Thailand’s Political Peasants

Contract farming has a bad reputation, often being associated with the proletarianisation of vulnerable small holders. But this isn't always the case and contract farming can make a valuable contribution to agricultural diversification.

Exploring the ritual relationships between the social and supernatural domains can help us understand the way in which power is drawn into the day-to-day worlds of livelihood, aspiration, and ambition.

While Thai villagers were once believed to be remote from politics, and some imagine that still to be true, Walker is bent on exploding that notion for ever.

The state has become a very important source of income, but state expenditure has done little to produce more productive forms of economic activity.

The main challenge for Thailand's agriculture–its relatively low labor productivity–arises from the persistence of an agricultural peasantry, not its disappearance.

A new form of "political society" has emerged based on the productive interaction between peasant culture and the governing practices of the modern state.

Rural Thailand's new "political society" is energized by a fundamental desire to be productively connected to sources of power.