How people have engaged modernity in a northeastern thai village

Chapter 1 Introduction Keeping up with the Joneses1 During the dry season, my mother has to order truckloads of soil from the excavation service2 to fill our land. Fellow villagers are then employed to level the soil. Each year, the expenditure is directly proportionate to the amount of soil that is available. In 2009, my family paid in total 1,700 THB (51.21 USD) 3; 1,200 THB (36.14 USD) for the soil and 500 THB (15.16 USD) for the labour. This practice has been in full swing since our relocation to this piece of land in 1994. We had to expend a large sum of money for these annual landfills for practical reasons - the annual landfills prevent flooding within the house yard during the rainy season. Flooding within the perimeters of the house was not a natural occurrence before the construction of an elevated4 inter-provincial highway near our house. However, the high road dyke blocks our natural drainage, resulting in our house yard to flood during the rainy season. Traditionally, to prevent flooding, houses were constructed on elevated grounds that were filled beforehand. The annual landfill method was an alteration of 1 This term is a 20th century American slang. It originated with Arthur (Pop) Momand's Keep Up with the Joneses comic strip in the New York Globe. The strip was first published in 1913 and became popular quite quickly. By September 1915, a cartoon film of the same name was touring US cinemas. The 'Joneses' in the cartoon weren't based on anyone in particular, and they weren't portrayed in the cartoon itself. Jones was a very common name and 'the Joneses' was merely a generic name for 'the neighbours' ( http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/216400.html retrieved 12 December 2009) 2 In the dry season, there are many soil-selling services. They offer to dig a pond for the land owner for free and they earn from selling the soil. The bigger and deeper the pond is dug, the more soil they can get. A truck load of soil costs 550 baht per truckload (as of May 2009). 3 All the exchange rate uses in this thesis is 1 USD = 33.25 THB (http://coinmill.com/ retrieved 12 December 2009) 4 The highway was constructed to be elevated to prevent itself from flooding. 1 traditional methods of construction, and was employed only by people who wanted to construct new houses in proximity to the roads. With the increasing movement of homes to areas at the roads, more people adopted the annual landfill method in order to adapt to the new challenges offered by their relocation. The construction of the modern inter-provincial highway had started a trend. It was part of a state-sponsored infrastructure development project that will have an inevitable impact on village life. The state upgrades the highway by creating higher ground for the road. As a result, the villagers started to adopt the same method in order to fill up their backyards and housing grounds. One by one, villagers had to fill up their land with truckloads of soil to prevent flooding. So did my parents. It is not hard to observe that people in my village are copying one another in this trend. In fact, this trend is fuelled by people‘s desire to be on par with one another economically and socially. In their own way, they have kept up with Joneses, meaning they strive to match one‘s neighbours in spending and social standing. This is a conscious pattern of being active villagers in the contemporary Thai countryside. My thesis engages the use of theoretical discourses of development and modernity to uncover the contemporary situation of a village in rural Thailand. I contextualised my thesis by locating my research in a village named Ban Nongyang. The village is located at a natural waterway, running five kilometres from Phanom Din hill. The main road which runs through the village, however, blocks the village‘s waterway. Grandmother Tut, my neighbour from across the street, told me that she inherited this piece of land from her parents. Before the road was built, this land, being outside the village‘s area, was empty. Prior to the relocation of her house, Grandmother Tut‘s old house was located close to the village dirt road once 2 considered ‗inside the village‘s area‘5. When the asphalted road was introduced, more and more people moved to stay close to the road. She said that ‘I wanted to stay near the main road (thanon yai)6 too. Hence, my husband and I decided to build a house here‘. In mid 2007, Grandmother Tut hired Uncle Chai and his professional housemoving team to relocate her new home ten metres away from the main road. She said that Staying near the big road became too noisy; my house was too close to the road. There are too many cars nowadays. The cars keep running pass my house all day and all night. When the trucks run at night, it is too noisy and it shakes my house. The construction of the inter-provincial highway plays an integral part in influencing the development of the village and of its villagers‘ lives. The trend of relocating houses in proximity to the road compels villagers, like Grandmother Tut, to adopt the landfill method; landfill had to be performed in order to level their land against the highway‘s height. Before conducting interior renovations to her home, flooding was not a concern. In 1980, Grandmother Tut decided to pave her ground with cement. This was part of another trend within the village; cement paved floors at the ground level started to become popular amongst the villagers. During the mid 1990s, teacher Khempet, a school teacher, started building his house in the empty land next to hers. To build the large, two-storey cement house and prevent the ground floor from flooding in the rainy season, Mr.Khempet filled up his land and built his house higher than Grandmother Tut‘s ground, by about 20 centimetres. With her house being lower than her neighbour‘s land, Grandmother Tut needed to raise her land 5 This dirt road was the most important road connecting the inner village with main road. However, in early 1980, the state cut a new road to connect the inner village with the inter-city road. The new road became more popular, as it was bigger and more convenient. People ignored the old cart road and very few people now use it as a short cut within the village only. 6 In Thailand, there are various kinds of roads ranging from cart roads, dirt roads and asphalt roads. Previously, there was only the inter-city road paved by asphalt. It was bigger than the dirt road that normally connected villages together. Thus, the word ‗thanon yai‘ or literally translate as big road refers to the main road or inter-city asphalt road. 3 further to avoid flooding. This time, she determined to raise her land higher than her neighbour. Running after Development: Engaging Modernity in a Northeastern Thai village In Thailand, development has been part of people‘s lives for more than half a century. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the impact of development, we cannot limit analysis to the institutional level. Instead, we must look at the actual impact of development that has penetrated, re-defined and transformed individuals‘ lives at the village level. Evaluating the real-life impact of development is made possible through the perceptions and actions of villagers. The process of rural modernisation can be clearly understood through villagers‘ experiences and their everyday life practices. The main research question is how the individual villager defines the way to achieve development and modern life. In addition, the research question extends to examine how the villager is transformed to become a modern actor who acquires a new consciousness of their social position in the society. Today, villagers are ready to reject being out of date, being old fashioned, and ready to embrace the new experience of being up to date. Being modern became associated with a luxurious lifestyle, better education, infrastructure, and a higher standard of living. These ideas of modernity are introduced to their village through various forms of development projects. In essence, everybody is running after development in order to achieve a modern status. The processes of change and their impacts emerge on individual and community levels. 4 In this thesis, three key words; development, modernity, and everyday life, will be discussed. Phatthana7 is as an active verb which means ‗to develop‘, ‗to progress‘ or ‗to advance forward‘. In the Thai context, it is often used interchangeably with modernisation. The Thai state officially set up the development policy based on the ‗paradigm of modernisation and growth‘ (Boonmathaya 2000: 15). More often than not, development in Thailand means introducing physical infrastructure projects such as roads, electricity, running water, irrigation and so on to the rural areas (Rigg 2003: 52). Hence, rural development (kanphatthana chonnabot) more accurately means bringing advancement and modernisation to rural areas (ibid). Modernity is popularly conceived and measured through Western-centered standards and connotations of what is modern. Bruno Latour (1993) interprets the modern as ‗the extension of scientific and intuitional networks defining themselves as rational and true‘ (Latuor 1993 in Bunnell 2006: 16). Anthony Giddens defines modernity as a mode of social life that emerged in Europe from the nineteenth century onwards (Giddens 1990:1). Modernisation is the process of exporting the (always- already modern) Western institutions and formations to cultural setting of non-West (Bunnell 2006: 16). In my thesis, I endeavour to interrogate the Euro-American-centred conceptions of modernity. In addition, I seek to discuss alternative perspectives that are available outside the boundaries of the West. As Appadurai (1996) proposes, Modernity now seems more practical and less pedagogic, more experiential and less disciplinary than in the 1950s-1960s. The megarhetoric of development modernisation such as economic growth, high technology, agribusiness, schooling, and militarisation are still with us. But it is often punctuated, interrogated and domesticated by the micronarratives of film, television, music and other expressive form, 7 Development, or kanphatthana in Thai stresses the economic, social/ human development are more exactly referred to by the word Watthana, but this is rarely used in the mainstream development studies context – although it is popularly employed by grassroots activists Kanphatthana = modernisation and is delivered by the state (Rigg 2003: 51). 5 which allow modernity to be written more as vernacular globalisation and less as a concession to large-scale national and international policies (1996: 9). Hence, I question how modernity and development contest and situate themselves in people‘s everyday life? ‗Everyday life‘ refers to everyday actions done by ordinary people and which happens in common places and events. ‗Everyday practice‘, on the other hand, is a summation of the activities that are performed in everyday spaces that have coherence in and of themselves. It constitutes or makes up daily life in normal living (Rigg 2003). The everyday life can be seen and studied by the anthropologist. I adopt Eric E. Thompson‘s (2007) work on ‗everyday‘ to help me to examine how villagers ‗mediate‘ development and modernity. The contemporary situation and the powerful institution such as education system, road networks, and western medical practices permeate the practical in people everyday experience. These are conveyers of the mediated modernity and development, ‗are a part of, not apart from, the local condition and everyday life in the rural village‘ (Thompson 2007: 154) In the quest of achieving something, rural people have to earn and invest more to acquire it. Keyes (2002) sees it as the commitment to development to the pursuit of the progress of the villagers. The stories of how people experience rural modernisation are the focal point of my thesis. Instead of exploring institutional arrangements or the re-organisation of development projects, my work focuses on the human experience of development. My work sees a very close connection between development and modernity. I take development as a form, or way, to achieve modernity. Indeed, development is a process of planned change or directed transformation. It is a guided transformation with some desirable expectation. The term development signifies a process of improvement: a movement to a better place. Modernisation and development have encouraged people to expect more 6 from life. Keyes comments that the pressure of needs is intensifying and expanding time over time. However, in the process of many development projects, villagers have both benefited from and become victims of development (Keyes 2002). Development has shaped and transformed people‘s lives and perspectives like never before. In my thesis, I opt to analyse how development came about and become institutionalised through schools, roads and health clinics which are situated in the village. Furthermore, I consider how the villagers define, interpret and respond to development and modernity in their everyday lives. I concur with Ferguson‘s statement on the failure of development projects that ‗failure does not mean doing nothing; it means doing something‘ (Ferguson 1994: 276) and ‗even a ‗failed‘ development project can bring about important structural change‘ (ibid: 275). My thesis aims to evaluate development at the micro-level; how it works and operates. At the same time, I also place high emphasis on villagers‘ definition of development. The villagers do not simply contest, resist, or reject the development and modernity. But rather, they seek to adapt these notions of development and modernity, and integrate these notions into their lives. This reaffirms the role of development and the way villagers perceive and live with development. Northeasterners have been influenced by the discourse on development through the state-led development efforts (Boonmathaya 1997). However, they have their own ways to rework top-down notions of development based on their own culture and tradition. Just like the case of my parents and our neighbours having to catch up with the interprovincial highway improvement, the relationship and the interaction between development and the villagers are not walking with or chasing up but it is the way people run after development. 