Anthropologist Grant Evans has written an interesting review (for the Bangkok Post) of Charles Tripp’s Islam and the Moral Economy [evans-on-tripp.doc]. He links Tripp’s argument about an Islamic moral economy, with Thailand’s ongoing southern violence:
In his erudite examination of Islam Charles Tripp shows that Muslims have a long scholastic and legal tradition that attempts to grapple with issues of economic justice, and which forms the core of their thinking about economic action in the modern world. “Thaksinomics”, therefore, was more than “just economics” for the Muslims in the South. Its raw, abrasive version of capitalism aggravated long-standing cultural dilemmas felt by Muslims.
The argument is intriguing, but it raises the question of how Thaksin’s “raw, abrasive version of capitalism” was actually experienced in local economic and cultural systems. Evan’s points out, quite rightly, that “in terms of economics, Muslims are not totally free to act amorally or immorally.” But are Thaksinites, or the diverse implementers of Thaksinomic policies?
In his conclusion Evan’s suggests that the common “moral economy” ground between Islamic economic theory and royalist sufficiency economy provides some basis for engagement between Thailand’s Buddhist majority and the Muslim minority.
… even if the elaboration of an Islamic economic theory is a chimera, it projects a set of Islamic idioms and moral meanings that modify the terms in which Muslims engage with the modern global economy. In a similar way the Thai monarch’s speeches against greed and for people to be conscious of their needs, now elaborated as the “sufficiency economy”, also injects a moral discourse into Thai developmental thinking – even though the “sufficiency economy” is no more likely than “Islamic economics” to succeed as an economic theory. But it does provide an idiom of engagement with southern Thai Muslim cultural concerns in a way “Thaksinomics” never could.
I suppose it’s a matter of how credible such a sufficiency based idiom of engagement may be. For the residents of at least one model sufficiency village it may be a bit hard to swallow.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Historicus // Apr 30, 2007 at 10:23 pm
As a sort of aside from the culturalist commentary, it is interesting to see what Kosit is now reported as saying (via the Bangkok Post, 30 April 2007):
Kosit says domestic consumption overlooked
PATTNAPONG CHANTRANONTWONG
The government’s economic plans rely too heavily on exports, instead of promoting both exports and domestic consumption as envisioned in the “dual-track” approach of deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Deputy Prime Minister Kosit Panpiemras has admitted.
The dual-track economy, better known as “Thaksinomics”, was not a wrong or bad economic theory, he said. “But the Thai economy is not yet strong enough to adopt such a method,” Dr Kosit said at a recent briefing with senior journalists.
“Even Japan still drives its economy by exports,” he noted. Even so, he believes the country should also focus on stimulating consumption to drive economic growth…..
2 Jon Fernquest // May 1, 2007 at 2:51 am
Kosit: “He said the government would also introduce projects to solve poverty, poor environmental conditions and neglect of elderly people in rural areas.”
That is the kind of elderly that needs to be shown respect and taken care of. My wife told me that we need to have lots of kids so they can take of us when we are old. I told her, you may be like that, but most young people aren’t like that nowadays.
There’s a tragedy there waiting to happen. People using up all their money, and not saving adequately for their retirement because they think the kids they raised are going to take care of them. Some of them will, of course.
As for elderly people in powerful positions, early retirement is the best option since they are the ones, at least in my experience who engage in all sorts of corrupt practices.
Like a dean who skimmed 50% off the salaries of temp contract workers, purchased an SUV afterwards. Got kicked upstairs after that. The elderly female dean who played a con game with me to trick me out of getting paid even one baht for two 100+ lecture classes, she got kicked upstairs. In fact that’s how the con game ended. Where is the dean? Oh, she’s not dean anymore. (Talk to the new dean) Oh, I’ve never heard anything about it. Cheat, lie, steal. And this elderly female dean looked very trustworthy. I trusted her. She even played in a violin recital with a member of royalty. What really boggles my me is how people like a dean at a university can cheat, lie, and steal and then look themselves in the mirror, as if they’ve done honour to their KIng, which they have not.
Even the dean of our department got kicked out of another more prestigious university on corruption charges. And Surayud gets all indignant when Thaksin claims that corruption is built into the system. Well, it is. I got cheated and had to leave and am now working in Bangkok far away from my beloved wife, dogs, and mother in law, after working very very hard educating students for two years, and then gettting unceremoniously lied to and kicked out on the street, particularly easy because I was a Farang teacher, and I am hardly the first.
There’s always a reward for those who will do dirty work. In the female dean who cheated me, in her particular case, a seasoned accounting professor had flunked a lot of students, accounting being a fairly rigid discipline in terms of competent or incompetent. The students came to complain to the female dean (the elderly woman above) and working with a vice-president they applied some suasion to the accounting professor, either pass them, or you won’t teach.
If Surayud was serious about corruption he would do something about it.
3 anon // May 1, 2007 at 7:02 am
Both the Southern Thai and Malaysian economies have a serious gap in income and opportunity between ethnic Chinese and the local Malay. Is this because both Thailand and Malaysia use an abrasive version of capitalism? Or because of cultural or social factors?
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