Isan Peasants, Thai Nation and Modernization
Keywords:
Charles F. Keyes, peasant society, Thai state, modernization, rural Northeastern ThailandAbstract
This article reviews and re-presents Charles F. Keyes’s ideas of peasant society and changes in rural northeastern Thailand in relation to the Thai state since the 1960s. Keyes’s studies of Thai society and culture are organized around three main themes: ethnicity, religion and modernity. Keyes has been influenced Weberian approaches and by the Cornell school of thought during the 1950s that put great emphasis on placing the village under study within a historical context of a nation state.
In his early writings, Keyes has suggested that during the late 1960s to early 1970s, it appeared possible for the Thai government to face problems when dealing with ethnic minorities during the period of modernizing the country. He has further argued that “the northeastern problem” had to be investigated through interactions between northeasterners and the central Thai over time. Many northeasterners retained multiple identities. On different occasions, they identified with their locality, with the people of Laos, and/or with the Central Thai. Rather than seeking a separate political destiny, northeasterners adopted regionalism to enhance their status within the Thai national order. In addition, Keyes has suggested that popular Theravada Buddhism has played a key role in shaping the social life of peasants in the northeast.
In his subsequent writings, Keyes has pointed out that development in the Northeast, sponsored by the Thai state, has produced various unforeseen consequences arising out of the integration of the rural agricultural economy into the global market economy, an expansion of the national education into the rural society, technological revolution and infrastructural development. All these have enabled local people to experience material conveniences in their everyday life and make sense of what development and modernity mean to them. It has also generated resistance by peasants against the hegemony of the Thai state Following the last four decades of development in the northeast, two distinctive social phenomena are noted - protestors and migrants. Keyes has emphasized that locality still persists even within the course of regional and national development towards modernization of Thai society.
Keyes’s numerous studies of peasants in rural northeastern Thai society in relation to the Thai state have been a significant pioneering contribution to an understanding of change and persistence of rural northeastern peasant communities within wider contexts of national history and politics of the Thai state. His academic contribution has greatly helped in providing a solid foundation for subsequent anthropological studies of Thai society and culture. However, as Keyes has put great emphasis on possible conflicts between the Thai government and ethnic minorities in the process of modernizing the country, he pays inadequate attention to internal tensions arising out of conflicting interests among different peasant households as well as between peasants and other Northeasterners outside the peasant’s local world. This complexity can be considered through class relations, a patron-client system, as well as political factions and power struggles among different factions in the region linking to political and economic powers at the national level.
References
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