7 Thesis Organisation Our prime objective is to strive to make the public aware and agree with the fact that the nation must develop, people must progress, and tomorrow must must be better today ( Sarit Thanarat speech in 1960 in Chaloemtiarana 1979: 148) Back in 1960s, development was among the top priority of Thailand‘s national policies. Development has transformed Thailand not only virtually butalso people‘s mentality. In this thesis, I look at the impact of development in people‘s everyday life and how villagers embrace development. Modernity based on development creates new identity, modern Thai people. Thesis marks the development in everyday life by explaining in 4 subject matters namely road, migration, education, changing in kitchen landscape. Story about an educated man, who became the full-time famous spirit medium, shows how people acquired the importance of modern education with an old traditional belief. In the mode of experience; it is interesting to see how villagers connect modern and traditional world together. Moreover, I discuss about a new rarely-used gas stove, which can only become a symbol of modernity but cannot replace an old often-used charcoal stove, as it fits more with local dietary. The contents of this thesis are divided into several chapters. Chapter 1 Introduction provides an overview of the thesis. It draws the contemporary picture of the villager and raises argument about how development and modernity encourage villagers to participate. The form of participation is what I call running after development. Chapter 2 starts with the review of the development, modernity and development and modernisation theory. In the second half of the chapter, I discuss methodological reflections with an aim to illustrate how fieldwork was carried out. 8 Chapter 3 deals with the historical context of the region. Topics discussed include the creation of Northeastern Thailand and state and development. The thesis starts the discussion from the administrative reform in nineteenth century in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (reign 1868 -1910). To show how Thai state has integrated the Northeastern region into the geo-body of the Thai state. This chapter also highlights the process how development has become a tool of the state to involve the northeastern region in the global economy. Chapter 4 begins with the background of Ban Nongyang as a community in the context of village settlement and the creation of the Thai political unit. It unveils the history of state-sponsored development in the village and discusses the village in transition chronologically. In the second part of the chapter, I look at the arrival of the development at the village level, using roads as a case study, and demonstrate how roads have become very important symbols of development and modernity. I use a cartographic map as the tool to reaffirm the notion of the road, which is the most distinctive feature in every villager‘s map. Sample of maps are read as signs of the development and modernity in Ban Nongyang. The meaning of the maps show what people want to highlight and what people want to omit in the imagination of their village. Chapter 5 discusses how villagers experience the world outside the village through rural-urban migration. Urban migration became popular among village men and women, especially during Thailand‘s economic miracle in 1980s. Villagers migrated to work in the big cities. Migration in itself is about seeking new opportunities. It is a phenomenon that allows people to engage themselves in the modern world. It had consequences when they returned home and reproduced the modern ideas in the village. 9 Chapter 6 focuses on emerging ideas of the ‗secure life‘. The discussion focuses on how people struggle and chase a better life and better status, a new social status created by the bureaucratic system and capitalism. This desire can be achieved through education, which paves one‘s path to a secure job and better life in the rural areas comes from not only an individual but from the entire the family. Chapter 7 describes the consequences when the traditional kitchen was supplanted by the modern kitchen. Using the kitchen landscape and its politics as a metaphoric case study, this chapter shows how conspicuous consumption and positional economics could explain changing village consumption behaviour. and how it reflects understandings of being ―modern‖ and its incorporation into the villagers‘ daily life. The key theme in Chapter 8 is the villagers‘ experiences with development. With this focus, this chapter illustrates the conversation between the villagers and development through private narratives. I present the life stories of three informants from three generations and discuss what development means to them. In the concluding chapter, the big picture of the social transformation and changes in the Ban Nongyang could arguably represent thousands of villages across the Thai countryside as a result from state-sponsored development since 1960s. This aims to conclude and show the way the villagers have transformed and adapted themselves through state-led development and how people have negotiated with development and modernity, viewing the process of such transformation from below. 10 Chapter 2 Theoretical Frameworks and Research Methodology Reflections The theoretical framework is aim to examine development as a form of modernity. The development and modernity theories are adopted to explain the development era in the Thai context. The theory helps to understand the (EuroAmerican centric) development; how does development as a process of modernisation work in the Third World. My thesis adopted the anthropological approach to examine the everyday situation in the rural village in Northeastern Thailand. The participation approach was employed to investigate the engaging with development and modernity of villagers. In addition, informal talks and loosely-structured interviews with the informants were carried out. Towards the end of the chapter, I also penned my methodology reflection. The bulk of my reflection is centered on my complex positionality as a researcher studying her own village. After critically assessing my own reflections, I suggest some learning curves for a local-born researcher interacting with villagers who are both informants and observers, simultaneously. Theoretical Foci The theoretical assumptions about ‗modernity‘ and ‗development‘ have been discussed for a long time in academia. In fact, ‗modernity‘ and ‗development‘ are the two main theories that I use in my paper. Both theories are important tools that will aid the understanding of transformation and current phenomena in the village in Northeastern Thailand. 11 Development Theory ‗Development‘ can be understood as an idea, an objective and an activity (Kothari and Minogue 2000, Nederveen Pieterse 2001). As an idea, discourses on development have been introduced by the Western countries. Subsequently, these paradigms are increasingly adopted and practiced by the rest of the world. The idea then becomes an objective, where development became the Western-led agenda for the Third World. It was drawn up to fit the new ‗rising expectations‘ during the era of post-colonial independence. Thus, development can be understood as the reconstruction of the world based on Western norms and institutions. The central idea of economic development is progress as determined according to the market forces of supply and demand (Mehmet 1999: 2). Western sciences, especially social sciences, idealise Western institutions and perceive the other as inferior and constantly struggling to catch up with the superior West by imitating it (Ibid: 10-11). Western theorists defined development as ‗modernity‘, which itself was defined as ‗the passing of traditional society‘ (Lerner 1958 in Mehmet 1999) or becoming modern (Inkeles and Smith 1974 in Mehmet 1999). This concept embraces the Western political institutions and norms as a universal reference (Mehmet 1999: 60-61). Economic development generally refers to capitalistic growth through industrialisation which depends on Western technology and equipment. Western Multinational Corporations (MNCs) were encouraged to enter the developing countries as agents of economic development that would bring prosperity to all (Mehmet 1999: 88). In fact, to read the development theories is to read a history of hegemony and political Eurocentrism (Pieterse, 2001: 8). 12 Development as a Discourse In the 1950s, the mainstream development discourse outlined science, technology and capital as the main components required to bring about industrial revolutions to Third World countries. The discourse of underdeveloped societies was totally reconstructed. Underdeveloped subjectivity is considered as powerlessness, passivity, poverty and ignorance. The advanced societies of that time aimed to achieve a high level of industrialisation and urbanisation, technical aptitude, modernised agriculture, rapid growth of material production and living standards, and widespread modern education and cultural values. This development discourse was sold to the people in the Third World countries as the new way to achieve developed– world status. Escobar, a well-known developmentalist (1995), redefined development as the new form of colonialism in terms of discourse. He employed Foucault‘s conceptualisation of knowledge and power to examine the representation of social reality and how it created the representation of the Third World. In essence, the development discourse speaks of economic growth as a tool; economic growth, as a tool, is used to transform poorer parts of the world. The critique of the development discourse began in the mid 1980s. After almost 30 years of practice, Third World countries became increasingly modern and developed. Yet, it brings us to the new dependency. The anthropologist in Latin America questions that ‗(in Latin America) have to stop being what we have not been, what we will never be, and what we not have to be‘ (Escobar 1995: 221). 13 Modernity and Development In the nineteenth century, following the Enlightenment, ‗modernity‘ emerged as a concept within European society. This logic of modernity rejected anything irrational. Hence, previously-held views on religion became increasingly challenged with rationality. The Occidental rationalism transformed societies which were dependent on religion to the modern societies which exist today. Thus modernity has become the popularly accepted standard and worldview through which people evaluate their and other people‘s degrees of progress or backwardness (Masquelier 2002: 847). Escobar (1995: 11) contextualises the era of development within the overall space of modernity. The functional conception of development was conceived of as the transformation of traditional into a modern society. Fagerlind and Saha (1995) emphasise that The process of modernisation can be charecterised as revolutionary (dramatic shift from traditional to modern), complex (multiple causes), systematic, global (affecting all societies), phased (advance through stages), homogenising (convergence), irreversible and progressive (Fagerlind and Saha 1995: 16). Modernity can be examined by looking at the practices and symbols that produce and regulate social life (Escobar 1995). The conceptualisation of ‗development‘, which engages with modernisation, was introduced to the Third World countries aggressively by the developed Western countries. The indigenous population had to be modernised. And, in this light, modernisation meant the adoption of the right values. These were embodied in the ideal of the cultivated European as well as in programmes for industrialisation and agricultural development (ibid: 43). Arce and Long (2000) pointed out that the drive to develop these countries is a legacy of colonisation as it exemplifies ‗the spread of ‗civilised standards‘ of modernity and 14 the way that local people blended the influence of modernity into their own ‗traditional‘ idiom‘ (Arce and Long 2000: 10). Hence, development is inherently tied to the western paradigm of modernity. Positivist thought in development reduces development into a linear progression, encouraging developing countries to follow the developed economic model; by shifting from a society based on agriculture to one based on industry. The growth of economic scale would lead the country to become developed and modern. Rostow‘s universal stage theory of economic growth is one of such theories that exemplify positivism. Development is conceptualized and assumed to be laying on the linear stage of five basic stages of economic growth, from a traditional society to a society of mass-consumption. Thus, if a country seeks development and modernity, development projects have to be implemented to restructure the traditional agrarian societies. Less-developed countries then have to follow the universal stage while the developed countries play the role of the mentor. As a result, the aid industry emerges for the global North to help the global South to be modern and developed by using their development models. Modernity is the ultimate goal, while development is the process. In addition, modernity is an age of standardisation and reproduction. Thus in the twentieth century concept, modernity is the process of the Third World catching up with the West. At the same time, the West as the leader does not need to catch up to anyone. Hence, in this thesis, the main argument is how the Third world borrowed and reinvented modernity through the process of development. My central focus is on the ground level: how the village articulates modernity and development that was given to them by the exodus (external factor/agent). Thai villages experienced (Western) modernity through the Thai state. Schools, roads, teachers and civil servants are agencies of modernity introduced by the state. 15 Modernisation Theory The process of modernity could be measured by the spread of modern institutions, like schools or (modern, Western) medical facilities, and maps as a modernisation surface. The modernisation theory has encouraged backward countries to only copy the already-proven example of the West in order to develop their societies (Fotsyth 2005: 454). Modernisation theory not only stresses the process of change, but also the response to that change. It also looks at internal dynamics related to the social and cultural structures and the adaptation of new technologies. Furthermore, it demonstrates the relationship between knowledge and power in the creation of development theory; the western countries have authority to create the set of discourse that makes the Third world countries become the other (Scott 1995: 127). However, modernisation is not a singular process (Rigg 2003: 14). The modernisation process is to create commodity markets and transfer technology, knowledge, resources and organisational forms from the more developed world to the less developed world. Norman Long noted that in this way, traditional society is paralleled into modern world and the transformation of the economic and social patterns to be modern (Long 2001: 10). Modernisation and Development in the Anti-mainstream Development The development of superstructures serves two key purposes; to enhance the ‗hardware‘ (infrastructure) of the society and to develop the ‗software‘ (its people) of the society. For the latter, the construction of superstructures is a catalytic process used to inculcate its society with notions of ‗development‘ and ‗modernity‘. 