New Mandala

In an excellent and provocative piece for today’s The Nation, Chang Noi makes the case that “[t]he bleating about vote-buying and patronage politics is simply an attempt to undermine electoral democracy because it seems to be working”.
Taking on those who support the disenfranchisement of Thailand’s rural masses this is a tough-minded intervention from a well-regarded [...]

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The Asian Development Bank Institute has just put out a new report on contract farming in Thailand.  This is an issue that has, in the past, been discussed at some length on New Mandala.  Previous coverage is available here and here.  Readers who follow debates about the merits of various rural development strategies in mainland Southeast [...]

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Earlier this year, I published a paper examining Thailand’s “rural consitution” (walker-2008.pdf). The paper documented the local political values that inform electoral decision making in a rural district of Chiang Mai province. It was a deliberate attempt to counter the commonly expressed view that electoral support for Thaksin was illegitimate because it was based on the financial mobilisation of gullible and [...]

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At the recent International Conference on Thai Studies, my colleage Nicholas Tapp presented a paper  [tapp.pdf] on the work of anthropologist Andrew Turton . The paper discussed Turton’s work on ideology, violence and coercion and its relevance to an understanding of power relations in Thai society. In a long footnote/afterword to the paper, Tapp makes an extended comment on work by [...]

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Last night the special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Asia on the coup was launched at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Thailand.  Here is the speech given by one of the editors, Kevin Hewison:
The last time the Journal of Contemporary Asia produced a special issue on Thailand was in 1978, it was a response to [...]

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Those who actually take the time to study rural political behaviour in depth usually come up with very different conclusions to those who rely on popular stereotypes or occasional discussions with taxi drivers and maids. An excellent example is the nuanced and fine-grained research of Yoshinori Nishizaki (who is now based at National University of Singapore [...]

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 This is an interesting study from the Philippines about the electoral behaviour of the poor. It probably won’t mean much to those who assume that those with different political opinions lack ethics, but for those with more open minds it contains many useful insights into local political culture. Here is a brief extract from the preface:
Contrary to stereotypes, [...]

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Last Friday I spoke at the 2007 Thai Update hosted by the National Thai Studies Centre at the ANU (update-program.pdf). Over the next few days I will post some notes about some of the key presentations. But for now, you will have to make do with the text of my presentation! Regular readers should find [...]

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Even very occasional New Mandala readers will be aware of our continuing interest in the politics of rural areas of mainland Southeast Asia.  Describing, discussing and debating those politics - from both local and national perspectives – is one of New Mandala’s core themes.  A brief search of our archive finds dozens of relevant pieces that will [...]

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Here is the report from The Nation on the seminar I delivered in Bangkok earlier this month.�
Rural voters not politically naive, says Aussie anthropologist
Published on May 25, 2007
The stereotype view of Thai rural electorates as being ignorant and incapable of making informed political decision during elections is wrong and a better understanding of their complex set of values [...]

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