I am currently hard at work on my paper on local political culture in northern Thailand. One of the issues I want to consider, briefly, is the role of what might be called “rural civil society”. In particular, I am interested in the role of empowerment/advocacy organisations such as the Assembly of the Poor and the Northern Farmer’s Network. Frankly, I have often had the feeling that, in terms of the overall rural populace, these sorts of organisations have a rather modest role, despite their high national and international profile. I would be interested if any New Mandala readers had views on this. Does anyone have any information on, for example, what percentage of rural people are/were “members” (however broadly that might be defined) of such organisations. My instinct is that the percentage is very low indeed. Of course, membership numbers are not everything and there be other more appropriate indicators of the rural influence of these organisations. Suggestions would be very welcome!
The demographic reach of rural civil society
February 12th, 2007 by Andrew Walker · 3 Comments
Tags: Thailand
3 responses so far ↓
1 Srithanonchai // Feb 12, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I share your impression as to the reach of civil society in rural areas as far as organized forms (especially NGOs) or movements are concerned. But, of course, one needs to know what “civil society” is and how it relates to local (province, district, constituency, tambon, village) administrative and political structures. And whether other terms such as “public” would not be better. NGOs are just a very small faction of “civil society” (just in case it exists), about which a lot has been written in the past few years. Have you done some sort of comprehensive literature survey on the subject already? Some points are summarized in:
Orlandini, Barbara. 2004. “Civic Engagement in Local Governance: The Case of Thailand.” In Citizen Participation in Local Governance: Experiences from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, by Hans Antlöv et al., pp. 89-13. Manila, Philippines: Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD) for Logolink, Learning Initiative on Citizen Participation and Local Governance, Southeast Asia. Also available at http://www.ipd.ph/logolinksea/resources/resources.html.
Have you come across things such as ทำเนuียบองค์กรพัฒนาเอกชน 2546 — 2003 Directory of Non-Governmental Organizations?
2 Srithanonchai // Feb 12, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Your colleague at ANU, Yoshinori Nishizaki, might be able to tell you something about political culture, civil society, public, or political participation in Supanburi.
3 Johpa // Feb 14, 2007 at 9:33 am
My brother-in law spent nearly two years down in Bangkok hanging out with Achaans from the Bangkok universities during one of the extended rural poor movement protests, maybe about 10 years ago. He remains an activist up in Mae Rim and was also working for one of the government rural development agencies, O.P.T. or O.P.Ch. or some acronym close. There is a political component to this agency as the local populace votes upon the lead and although my brother-in law lost his bid for village headman under questionable circumstances, his friend became head of the tambon development office and hired him as his assistant.
Feel free to e-mail me if you wish to get in contact with him.
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