16 However, in it is an irony in the developing world that modernity is the state and village paradox. Villagers have committed themselves to the pursuit of the progress. Hence, they try their best to cope with the existence of their daily life. In Thailand there are many alternative forms of resistance. We do not need to do what other people want us to do. This leads to the negotiation between the state and development. The most prominent and well-known example of a new form of resistance to the modernity of Thai society is the emergence and popularity of the Sufficiency Economy theory. Much like how Singapore and Malaysia had promoted ―Asian values‖ as a rejection of ―decadent‖ Western values that is seen to be tied with modernity; these phenomena help us to understand that partial resistance is the way to confirm the existence of modernity. Development is seen as the negotiation of the linear step of the economic and social development with the possible resistance . Post-development: the Encountering of Mainstream Development There are many critics of the singular (Western) modernity (Bunnell 2006: 19) model of development. Herbamas (1980) sees modernity is an unfinished project. Max Weber argues on the sociology of religion about the problem of universal history. Weber quested that Why, outside Europe, ‗the scientific, the artistic, the political or economic development….did not enter upon that path of rationalisation which is particular to the occidental (Habermas 2000: 1). The post-development school believes that development is the new form of colonialism. In other words, development is alternative word used to justify the right for northern countries to come and exploit southern countries, much like during the colonial era. In addition, the discourse of development serves the western political purpose to expand beliefs of democracy which would allow them to control the so17 called Third world countries more easily. Development does not provide the sustainable way to solve the problems in the underdeveloped world. The idea of post-development goes along with the idea of anti-development and beyond development. This school argues that development fails to allow the Third world countries to achieve the development form framed by the Western world. According to Nederveen Pieterse, ‗post-development overlaps with Western Critique of modernity and techno-scientific progress‘ (2001: 99). Post-development parallels dependency theory in seeking autonomy from external dependency, but is taken further to describe development as a power/knowledge regime (ibid: 104). Moreover, post-developmentalists see Development as a system of knowledge, technologies, practices and power relationships that serve to order and regulate the object of development‘ (Lewis et al. 2003: 545 in Lie 2007: 53). Post-development emerged after the ‗mainstream‘ development seemed to fail. Arturo Escobar (1995) argues that the studies of development are often taken as ‗telling the story of the (development) dream and how it progressively turned into nightmare‘ (Escobar 1995: 4). The post-development scholars situate themselves outside the institutional structure of development (Lie 2007: 53). In this case, the anti-politics machine is the emerging and strengthening of bureaucratic power like never before instead of limiting their role as facilitator of the development process. Post-development considers development as a hegemonic discourse. Post-development tried to find the alternative to development. The post-development school highlights the study on people is the emergence of counter-discourses from ‗below‘, affecting actions and outcomes from people who have to encounter the development. 18 The Critique of Post-development: Tradition is Not always Pretty or Comfortable The argument of the post-developmentalist is post-development is only critique but no construction (Nederveen Pieterse in Ziai 2007: 116). Jonahthan Rigg(2003) also argued that post-developmental has played a ‗discursive trick, a rhetorical ploy of equating development with Development‘ (Rigg 2003). It sees development is as a monolithic discourse (Ziai 2007: 112). Post-development only see development as a passage to modernisation, modernisation with Westernisation and Westernisation with the unthinking application of (bad) Science and Technology (Rigg 2003:327). Moreover, the main device to debunk development is the development promise of universal prosperity which post-developmentalist calls it as a ‗deceitful mirage or malignant myth‘ (Ziai 2007: 113). Post-development also ignores the fact that modernity and development do bring in numerous positive changes into peoples‘ lives (Rigg 2003, Corbridge 1998 in Ziai 2007: 115). A critic of Escobar on the failure of development such as the debt crisis, famine, increasing of poverty, malnutrition and violence that Escobar does not acknowledge that all these incidents have existed since the past (Ziai 2007: 117). Finally, post-development is another blueprint that based on reverse; anti-Western values but still, post- development also practice the same way as the mainstream development that to tell people what the villagers should do or follow. (ibid: 115). 19 Methodological Reflections My thesis is contextualised in Ban Nongyang, a village in Isan. With these problems on development in mind, I embark on my fieldwork in a place where people speak a different language and have a different culture from their counterparts in central Thailand. I carried out four months worth of fieldwork. From December 2008 to March 2009, I resided in Ban Nongyang as a researcher. Writing ethnography involves establishing trust and intimacy between parties involved. The ethnographer must establish a long-term relationship between himself or herself and the informant. The most important thing in writing ethnography is to stick to the words and terms that the informants used and perceptions they expressed as much as possible (Boonmathya 1997: 7). With my linguistic mastery and social embeddedness as the member of the community, it was easy for me to build up relationships with the informants. I personally knew the most of the people whom I interviewed prior to research. Some of them are my relatives, my parents‘ colleagues, and my friends. In short, everyone I interviewed can be linked to my personal life. It was easy for me to immerse myself within the local context and access community documents. Still, my conversations with people are full of malleable opinions, gossips, and conflicts of interest. The stories discussed in the thesis come from my four months of fieldwork and life-long experience as a member of the community. However, I have struggled with a conflicting stance between the role of a researcher and an insider. I sometimes sensed that informants were afraid to speak their minds, as they probably thought that it would affect them if I reported what I wrote to a state authority. For example, one afternoon, I was interviewing the food stall owner about his level of satisfaction of development in the village compared to that of Bangkok. My uncle-in-law, who is a 20 government teacher, walked into the stall. I greeted him by ‗wai‘ and said hello to him. He knew that I was in the middle of an interview, and he reminded the stall owner to ‗give good answers‘ (top di di). Thus, I realised that, at times, the barrier does not come from my status but from people around me. There are several limitations to insiderism as well. Knowing the background of villagers did not mean that I automatically gained their trust and obtained accurate data. After spending time in the village, I realised that my experience was limited. I looked at things only in one side, the middle class point of view. Most of the stories about the village‘s current affairs were recounted to me by my mother. Her picture of the village, through the stories conveyed, is shaped by her experiences and her middle-class social standing. This thesis represents an overview of everyday life of villagers and state-sponsored development. However, it will convey my (biased) reflection of development and the community though my own lens as a member of the community. Encountering and Engaging with Villagers As a member of the community, it seems like I share the village problems with other members of the village. Once I was asked by Aunty Tan, my distant relative, ‗how I would help the villagers to get out from debt and become rich?‘. My answer was that I would improve the irrigation system to be more efficient by deepening and broadening the irrigation canal. As a result, farmers would have enough water to farm. Aunty Tan laughed loudly at my answer. She said that the canal is useless. The earth bank is broken so it cannot retain water in the rainy season. When it rains, the canal bank will collapse as a result of there being too much water. The water flow will erode the canal‘s bank. Furthermore, the canal has no water in the dry season and 21 floods in the rainy season. Hence the canal sometime causes more problems than it is worth. I listened and agreed with Aunty Tan. I started to re-think about what I have heard from the government and the development at the ground by the villagers for the villagers could make sense. Being an anthropologist in the village was neither easy nor hard. It was one of the most memorable times in my life. At first, everyone probed about my presence in the village. When I responded that I am a researcher, they had different reactions. Some of the villagers volunteered to be interviewed. Some villagers asked me what would be changed after I finish this project. I upset some villagers answering that ‗well, this thesis would pave my way to come back home and develop our village‘. The villagers are always offered themselves to be interviewed and they hope that with their opinion, the state would have something to help them. It made me feel even more frustrated when I had to repeat my answer again and again. Sometimes, I felt guilty. The truth is my thesis cannot help them to get out of the debt or help them about anything. Even though the villagers knew that my thesis might not help them, they were still very friendly to me. I talked to people as much as I could, hope to gain some insight into their thoughts. I also roamed around with several groups of people each afternoon. In the afternoon, the villagers from the same hamlet always go to someone‘s house to roam there. I sat there and listened to the villagers‘ opinions, comments and gossips about happenings both within and beyond the village boundaries. Sometimes, the villagers laughed at me when I quickly wrote down what they said in my field notes. I have gained a lot of useful information and opinions from my village folks during fieldwork and I also have a better relationship with them. 22 With my extended family, I gained a whole new experience. It was harder to interview my close relatives than the other informants. It took me a longer time to open my close relatives‘ minds, and to accept their opinions about the village. I asked my relatives and cousins for their opinions on some events within the village. I only ever got typical well-constructed and middle-class style answers, which always came from other people. Every Friday or Saturday night, I would be at my grandmother house. Pam, my cousin, always came back home during the weekend. In some occasions, Nuk, my cousin, also came back. We would always come together for family dinner and stay around to chat. My two aunts would update what ‗happened in the past week‘ to us. I found it interesting, boring and annoying at the same time. My two aunts are teachers in the primary schools. Interestingly, they always manage to get updates on happenings within the village, even when they had to work in school all day. The update is what my sister calls gossip. Ae, my sister, always goes back home straightaway after dinner with her (unspoken) reason that ‗it wastes my time to sit and listen to aunties gossip about people and even any passerby‘. In the conversation, aunties always added some spice to make the story interesting and encouraged the audience to get involved. These are very crucial factors in sharpening my cousin‘s middle class opinion toward other villagers and the village. This makes me understand my position and opinion before I came back to do the fieldwork in the village, as I had mentioned earlier. I did not expect to hear the truth or to find out the truth from any informant. My main concern is the interpretation of villager‘s response of their opinion. Although I am a member of the village, I had to accept the fact that I will never be able to know the village inside out. I had to constantly be updated with happenings in 23 the village while penning my drafts back in Singapore. But I suppose this is an issue faced by every social scientist. 