Isan People Discourse through the Ideal Space in Thailand’s Contemporary Social Studies Textbooks

Abstract

The discourse of “Isan People”, as constructed in schools through Social Studies textbooks, has been used to justify Thailand’s national policy of regional development. The phenomenon, as it is symbolically constructed can be seen to reflect the contemporary imagination about Isan people as poor, marginalized, witless, ill, and drought stricken. In the same way, textbooks decrease the cultural capital of Isan ethnic people. The public’s experience of national textbooks, therefore, influences how various ethnic people in Isan become transformed into “Isan People”. In the contemporary ideology through

geographical area of people in Thai society, politics was the approach that makes Isan people formation since having national curriculum in 1960 until curriculum in 2008. More than half of century that ethnic people in Isan of Thailand turn to be Isan people in thinking process of people in the society continually. The image of Isan people that is created from textbooks is not different from the image of other Isan ethnic people in other parts of Thailand. Because of the effect in education which is labeling on the unity look them up as the honor less people, hillbilly, and defeat on resource controversy, fool, and beggar. Those are made from the cultural creation that instruct from the curriculum and educational process in school system.