regards,
HP Boothe
38 Srithanonchai // Feb 16, 2007 at 2:09 am
HP: You seem to be a little touchy. But to be fair, I don’t ask you to conduct the research yourself, because this would indeed require a huge infrastructure, plus a lot of money. So, I think it would be fair to ask you just to come up with the research design (then, one might be able to sell it to some funding agency, if they can be convinced that this is viable and worthwhile). For this, you will have to familiarize yourself with the existing literature. Then you will see what I meant, and what the model is (I am not your servant, right?).
Re surveys, I don’t have any antipathy towards any word, and not even towards any given method at all, here surveys. But, first, I don’t like them if they produce research artifacts. This normally results from idadequately prepared researchers who think that posing questions to respondents is a simple matter.
Second, I simply pointed you to the probability that, in this sort of complex research undertaking–uncovering provincial-level political structures–a survey (in the usual sense of administering a questionnaire) might not be the adequate method of data collection. You might have to go for other methods, such as network analysis, and other ways of getting the necessary data than handing out questionnaires. You might have to chose a multi-method approach (qualitative researchers mostly do this to cross-check their data). This was meant to help you.
Validity simply means that an empirical statement corresponds to the claimed empirical reality (e.g., vs. a reliably or unreliably produced artifact; of course, a reliably produced valid result is a nice thing, too).
Rest assured that a great deal of my work during the past two decades consisted of collecting data in order to contribute to the “understanding of things.”
Finally, let me say that I don’t think that it is a scholarly productive position to be a sectarian methodological extremist. So, try to be more open and flexible, be a sport and take the challenge, and have the chance of making a name for yourself.
39 hpboothe // Feb 17, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Srithanonchai: I must apologize, I didn’t realize that you were merely suggesting that I write a grant proposal to develop and empirically test a model of Thai rural politics. Are you telling me that in the history of “Thai studies” such a thing has never been done? It seems the field is in worse shape than I had thought.
I also notice your confusion between “validated survey instrument” and “the usual sense of administering a questionnaire.” Having already berated me for not noticing “people” vs. “the poor” in another article, I’m surprised at your presumption – especially after “two decades” of “collecting data.”
I’m sure you understand that proper data collection occurs *after* hypothesis generation – otherwise, you wind up with “research artifacts.” So, of course that must mean that your data collection was done in order to test some hypothesis – you wouldn’t make a major mistake like collecting a pile of data and then later trying to make findings out of them, would you? Of course not – so what were your hypotheses and what did you find?
Finally, your definition of “validity” is one I’ve not encountered before. Are you basically saying that “validity” means that observers did not lie about what they’ve observed? That’s fascinating – because to me validity means replicability, and therefore predictive value. Hence, validity requires multiple trials, inevitably leading to a quantitative dimension (Trial 1, Trial 2, etc.), which is why I was curious about your reference to “qualitative validity.”
Perhaps “TITS” – This Is Thai Studies – an academic field where technicalities are jettisoned in favor of popular usage. Where “survey” means “questionnaire”, where “validity” means “not lying”, where data is collected to develop hypotheses rather than test them… in short a field where science has no presence. Fair enough. Please do carry on.
Best regards,
HP Boothe
40 Srithanonchai // Feb 17, 2007 at 10:38 pm
HP: Hm, now you lower your intellectual level even to that of the old “Night Owl” of Bangkok Post (who was at least measured fun to read, and who had a much more relaxed approach than you have)? That explains why you seem to need a crash course in “Research Methodology 101.” But since you already have admitted in another post that you are an ignorant non-professional, I won’t volunteer.
Just in case you can bring youself to adopt a productive position, the Thai Studies Conference in January 2008 at Thammasat University will have a panel of “Research Methodology for Thai Studies in a Transnationalized World.” That might very well be the appropriate place for you to present your findings and suggestions, and make “science felt”. And there is sufficient time, I think, for studying things a little bit more so that you won’t be ashamed of youself in the academic public. Here is the web site of the conference for your information and constructive attention: http://www.thaiconference.tu.ac.th/themes.html
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