24 Chapter 3 Transforming the Fringe; State and State-sponsored Development in Northeastern Thailand Northeast Thailand, commonly known as Isan, is northeast of Bangkok. It is the largest region in Thailand; it covers one third of the total land area of the kingdom. Isan is notable for its high incidence of poverty (Phromphakping 2008:15). Apart from the difficult physical environment, including poor soil quality, water scarcity, etc. that has impoverished the region, Charles Keyes (1967) also discusses its geographical isolation from Bangkok. Further, the Mekong River serves to isolate the region from Laos. On the other hand, the Phanom Dong Rak Mountains divide southern Isan from the Kingdom of Cambodia. This geographical character has crafted Isan into a culturally rich region. Also, with ethical, cultural and linguistic differences from Bangkok, Isan inevitably became a fringe region. This chapter discusses the process of state integration of the fringe region from before the arrival of the Thai state bureaucracy until it became a part of the state in the early nineteenth century. During the early nineteenth century, the state‘s power was not really visible to the lay citizen. However, all of these changed during the age of development. The early National Economic Development Plans brought infrastructural development to the Northeastern region of Thailand (Phongphit and Hewison 2001:109). With this visible development approach, the state became increasingly prominent. The nation-wide state-sponsored infrastructure improvements have become a symbol of the state in lay citizens‘ eyes and rural people‘s minds. These infrastructural improvements helped to expand the virtual power of the state 25 through roads, schools, and health stations. In this chapter, I use education and state policies to examine how the state transform and integrate Northeastern Thailand. The Birth of Isan in the Nation Building of Modern Thailand Geographically speaking, Isan is located in the elevated vast land called Korat Plateau. There are Mun and Chi River, tributaries of Mekong River flowing from the west to the east. It is the closed region with the natural separation. Mekong River separates the north and the east of Isan from Laos. The Pethchabun, Dong Phaya Yen and San Kamphaeng ranges divides Isan from the central region. The Phanom Dong Rak range lies as the boundary between Thailand and Cambodia in the south. Most of the Northeasterners refer themselves as the Thai Isan (Keyes 1967: 2). The majority of population is ethnically Lao and speaks Thai-Lao (Thai-Isan). Khmer and Kui domains are located in the southern part of the region; mostly in Buriram, Surin and Srisaket province. (Mikusol 1984:1) Before the seventeenth century, the territories in northeastern Siam were under the Khmer empire and the Lao Kingdom. The Siamese court started to expand its power toward the Korat Plateau in seventeenth century during the reign of King Taksin (reign 1767-1782, who annexed Champasak and Vientiane as vassal states. It remained this way until the east bank territories of the Mekong River were transferred to French Indochina in 1893 (Mikusol 1984:4). In 1900, Northeastern Thailand was subject to drastic changes. Prior to this, the Siamese court changed the administration in the northeast to three Monthon (region): Monthon Isan, Monthon Udon and Monthon Nakhon Ratchasima. This area had close cultural, social and economic ties to the Laos and Cambodia courts. (Phongphit and Hewison 2002: 86). 26 Thailand‘s modernisation and nation-building process began in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (reign 1868 – 1910). In order to transform the Siamese court into a modern state, King Chulalongkorn introduced a series of administrative reforms based on Western ideas and technology (Mikusol 1984: 7). This series of reform between 1892 and 1905 aimed to respond to the threat of Western colonialism especially the French intervention in the Northeast. The French made a strong attempt to expand their political control, as they had in Indochina, to Northeast Thailand (ibid: 39). In 1898, The French established consul-generals in two important towns of the Korat Plateau, Ubon Ratchathani and Nakhon Ratchasima (Wipakpotjanakit 2003: 605-606). A new system of administration called the ‗thesaphiban‘ system (provincial system) was established, which entailed a form of internal colonialism in which the national decision-making and policy implementation was highly centralised by the elite in Bangkok (Mikusol 1984:7). The local lords were abolished and replaced by officials who were sent from Bangkok, thereby reducing local control and regional autonomy in the Northeast (ibid). This new system was not successful at first. The replacement of the local lords led to several rebellions throughout the kingdom, especially in the Northeast, which could be understood as resistance by the Isan people to the Siamese Thai (Phongphit and Hewison 2001). The response of the imposition of a centralised administration system since late nineteenth until the early twentieth century reinforced the sense of being a politically subordinate minority among the Isan people (Keyes 1983: 854). The uprisings in Isan, especially the Holy Men rebellion (kabot phu mibun) in 19011902, could be considered as ‗the most significant historical event shaking power of the Siamese court in the region‘ (Phongphit and Hewison 2001: 92). Mikusul (1984) purposed primordial sentiment, which emphasised the sense of self based on blood, 27 race, language, region, etc. (Mikusol 1984: 6), to understand the rebellion phenomena as the reaction to the Siamese court. Northeastern people base their dissimilarity on local historical experience, cultural practice and linguistic difference from the Thai in Central Thailand (ibid). Eventually, the Siamese were able to suppress the rebellions. In fact, they tried to improve and change the administrative system until it became the model of the provincial administration today (ibid). The Thai state was successful in establishing a sense of national identity and integrated Isan people to be a part of the Thai state. The term ‗khon isan‘, or Northeasterner, was created to identify them as a part of the Thai state, instead of being different ethnically (ibid 205). Development in Isan; the Tool of National Economic Integration Infrastructural improvement in Isan started in the nineteenth century. At that time, it was a tool to establish the legitimacy of Siamese Court. In 1930, the rail route to Ubon Ratchathani, the easternmost province of Kingdom, was completed, thus facilitating travel between Northeastern and Central Thailand. The transportation strengthened the economic connection between the centre and the periphery. As a result, the economy surged drastically (Mikusol 1984). In 1957, the development focus was shifted to integrate Thailand into the global economy. Prime Minister Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat created the National Economic Development Board (NEDB), which was later re-named the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB). Their aims were to implement policies and measures that would change the lives of the people, from the conditions of ignorance, poverty, and pain, to a condition of developed. I would argue that the destination, for this symbolic journey towards a better condition, is unclear, and by its 28 nature, undefinable. This is due to the fact that the point of departure itself is ambiguous, and that the three conditions, ignorance, poverty, and pain are social constructs, inspired by a combination of actual conditions of impoverishment and the trajectory of the underdevelopment image which the centre of power casts on its periphery. The results have been ambiguous at best. While certain improvements have been made apparent, the picture is skewed by new problems that have emerged from these initiatives. They range from environmental issues, such as urban pollution and rural deforestation, to social issues, such as widening income gaps. Following Keyes‘ (1967) asserted that ‗the backwardness of the Northeast at least in part to dislike and distrust of the region in official circle, developmental discourses in Thailand must be analysed by scrutinising the relationship between the state and its people. Many reasons have been suggested to explain why Isan is always left behind in a circle of underdevelopment and poverty. According to Dixon (1997), soils in the Northeast region are sandy in texture, shallow in depth, and low in inherent fertility. Their porosity reduces agricultural productivity, which is exacerbated by an unreliable rainfall pattern. A second reason is the isolation of the region. Isan is on the fringe of the kingdom with strong cultural and ethnic ties to Lao and Cambodia. Conclusion The transformation process emerged when Thailand had to encounter the Western powers during the colonial period, leading to the appearance of the modern Thai state in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The Bangkok administration claims that it has been successful in transforming the awareness of its people. The semi-autonomous domain of local (Lao) lords in the northeastern Thailand were 29 abolished and replaced by state representatives, the servants of the crown. This contributed to and reinforced the emergence of an ethnographical identity labeled ‘Isan’ (Keyes 1983: 854). The centralised policy, the modern education system and the language policy were introduced to create a sense of community. These policies were successful in inculcating the Thai national identity among the northeasterners (ibid). However, to transform the northeasterner to be a part of Thai state has not been easy. As we can see, during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, a series of uprising rebellions had mushroomed in the north and northeastern region. . State-sponsored development began in the nineteenth century, particularly during the reign of King Chulalongkorn. The emphasis of development during this early stage was on the construction of infrastructure such as railways and telegraph lines. Being at the forefront of the state‘s modernisation program and civilisation efforts, these infrastructures were essential to the survival of Thailand during colonialism. Development plans were implemented throughout Thailand again before the end of 1950s and were more intensive in the early 1960s, during the Sarit regime under the supervision of the United States. Thailand‘s government adopted a marketled economic development policy. This model increasingly engaged the Thai national economy with the global economy. As a result, it had significant consequences for the rural transformation. 30 Chapter 4 Mapping Ban Nongyang: the History and the Memory As the car travels downhill along Patthamanon Road, an inter-province highway from Surin to Roi Et, someone prepares to alight at the 45th Kilometre mark. The first thing that he sees is a big white sign with the name of the village, Ban Nongyang, both in Thai and English. Besides being a deictic sign, it also marks the boundaries of the village. Continuing on this path, the visitor sees a big pond with a temple behind it. Ban Nongyang is located on the right hand side of the road. There are many houses built along the road, most of being two-storey houses constructed from an irregular mix of wood and concrete. The school, district primary health station and sub-district municipal office are located at the fringe of the village which is marked by territorial markers such as the signage of another village. It does not matter how fast you drive past the village or how much you can see in the village. The symbols and signage of state-sponsored development are apparent. Among thousands of communities throughout the kingdom, roads and schools are two of the most basic markers of state-sponsored development. These remind us how much of a role the state plays in people‘s everyday life. Since state-sponsored development came into the village nationwide starting from 1960s, there have been tremendous changes in the village landscape. In this chapter, my approach is to understand development as a process of transformation of Bang Nongyang from traditional to modern. In the process of development and modernising, there are various features at play in the push and pull of village transformation. Here, I examine how villagers in rural northeastern 31 Thailand engage with modernity. The critical period since the introduction of statesponsored development in the 1960s will be the departure point. Rigg (2008) studies the changes in Thailand and proposed two narratives: (1) deep transformation in economy, society and environment; and (2) growing material wealth accompanied by deterioration in many aspects of well-being. In essence, he studied the interplay between modernisation and development. Moving away from a descriptive representation of the village, this chapter seeks to uncover the visual and sensual landscapes of the village. I suggest that development is a process which leads to modernity and causes transformation in the village. This chapter describes maps of meaning by the villagers; how do villagers use maps to illustrate the way they view and experience the village? The discussion will focus on the history and the memory of the village. In the following discussion, I look at the evolution of the village and community through social memory. I divide into three parts. In the first part, I discuss the conceptualised idea of the village and community and the socio-political background of Ban Nongyang. In the second part, I use roads, one of the most prominent symbols of development to capture how the development is located as a part of people‘s lives seeing from the prominence of the road network in the village map. In the third part, I look at a map drawn by the villagers, which helps me to examine people‘s imaginations of their own space and community. 32 Community and Village: Past and Present Community, with the sense of togetherness, characterises a wide range of people who ‗share the sense of identity, specific interests, values and role of definitions with respect to other‘ (Forsyth 2005: 102). The word ‗community‘ also has social and cultural connotations, while ‗village‘ tends just to be an administration unit and spatial division (Rigg 2003: 50). The village, as a grouping of people, can also be called a community. In the social organisation norms, the small peasant village was characterised as a closed corporate community (Rigg 1994). Rural Thailand has been used as a playground for the state to control the village since the modernisation reformation in the Chulalongkorn reign. The concepts of ‗ban‘ or ‗bang‘ have existed for a long time in the villagers‘ perspective. The village used to be a habitat for the people who lived there. With the onset of state-sponsored development, it has been changed or rearranged to be the smallest political unit in the bureaucratic system controlled by the state. Hirsch (2002) suggests that the notion of village could be seen as a territorial unit, as administration instrument or as a tool of standardisation (263). The official discourse divides the rural population and territories into ‗ban‘ as the smallest unit (ibid: 265). The Thai state introduced bureaucratisation to the villagers by establishing village headmen, who represent the state as its mouths, eyes and ears in order to help bureaucrats to control or take care of the state‘s interests in the village (Puanghet: 1213). 33 Engaging Village with the National Politics The dominant definition of a modern state entails the following set of criteria: the presence of a government, sovereignty, citizens and territory. In 1890, King Chulalongkorn‘s reign reformed the Kingdom‘s administrative system. The centralisation brought back the power to the King in the centre of the country, while the local lords and nobility were replaced with a bureaucratic administration. The political village was created by the central government in Bangkok in order to distinguish it from the traditional village (Rigg 2003: 197). The central state came in and created or territorialised the village administrative unit. The political territory of Thailand is categorised and sub-categorised through (EuroAmerican centred notions of) geographical scale, province, district, sub-district and village units. As such, people who live within the same border or space are registered as the inhabitants of that village (Vandergeest 1996; 285-286). The Socio-history and Political Background of Ban Nongyang Village Settlement Ban Nongyang, a Khmer speaking village, is located close to the natural swamp. Ban is ‗village‘ in Thai. Nong means ‗the natural water reservoir‘. Yang is ‗wild rubber tree‘. Ban Nongyang, therefore, means ‗a village located along the swamp that surrounded by the wild rubber trees‘. Ban Nongyang was settled close to the natural water resources for consumption by the villagers and their cattle (Phongphit and Hewison 1990: 6). The swamp receives the water from the Phnom Din hill, a small hill in the north direction. At that time, Nongyang was bigger than it 34 is today. It was a shallow and wide swamp, which expanded during the rainy season. There were bamboo groves laid on the north of the swap. It separated the swamp area out of habitat area. Starting in the 1970s, the swamp was re-engineered twice. The first re-engineering was in the 1970s by human labour. The second re-engineering was in 1990 and was done by machinery sponsored by the Royal Thai Army as a part of the Isan Khiao Project8. The village pond was transformed from a big swallow and wide swamp to a smaller but deeper catchment. The swamp without obvious borders became a rectangle pond. From my ethnographic survey, there is no evidence or any legend to tell the village settlement. No one is able to tell the village history. Most of my informants agreed on the original family names of the village: Pittngam, Ngamlert, Srikeaw and Borisut, Pimsri. Other surnames such as Phrombutr and Lapjit appeared in the village since, in the Khmer culture, men married and moved into women‘s families. Thus, these surnames are from the men who migrated into the village. Administrative Unit According to dwellers‘ understandings, originally one unit village was one whole community gathered with some other small outskirt hamlets. Normally, the villages would situate 3 kilometres away from one another. Once the political administration unit was introduced, Ban Nongyang was registered in Tambon Makmi (Makmi sub-district). In 1969, Ban Nongyang under Moo 3, Ban Mueangkae, Tambon Makmi shifted to be under Tambon Buakhok. And in 1972, Tambon Mueangkae was established and Ban Nongyang became Moo 1 of Tambon 8 Khrong Khan Isan Khiao (Isan Khiao Project) is a development project ran by the Northeastern Army in 1987 - 1990. It aims to improve conditions in farming areas and water sources in northeastern provinces. 35 Mueangkae. Ban Nongyang became moo 1 instead of Ban Mueangkae because the head of a group of villages at that time is Ban Nongyang village head man. Later in 1976, the Ban Nongyang, moo 1 was spilt to 3 units; Ban Nongyang unit 1, Ban Takdad unit 14 and Ban Nongtae unit 16. Politics of Village Name In the government document, Ban Nongyang is only a state administrative unit. But in dweller mindset Ban Nongyang is the gathering of 3 political units. Phuyai Thanom, Ban Takdad‘s ex-village headman, told me that the villagers were successful in their proposal to split Ban Nongyang into 3 units in 1976. The state asked the villagers to name the two new villages. Hence, the names Ban Nongtae and Ban Takdad emerged. Theoretically, the area which is now moo 16, Ban Nongtae, should be moo 1 since it is a centre of the village and it is where the Nongyang is located. However, the house of the village headman at that time was not in that area. Thus, the villagers decided to reserve Moo 1 for the land opposite the temple along the highway in the western part of the village. Moo 14, Ban Takdad, literally means ‗expose under the sun‘. The village name came from the name of the small hamlet that spilt of from the village. The hamlet, located 1 kilometre from the village, appears to be under the sun. Since Moo 1 is already named Ban Nonyang, Moo 16 must have a new name. The village agreed to name the new village unit Ban Nongtae. Grandmother Kop, a 60 year old farmer, told me that this is because there is one big Tae tree, with the scientific name Sindora siamensis Teijsm, at the corner of Nongyang pond. As I mentioned, there are three political units but people still continue using the old name of the village, Ban Nongyang. 36 Road, a Symbol of State-sponsored Development In the 1960s, Thailand primary object is to raise standard of living of the people in Thailand using development and modernisation. Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat, Thai Premier from 1959 to 1963 concentrated on building infrastructure as part of the rural development program. During his time in government, a network of roads was built across the country, linking villages, markets, and provinces. For Sarit, roads were also a tool to defeat the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) and to increase government legitimacy and stability especially in ‗insecure areas‘ (Chaloemtiarana 1979, 154-155). The importance of roads network is reflected in the report from National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) that emphasized ‗the development of transportation and logistics is considered as a very high priority‘ (NESDB 1963). Different kinds of roads, ranging from cart-ways to dirt and asphalt roads, were built during this time. The network of roads represents the state‘s imposed developmental scheme that provides people with an infrastructure to ―chase after development‖. It also provide a physical framework in which development can be viewed as a set to experiences whereby local people make used of the road, and in their own way, redefined the meaning of the development process the state has intended. Throughout the development era, the physical landscape of the village changed significantly. The first way in which this has occurred is through road construction. The asphalted road which connects Surin and Roi Et province divides some villages into two parts. Moreover, the rural road department built new dirt roads which connect the villages with the intra-province high-way. The cart road was abandoned since the new route is more direct. More and more people moved to build their houses near the road. The arrival of paved roads is a turning point in the social 37 life of rural villages, as it represents a significant indicator of a community's degree of social and economic progress (Roseman 1996: 837). Social Memory of the Road and Development Social memory is the indirect memory formulated by oral or written accounts of history (Anderlini, Gerardi and Lagunoff 2009: 1). These accounts were passed on through several generations (Anderlini, Gerardi and Lagunoff 2009: 1). The concept of social memory here helps to examine the emergence of roads and modern infrastructure. Here, Road is a level of collective representations though social action, social time and social space both the creatures and creators of social order (De PinaCabral 1987: 717). In the 1960s, the first paved road was constructed. It is an interprovincial highway connecting provincial towns together. It is named the Pattamanont road, or for the villager, it is the Surin – Thatum (district name) or Surin – Roi Et (province name) road. Villagers who were born before the 1960s always told me about how excited they were when the paved road was constructed. My father told me that When the road was first constructed, it was not as big as what you see today. It was a simple two-lane asphalted road. At that time, cars were too expensive. There were only buses that ran between Thatum town and Surin Town; we called them ‗safety bus‘ (rot plod phai)9 and another bus started from Ban Pring; an inner village to Surin town called ‗sty bus‘ (rot khok mu)10. Buses ran between town and come back daily. There were not so many cars then every time a car passed by, the children would run to the road and smell the tyre smell. Interestingly, I get similar reactions from people of my father‘s generation when I speak of ‗tire smells‘ while conducting fieldwork. They would smile at me and 9 The label ‗rot plod phai‘ was written at the side of the bus. 10 The bus was modified from the truck. The owner use the wood to fence the truck hence it looked like the sty. 38 say ‗yeah, I remembered. That time, there were not as many cars as today. Once one car passed by I would ran to the road and smell the tire smell‘. Roads as Modern Infrastructure To build road means to build new relationship to the state. Road put villagers in direct contact with the world of trade stores, outdoor markets, schools, and the government station. Road not only physically connect people to the outside world but also create more emotional attachment with the state, it also changes the landscape of rural Thailand. Sarit believed that two basic needs for raising standard of living of rural population is roads and water (Chaloemtiarana 1976: 151) thus in his office Infrastructure building especially road became top priority. This is the essential political aims behind Sarit‘s roads building policy is to focus on increasing the government‘s legitimacy and stability. In this respect, roads construction project was implemented through official recommendations, rather than a response to the need of local people. I asked the villagers to draw a village map. Quite distinctly, roads are featured in every map. Through these ‗maps‘, we can see how the road frames the villagers‘ imagination of how the village map appears. It frames the experience of the place. In this case, the road limits one‘s experience; a place that cannot be accessed by the road becomes unimportant for people. Sharon R. Roseman (1996) proposed that roads are symbolic constitutional history at the local level. Roseman employs the opposition between the existence and the absence of paved roads linking the countryside to the cities and thus to economic and technological progress. It reaffirms the symbols of modernity as opposed to backwardness. 39 Figure 1 The village maps shows the village’s road network (Mental) Maps and People: Understanding the Village and Villagers from the Map A map is a graphical representation of geographic space where location and attribute (where something is located and what it is) are combined into a single visual product (Wentz 2006). Maps can be read as a form of geographical imagination (Massey 1995). Every map conveys different meaning. It shows the individual interpretation of the village landscape. The map becomes a juridical territory; it facilitates surveillance and control. Maps are still used to control our lives in innumerable ways (Harley 1989:12). Maps are means of representation and every individual map embodies a particular interpretation of the place it is depicting. Their design shows what they include and what they omit. It reflects different experiences, priorities and interpretations (Massey 1995: 20). In this sense, the map reflects the worldview of the mapmakers on what they view as important. 40 This part seeks to engage maps, as a tool, to decipher villagers‘ collective memory of the village. First I look at the map of meaning; what do people put and not put into the map? Secondly, I examine the elements included in maps to understand how the state ideology portrays the people every day and how the villagers reproduce the state ideology. This leads to my point about the collective memory of the village. Here, I use the road as the evidence of the introduction of development and modernity. Roads distinctively appear not only in the villagers‘ maps but also in the state map. The road symbolises development; to access the road is to access modern infrastructure. Here, I engage the use of maps to examine how the road shapes and reshapes people‘s imagination about the village‘s space. (Mental) Map: Drawing My Village Figure 2 Village map sketched by the villagers 41 These sketches do not provide a map-based representation of the individual‘s spatial or geographic knowledge. Rather they indicate how these individuals think about their surroundings. (Bell 2009: 72). These four maps I have shown are selected from drawers of different backgrounds. Picture 1 shows a map drawn by a local primary school teacher. It shows his concern about putting everything in the map. In this sense, the map is full of symbols. The second picture is the map drawn by a 22-year-old man. His map roughly shows the village‘s road network. He does not concerned about the residential or even the small cart road within the village. Yet, he drew the location of the motorcycle repair shop and the small groceries store where male teenagers always gather in the evenings. These two places are the places that he most often frequented, which is why he included them in his map. Picture 3 is drawn by a schoolteacher. She drew the temple gate, the pipe water station, the community rice mill and the bridge across the village irrigation canal, which makes hers stand out. She depicts the temple with much more detail, showing her close relationship with the temple. For Picture 4, the drawer is a member of the municipal district council. His map shows his concern for the residential area of the village which is his responsibility. In short, the maps drawn by people from different backgrounds tell us different stories. People show their identities based on what they include (or exclude) in their maps. 42 The Map of Meaning The knowledge and science of representation, to demonstrate the truth that its subject declares plainly, flow nonetheless in a social and political hierarchy (Harley 1989:6). The steps in making a map are selection, omission, simplification, classification, the creation of hierarchies, and 'symbolisation'. These are all inherently rhetorical (Harley 1989:11). Maps show how villagers read their village differently. Figure 3 The maps show different interpretations of the village boundary Picture 1 was drawn by a primary school girl. Her map shows the much smaller village boundary as compared to the second one drawn by a female schoolteacher (Picture 2). The illustrator of the first picture shows her limited interaction with the village school, the Tambon Administrative Office and the Subdistrict health centre. Instead, she named the six houses, belonging to her neighbours and close relatives, and among the four small houses, the middle one belongs to her domestic helper. The big house that appears somewhat separated is my house, where she would frequently hang out when I was conducting my fieldwork. The biggest house represents the village (according to her sign on the map) where she told me that ‗there are houses here, in front of the temple but I do not know the house owner‘s 43 name‘. Her answer has shown her limited knowledge about the village. She has very limited social interaction in the village since she studies in the provincial town. She spends most of the time one the school bus and in town. Picture 2 is drawn by a 47 year old, female teacher. Her map distinctly shows the locations of houses with the use of square boxes. The village map for her contains details of one side of the road only. The residential area and the village road network are not important to her. She pays more attention to the village institutions: the temple, the village pond, the pipe water station, the village rice mill station, the jar factory, the school, the Tambon Administrative Office and the sub-district health centre are on her map. She states the main road name in the ‗official name‘ but for other roads, she put the direction as a name. The Reproduction of the State Ideology I asked my informants to draw a map of the village. At first people refused to draw the map because they did not think their map would be the correct map compared to the official map drawn by the government. Finally, I received 17 maps from 16 villagers. There are only three maps drawn by female villagers. The reason given by those who refused was that they did not know how to draw. We can easily see that the map is automatically interpreted as a matter of state authority. As I asked aunty Miah, my aunt‘s domestic helper to draw the map, she replied, Are you crazy asking me to draw a map? I don‘t know how to draw. Why don‘t you go and ask teacher Sawin to draw? He must be able to draws an accurate one for you since he is a teacher. Another example was my father. ‗Father, can you draw our village map for me?‘ I asked. I told him I wanted him to draw a village map. He replied, 44 It is not a village map it is a village layout. A map is something bigger like the provincial map or country map. Maps need to be accurate. You cannot draw it just because you feel like you want to draw. It is required many knowledge. Why don‘t you use Google map? Aunty Miah refused to draw the map since she thought that she is not capable and not accurate enough while my father thought that his map would not geographically correct. Both cases show that the authority of being the owner of the village is not with the villager. Aunty Miah can represent typical villager; born in a poor farmer family and received only the compulsory education. As for my father, he is a mid-level education supervisor at ministry of Education: he represents both a villager and a state officer. In some sense he should be more comfortable in drawing the village map since he has some authority. However, his refusal confirms that the local people locate themselves as peripheral to the state, even if they work for it. Instead of drawing a simple map to reflect his imagination about the village as I requested, my father asked me to get Google map since it is a satellite map. It shows that my father gives authority to Google map, thinking that it is more accurate than his own geographical understanding. Maps are still frequently viewed as factual statements that are essentially neutral, objective and above political and grubbily material concerns (Pinder 2003:172). The great array of maps produced by the government at all levels is further evidence that maps are necessary simply because many facts and concepts are best shown on a map (Monmonier 1988). Once embedded in a published text the lines on a map acquire an authority that may be hard to dislodge. Maps are authoritarian images. Without our being aware of it, maps can reinforce and legitimate the status quo (Harley 1989:14). 45 Figure 4 Village map sketched by a local teacher A well-drawn map by teacher Sawin shows that he is an experienced map drawer. He drew a lot of school and village maps back in the 1990s, which the school now uses his drawn maps as wall decoration. In this map, you can see the name of the map, as well as the symbols and the explanation of the symbols. The letter ‗N‘ indicates the directions on the map. It also shows the bigger boundary of the village. He uses the natural waterway to set the village boundary. Uncle Sawin shows how much he is concerned about the using of the symbols to make sure the village map looks complete. From his map, he sees Ban Nongyang as a village comprised of three units, which is based on the administrative view of the village. 46 Michael Foucault‘s (1980) notion of power is applicable to understanding how villagers produce maps and attach memory to them. For Foucault, power shapes knowledge, map in this sense, is a tool of power, and it helps maintain the state‘s mastery over its claimed territory (Foucault 1980 in Harvey 2009: 431-432). A cadastral map is the geographical representation of the political sovereign‘s claim to that territory and the government‘s organisation of the territory (ibid: 433). The title not only shows legal ownership but also reveal how the state started controlling and managing the land. It shows the landowners in the surrounding proximity in numerical order. It reaffirms the power of the state beyond villagers‘ land utilisation. As aforementioned, schooling on the proposed world imposes a development orientation on the villagers. However, it has prepared villagers to accept a subordinate position in the centralised bureaucratic world of Thai nation-state (Keyes 1991: 89). This is why villagers refused to draw the map of their own village in the first place, as they hand over the authority in the management of their surrounding to the state. Rigg (1994) views the village as a unit of the society, production, identity and administration. The traditional village is a little republic, or a political unit that follows the state‘s imposed trend of development. This one way top-down relationship allocated the villagers as forever the recipients, lying at the bottom of the Thai state hierarchical structure of development policy planning and implementation. Further, this top-down structure also adversely affects the way the villagers sees the world around them. In a way, the map-drawing exercise reveals that the villagers do not think that they have any authority to draw the village map since authority is in the state‘s hand. In order to draw a map to present the village, they have to follow the state‘s version of the map or the map drawn by the village headman. Moreover, most follows the official version of the map when they try to draw it themselves. 47 Conclusion In this chapter, I focus on the transformation of the village into the state system. Ban Nongyang is one of thousands villages throughout the Thailand that were affected by the rural transformation. State and development projects came in to the village in different forms with the goal to transform the traditional village to become a unit of administration. The preceding discussion considers social memory using maps as an example. Maps show the several levels of interpretation. Each map of each place exhibited the individual characteristics of that place. All the maps have outstanding layout of the road network within the village. However, there is differentiation at the individual level. It shows how they put and omit to put in their maps. Moreover, there is no exact village boundary. It is up to each informant to draw their own village boundary. The authority of drawing the map is another discussion here. Since the map is dominated by the state, the villagers think that they have no authority to draw an accurate village map. Look at Sawin‘s map; to make his map look more accurate, he put the entire symbol into his map thus his map is the state-like map. The road network is the most prominent thing presented in the map. Roads, a prominent symbol of development, link the countryside to the cities and help to facilitate the economic and technological progress which has become the symbols of "modernity" as opposed to "backwardness". To access roads is to access development and modernity. Roads bring in huge changes and encourage massive mobility in the village, on a scale never before seen. Therefore, the construction of roads has allowed more than just more efficient traveling, but it has also lead to the construct of a new social memory of development and the engagement of people into modernity. 48 Chapter 5 Moved There and Moved Back: the Memories and Experiences of the Village Migrants In this chapter I look at rural-urban migration and the encountering of modernity; migration plays as a negotiation of the relationships among the individual actors. The rural area becomes the playground where the wave of modernity flows into the community. This is brought about by the migrants‘ first hand experiences with working and encountering the modern lifestyle of wealthy urban dwellers. The village is therefore considered as a recipient of development and modernity. The external experiences are pouring into the rural landscape from institutional actors such as state and individual actors such as the villagers themselves. The urban-rural relationship is two-way relationship which is dynamic and fluid. Here, we can look at the everyday life practices of people, the patterns of the migration. In this chapter, I present the stories of the migrants. Apart from portraying the picture of urban migration and the ensuing negotiation with modernity, I also discuss the role of migrants as a carrier of modernity to the rural society, and bring their culture to the outside society along with the exchanges between the urban and rural setting. Moreover, I also consider the present life stories of the people who return home after having spent half of their lives in the metropolitan areas. 49 Open-economy as a Push Factor of the Rural-urban Migration Isan workers replaced the Chinese immigrant workers in the 1950s (Keyes 2002). With the completion of rail and road construction, people from Isan were encouraged to migrate to work in the big cities in search of cash wages. Money became more and more important for the rural people (Phongphaichit and Hewison, 2000, Keyes 2002). Consumerism, driven by globalisation/ modernisation, has become a normative goal, even at the edges of global consumerism, as in the rural area. Following the suggestion of the World Bank to stimulate the economy, Thailand implemented the open-economy model, which brought drastic changes to the national economy and improved standards of living. From the 1960s, capitalist-led development has created drastic changes in Thailand in both the rural and urban landscapes. This has resulted from the exposure to the world market and export-oriented industrialisation according to the policy of the Thai state. In search of a better life, many rural people migrated to Bangkok and other big cities. Since the rural people have very limited education, they can only work in unskilled, labour-intensive sectors, especially in construction sites and weaving factories, where the wages are low. Phromphakping sees migration as a response to the spatial inequalities resulting from uneven development (2008: 4). From 1986 onwards, the urban economy spurted ahead. Bangkok became the dream city for peasants wanting to run away from poverty and strike it rich. Therefore, they migrated to these cities in search of opportunity and money (Pongphaichit and Baker 1996: 146). The wage of the unskilled worker is low, but this does not deter rural migrants from coming to Bangkok. For the migrants from the countryside, Bangkok can become a city of heaven or a city of hell (Mills 1997: 47). 50 In the boom period (1980s-1997), many working-age villagers left to work in Bangkok and other big cities as unskilled workers. Most of them went to Bangkok immediately after they finished primary school when they were around 13-14 years old. In the past, the rural people lived in self-sufficient conditions and used the barter system. Money was not particularly important. The villagers relied on their neighbors with whom they traded rice for essentials like salt. In the cultivation or harvest period, the villagers would help their neighbors in the paddy fields. However, the young villagers who worked outside of their villages have remitted money back to their parents, who caused the village economy to become rely more on the cash economy. When electricity was introduced to rural Thailand in the 1980s, money from remittances encouraged many families spent the money to buy home appliances such as refrigerators, televisions, stereos, and motorcycles to facilitate their lives. The culture in the paddy field also changed when money was used to hire people to plant and harvest, which replaced the prior rotation-helping system. Looking at the transformation and engagement of modernity in the village, we cannot only limit the study scope to within the physical village boundary. Development opens the new landscape of human mobility. Road and railway networks allow people to move around much more easily than before. As the capitalist-led economic development has been implemented, thousands of factories have opened in Bangkok and the peripheries. The urban migration from the 1980s is inherently associated with the growth of the demand of cheap labour intensive industries (Phrompakphing 2008: 45). People from all over Thailand started migrate to work in Bangkok both seasonally and permanently. 51 Migration and Its Stories Uncle Wan; a 60 year-old farmer and part-time carpenter went to work in Bangkok around mid 1970. His first job was in construction. He told me that That year after Songkran; my friends who were working in Bangkok were about to go back to work. I thought that I should go with them at least during that dry season and come back to do the farming in the rainy season. It was better than staying at home; at least I can earn some money. After that year by year, I kept going to work in Bangkok or sometime Korat11 right after the harvesting season. Later, in 1990, I got a job at the rice mill nearby the village then I stopped going to work in the city. Uncle Wan claimed that he was in the first generation that went to work in Bangkok. The first wave of the migration consisted of men who went out to work as unskilled labour in the big city. Grandmother Kon, a 69 year-old grocery shop owner told me that ‗in my time, only man can go to work. If you are a woman and you want to go, people would assume that you go to work as a prostitute‘. Grandmother Kon went to work as a domestic helper in Bangkok and met her SinoThai husband. Later, she and her husband moved back and opened a grocery shop in the village in the early 1980s. In 1980s, it became normal to both men and women to go to work as an unskilled labour in Bangkok, mostly in the factory or a construction site. There is no discrimination against gender in the rural-urban migration. Female migration is higher among teenage migrants, but declines after they become adults. In contrast, the number of male migrants is high and sustained even amongst middle age men (Phromphakphing 2008: 45). Some people even moved there permanently and remitted the money back home instead of coming back to do the farming during the farming season. 11 The shorten name of Nakhon Ratchasima province which acts as a gateway to other provinces in the Northeast. 52 Mary-Beth (1997, 1999), in her work on the female migrant workers in Bangkok, shows the pressures of the female factory worker and their endeavor to be both modern, up-to-date (thansamai) and dutiful daughters. The discussion lies on the changes in accepted cultural practice. The pressure on the women in modern Thai society between being traditional, dutiful daughter and modern, up-to-date woman is not conflicted but is ‗tightly linked‘. They can be modern woman factory workers and also dutiful daughters at the same time. Aunty Wi, an old factory worker will be discussed to support Mill‘s research. Aunty Wi, who is 44-year old, grocery shop owner, said that, I quit school after finishing compulsory primary school education in the late 1970s. I stay at home helping my family farm for 5 - 6 years. I went to Bangkok in 1989 since there is nothing to do at home. That year was a drought year. I followed my friends to work in a textile factory. Normally, people will go to work one or two years after they finish primary school (14-15 year-old) but I went to Bangkok when I was 17. Thus, I was quite late to start working in Bangkok. She started working in the textile factory at Bangkae sub-urban Bangkok. She told that her wage was 70 THB (2.10 USD) a day; each month, she earned around 1500 - 1600 THB (45.11 – 48.12) a month. It was enough since she stayed in the dorm provided by the factory owner by sharing with another 5 girlfriends. My monthly remittance was 500 THB (15.03 USD) a month. I kept 1,000 THB (30.07 USD) since I want to buy a gold necklace. I did not remit all the money back home. I kept some with myself, I wanted to ‗carry money armfully‘ (hop ngoen) back home. I would give it to my mother anyway but I just want to give it to her with my hand. Apart from remittance, another feature of working in the city is access to modernity. Aunty Wi told me that she always spent her day-off at the mall. I love to go the mall and browse the electricity appliances and the kitchen utensils, like the set of nice melamine dishes and bowls. I want to buy it back home. At that time, the electronic appliances in Bangkok were much cheaper than in our town. The first time I came back to visit my family, I bought back a colourful blanket. I love 53 the moment that I hang my blanket on my washing line. I saw your mother hang it before. I thought I would get it one day and I got it. Aunty Wi spent 5 years working in Bangkok, then she returned home and married her husband, who is from the same village. She comments on the decision to marry her husband: I came back home that year and my husband‘s parent came to propose me for him. He is a good guy. I never heard anything negative about him (when he was working in Bangkok). Moreover, he is neither a drinker nor a smoker. So, I said yes. That it was important that she ‗never heard anything negative about him‘ leads to my following discussion on the difficulties that women workers have to encounter in order to retain their value and parents’ face back at home. In such a small community, both in the city and back at home, face is very important. To go to work outside the village, most of them follow their relative or friend to work in the same workplace; even if they do not, they still stay or hang out together in the same social circle. This is particularly true for the female workers who tend to work in factories, as they have the same working and leisure hours. It is not easy to manage your unlimited freedom and power of consumption while you are away from the family regulations back at home. Moreover, it also creates a chance to meet people from all over Thailand. There are many single mothers in the village who were ex-female migrant workers. One day, fourteen years ago, aunty Phlae, the daughter of an exvillage headman, came home pregnant. Of course, this upset her mother. Her mother tried to ask her who the father is, but the daughter never responded. Still, no one knows the truth, although there are various rumours: some said the guy is married and some said that the guy is single does not want to take the responsibility. Now, she is still living and struggling in the village with her mother and son and has never gotten married. 54 In the City and Back at Home; the Contradiction of the Status of the Migrant Workers As mentioned, the relationship between rural-urban is not a one way relationship. We must question, for instance, how migrant people engage with the urban modern life that changes their goals, inspirations, intensions and expectations. How it is embedded in urban life and the adoption of cosmopolitan lifestyles (Rigg 2007: 67) is widely discussed. However, it is impossible to understand this social phenomenon by overlooking the cultural exchanges of urban-rural as a two-way of relationship by having the migrant as a messenger. It is normal to see the migrants returning from Bangkok with their arms full of modern goods such as electronic appliances. When migrants return to their village, they bring with them not only modern gifts, but also the modern-urbanised character. Peeled-skin and urban custom is preferred and embedded the higher status of being the (Bangkok) factory ladies; in the village. In fact the peeled-skin comes from the long working hours in the factory thus they do not have chance to be under the sun. Ironically, the clash status of being at lower level in the Bangkok society becomes someone ‗thansamai‘ back in the village. On the other hand, when the migrants return their workplaces, they also bring back their own rural identity to the bigger and more modern city Finding the Way Back to the Village During the financial crisis in 1997, a number of factories closed down, leading to many who worked in the cities returning to their villages. Along with their presence, they brought back to the villages the urban lifestyle. For instance, they prefer to buy food rather than to cook, since they were usually too busy to cook in the 55 cities. The changing of eating habits can be seen from the appearance and expansion of local restaurants in rural areas. After the Thai economy recovered, some of the migrants returned to Bangkok and other large cities, but others decided to remain in the village. As a result, the urban lifestyle began to entrench iself among the villagers. Uncle Roek went to Bangkok in 1983 and started work as a coolie at Yaowarat, Bangkok Chinatown. His wage was 60 THB (1.80 USD) per day. Later, he went to work in the fishing boat at Meaklong, Samut Songkhram province, one of the biggest jetties in Thailand. He returned to Bangkok again in late 1990s to work as a mechanic at the washing machine company. Then he changed again and started to sell street food in Bangkhae, a suburb of Bangkok. As a food seller, Uncle Roek and his wife struggled a lot. He kept changing the food he sold from what he called ‗authentic Isan food‘ to packaged pre-cooked food, which continued to change for several times. During the economic crisis in 1997, many were affected by factory closures or company down-sizing, and switched to become food vendors. I always wanted to go back home. People from the same village kept telling me to move back here and open the restaurant long time ago. But I did not move back. At that time, I thought it was impossible. Our village is not that developed. Who will buy my food, the lay-villagers (chaoban)? Uncle Roek gave me the reason that he refused to move back to the village. He sold food in Bangkok until 2007 and he decided to move back to the village when his youngest daughter finished her bachelor degree. His reason for returning was that ‗living in Bangkok became more and more expensive. I had to pay 4,000 THB (120.30 USD) per month for the room rent and the stall space. Now the situation changed, more and more rural people (khon bannok) got a permanent job and have a salary. They have more buying power than before. Moreover, in Bangkok, there are more and more competitors. 56 Aunty Uan, Uncle Roek‘s wife, followed her husband to Bangkok when Uncle Roek worked at washing machine company as a housekeeper. I followed him to Bangkok because I want to work and earn some money. However, living in Bangkok is not easy. In Bangkok everything is money. Once you get out, you must spend. For example, to go out, you must pay the bus fare – sometimes I need to transfer 4 times to get to the destination, how much do you think it cost me? You need to pay for food and the wage is low. You must rent a house and must pay for the rice (ban ko tong chao, khao ko tong sue). Do not think that you can eat good food and live good life like Bangkokians. Bringing Back Home the Urban Practice Uncle Roek decided to move back to Ban Nongyang in 2007. He finally opened ‘Loed Rot Surin Restaurant’ in mid-2007. It is a 6-table, cozy-looking restaurant located at the village city bus stop right in front of his house. The restaurant is run by the couple. His restaurant reminds me of the urban style restaurant. It is very professional, with the proper menu signage displaying the prices. The restaurant layout is in order and neat. The service is like what you would expect from a city restaurant. The cantonment is always full and ready to use. Unlike other rural food sellers, they open the restaurant daily and are never closed for ‗firewood or mushroom hunting‘ or ‗close because there is a party at someone house so there will be no customer like other food stall in village‘. What we can see here is the urban practice of the professional food seller in a village setting. Uncle Roek‘s restaurant is diubg very well. The prices are relatively expensive since he charges the same price as in Bangkok. His reason is that the ingredients are harder to find in the village than back in Bangkok. As a result, he incurs a transport cost, as he has to buy everything from the town market Uncle Roek has plans to expand his restaurant by two more tables. As mentioned, 57 I earned more than I expected. I did not experience the 2,600 Baht (78.20 USD) butterfly order in Bangkok but I got it here. Nowadays, the Tambon Municipal Office always has the training and the seminar. They always order the lunch boxes from my stall. Moreover, I have a lot of regular customers come from outside the village. Those state officers, teachers who come to eat lunch or meet for dinner here. My golden rule is ‗to give the customer a good service. Uncle Roek‘s restaurant reaffirms the changing of eating habits resulting from the urban migration. His urban style stall sells not only noodles but also other Isan food and Thai dishes. Uncle Roek‘s restaurant is the only restaurant in the village. His stall is a departure from the old style village food stall that only sells noodle12. In addition, the urban practice of the restaurant‘s opening hours is very systematic. There is a sign which displays the opening hours as 7 am - 9 pm every day. He said that he seldom closes the stall. He would rather take a long holiday than to keep closing for random occasions. The volume of food sold by Uncle Roek‘s restaurant during the planting and harvesting period re-affirms the presence of the urban food consumption practice in the village. Normally, the best time for to sell food is in the summer when people are free from farming. The rainy season is the worst time, as people prefer not to eat out as there are a lot of food available for harvest, such as forest mushroom, bamboo shoots, vegetables, fish and frogs. Villagers can just harvest forest products for consumption. However, the rainy season is also the planting season and most of the villagers will be busy with farming. If you hire help with your farming, you are expected to cook for them. Today, the villagers change from cooking themselves to 12 The sense of eating out in the village does not really exist. People are not keen to buy food since you can find food from the forest. The first food stall set up in the village is the noodle stall ran by Grandfather Gen (which literally means Chinese). The best location to set up the stall is at the village junction where the local road meets the highway. And it is always the noodle stalls that tend to be successful. It aims to not only serve the local dwellers but also the travelers who come and wait for the bus to and from the city. As mentioned about noodle it not the local diet, noodle does not count as a everyday life food since noodle, pork and other basic ingredients like pepper, tong chye are the ‗you must get it from the market‘ ingredients. The noodle stall normally opens in the lunch time from 11 am – 3 pm. The noodle sellers do not really consider themselves full-time food sellers. They also rely on other income like farming. Hence, someday the stall just stops selling things for other activity without any notice. 58 simply buying food from Uncle Roek‘s restaurant. He has even better business than during the summer. Here, we can see Uncle Roek as a messenger introducing the urban business running style to the villager. Making Way to Return Home Uncle Roek returned home and still has good business. He said that ‗my life is still the same as when I was in Bangkok‘. Uncle Roek and his wife enjoy the normal mode of life in the village. Uncle told me about his children that are still struggling in Bangkok. I have two children, son and daughter. I want my children to come back and work in the village. My son is a steel bender. I think he can survive if he moves back here. Now, at home (in the village), there are many steel jobs. My daughter works at the insurance company. Her salary is not enough for her to survive. Up-country it is safer than living in Bangkok. The salary is not enough because my daughter spends it on lavish goods but because in Bangkok, you need to pay for everything. Well, my children do not want to come back. The choice of returning is still up to the individual. A migrant is an active participant in the reconstitution of urban life (Schiller and Caglar 2009). Living in the metropolitan for so long, the villagers may feel more comfortable to live there than go back home. The reason being afraid that there will be not has any job to do back in the rural village. These migrants are away from the village for a very long time. They do not want to adapt themselves back to the ‗rural village mode of life‘. Some of them are afraid that they might could not find any job as they do or paid well as good as they get in Bangkok. 59 Conclusion Thai state focuses on economic development; infrastructure was built to facilitate economic growth. The export-oriented economy needs tremendous labour to work in the industrial sector. These two factors encouraged the emergence of urban migration. The urban migration became popular in Thailand during the economic miracle in the 1980s. Rural people migrated to the big cities, especially Bangkok, to seek new opportunities. The urban migration portrays an idea of villagers‘ contact and experience with urbanism and modernity from the external world and how they adapt it into their lives. Urban migration and the urban practices presented in this chapter show how the urban migration engages at the individual and community level. The first reason to migrate is to find opportunities to improve living standards for oneself and for one‘s family. In this process, urban migration not only provides the chance for migrants to earn more money but also offers them chances to engage and experience new things beyond their village. Modernity is one example. The migrants engage, practice and negotiate with modernity and they also play a role as a messenger who bring the modernity/urbanism practices back and reproduces it in the village. The village becomes the ground for urban-rural interaction. Villagers become the players who have their own authority to add-in and drop-out the urban practice. The migrants leave the village with the duty on their shoulder to earn money to feed the family members back home. The migrant position changes according to where they are. In the city, they are in the lowest layer of the society; they trade their labour with the little money they have. They are only able to enjoy limited luxuries according to what they can afford. However, once they return home their social status changes. They become the urban 60 people (khon mueang). They come back with not only with the goods that they bought in the city, but also a modern identity. The embeddedness of the modern/urban life can easily be seen in the transforming village like in Ban Nongyang. The case of Uncle Roek shows the introduction of the new concept of being a full-time food seller. It shows that now in the village, life is no longer about being a farmer. With the skills as a food seller, Uncle Roek and his wife show how they adapt their urban life to the rural landscape nicely. However, it does not mean that now the migration trajectory changes from moving away from the rural to the moving back to the rural. It is just that people have more choices in mobilising their lives as we can see that Uncle Roek‘s children do not want to move to the village. 61 Chapter 6 Education and the Pursuit of a Better Modern Life In the development era, formal education is considered as a national mobilisation. Literacy becomes an essential instrument of informing the people, and a means to mobilise the masses to political solidarity and to give their energy to the attainment of national goals (Fagerlind and Saha 1995: 46). Education is the formation of modern values. From the book Becoming modern, Inkeles and Smith claimed that in the developing countries where they conducted their research, education emerged as ‗unmistakably the most powerful force…shaping (a person‘s) modernity score‘ (1974:304). Roger Manson (2000) discusses in his paper on conspicuous consumption and the positional economy that education is considered as a status-seeking activity. Education becomes a socially-inspired consumption. Advanced, professional education is re-defined as a new emerging idea of secure life. Competition for status-conferring occupations and employment encourages people to pursue an educational degree. The levels of education range from primary, secondary and tertiary levels are examples of such positional activity (ibid: 124); the higher education you have, the higher your social status will be. In this chapter, I discuss how villagers value formal education and how they have embraced it as a privileged way to embrace modernity. I begin my discussion by outlining a brief history of education in Thailand. The Thai educational system in a non-Thai speaking village will be examined through the national language policy. With these policies, I will consider how the fringes of the country became a part of Thailand. 62 The Background of Formal Education in Thailand The people on the periphery never appeared in any grand narrative of the national history. At the same time, they are forced to become a part of the contemporary Grand National narrative. The perception of Thai citizenship was created through the state education apparatus. Keyes (1991) viewed the school is ‗the proposed world‘ in which the indigenous peoples are socialised to become Thai citizens and accept the power of the Thai state. People living throughout Thailand have had similar experiences in learning the idea of their nationhood through the state‘s standardised norm; people consumed comparable news across the country, studied the same curriculum, and were taught in standard Thai language. The dramatic change occurred when the school system was introduced. In pre-modern Thailand, education was closely tied to the Buddhist world. Theravada Buddhist schools and the wat-schools (temple-monastery) were found in nearly all villages. Education was designed to cultivate literacy and to provide access to the dhamma, Thai and Pali languages taught by the monks. Since instruction was structured primarily as preparation for entry to the Sangha, only males could attend the classes. (Keyes 1991, 95) King Chulalongkorn (reign 1868 - 1910) realised that educational modernisation could be achieved without adversely affecting Siamese identity and could eventually serve to strengthen national identity amidst challenges presented by the West (Fry 2002: 8). The first modern education school was established in 1970 for the royal family and nobles. And in 1884, the first primary school providing free education for common people was founded at Wat Mahannapharam (Mikusol 1984: 161). King Chulalongkorn promulgated a Decree on the Organisation of Provincial Education in 1898, which retained the traditional monastic schools with monks as 63 teachers, but gave these schools new functions. Charles Keyes (1991: 95) suggests these schools were ‗instructing students in the ‗modern‘ curriculum devised by a state agency‘. The curriculum included the teaching of standard Thai as a national language, arithmetic and the requirement of national standardised examinations. By King Vajiravudh‘s (reign 1910-1925), monks were removed from the education system and the king envisioned a system of popular education in which teachers would be trained by, and report solely to, the state. King Vajiravudh‘s promulgated the Primary Education Act of 1921, an act that made state-sponsored education compulsory for all citizens. One of the most important social implications of this Act was that it made school attendance mandatory for girls as well as boys. It was the first attempt to eliminate sex discrimination in education (Mikusol 1984: 180). The percentage of female students between 1921 and 1925 throughout the country rose from seven to thirty-eight (Keyes 1991: 96). Keyes discussed the result of the establishment of state schools throughout the country: the local state schools became an abnormality within the world of villagers. The change occurred especially in the Northeastern region of Thailand where the people were ethnically different to the majority in the country. The national textbooks and curricula focused more on central Thai knowledge. Dialects were prohibited within the school areas. Teachers and schools played the role as state agents to bring the central dogma to the region, and played a major role in shaping the cultural orientation that villagers had towards the world (ibid: 118). 64 Village School and Compulsory Education as a Means of National Integration As an important tool for national integration, schools were built throughout the kingdom since the early 1900s.The Primary Education Acts of 1921 made primary education compulsory for all citizens. In the 1930s, state-sponsored primary schools were established throughout the kingdom and the law has been implemented in most communities. By the late 1930s, the school system became well-established in the rural areas of the country (Keyes 1991: 90-96). It was an enormous expansion of the modern education system and modern schools gradually replaced the Buddhist temple as the centre for traditional education (Vaddhanaphuti 1991: 153). The modern government-managed compulsory education was used to assimilate the citizen into the Thai mainstream (Mikusol 1984: 162). Every morning in school, students have to show their respect to the flag; a national symbol, sing the national anthem and chant the triple Gem (phra rattana trai) (ibid: 188). The standard textbook and curriculum were prepared so all the school would meet the same standards (ibid: 201). The textbook instills the idea that education would benefit to both individual and national interest. In addition, textbook penetrates the modern knowledge that fosters the ‗love of the nation and behave in the morality, individual discipline and social discipline‘ (Sattayanurak 2008). The primary school in almost every village throughout the kingdom plays the largest role in developing the citizen concept of belonging to Thai state (Mikusol: 188). Ban Nongyang is like other villages throughout the country in this aspect. The community school was established in Ban Nongyang in 1934. The very first batch‘s classes took place in the temple auditorium. Later, the school was built in the public space in the north part of the village, close to the inter-province highway. From the outset, there were two local staff members: one was the principal and the other 65 was a teacher. The courses taught were Thai language and mathematics. Due to the shortage of the teachers, the quality of education was a critical problem. Sawai, a 53 years old villager who went to school in late 1960s told me that In my school day, I woke up in the morning, got dressed and walked to school with friends. In school, I did not learn much. I learnt (classical Thai) dance all day and I needed to take care of their trees before going back home in the evening. According to Keyes (1996), school is ‗the proposed world‘. School is the place where the state prepares ‗the villagers to accept subordinate position in the centralised bureaucratic world of Thai nation-state‘ (Keyes 1991: 90). School introduces a modern concept of time, as it follows the official calendar based on a five-day work week, with two days for the weekend along with some additional public holidays during the year (ibid: 109). Moreover, the schools created a new routine for the students during the weekday. Each student has to go to school in the morning, starting at 08.00, with classes all day and a one hour lunch breaks at 12.00 and return home in the late afternoon at 16.00. This practice is called the practical realities of urbanism in the rural places (Thomson 2007). To become a proper Thai citizen and to receive services from government agencies, such as identity cards and birth/death certificates, people must understand Thai. As school is the proposed world or agency of the cultural and ideological reproduction for the nation state, it is an important task to produce a Thai citizen who can communicate, read and write Thai language fluently. Ban Nongyang is a Khmer speaking community where there is almost no chance to speak Thai except with the government agencies. In school, using Thai to communicate is compulsory. When I was young, there was a rule to speak only central Thai in school; if anyone spoke Khmer in the classroom, they would be fined by the teacher. Moreover, with the arrival of electricity in the village, people started to buy televisions or radio. Mass 66 communication allows people more chance to use Thai, which has led to more and more local children who cannot speak Khmer dialect. Pursuing the Dream; Education as the Social Mobility Knowledge is the greatest wealth Even when you are lost in nowhere Even when you are in difficult situation, you will pass through (Pra Apai Mannee composed by Suthon Phu circa 1821-1823) In Suthon Phu‘s verses, ‗Knowledge enables you to endure through great difficulty‘. This great poet shows how in traditional Thai society, the social value of education is well-established. However, traditional education was limited to men through the temple system. As mentioned, in the development era, education has become part of the national agenda. State-sponsored education is compulsory for all citizens and by late 1930, a state-created school system become well-established in rural communities of Siam (Keyes 1991: 96). This eliminated gender discrimination with respect to access to education. State-sponsored schools replaced the Buddhist monasteries as centre of knowledge. At first, these schools were only in sub-districts or in the big communities. These schools opened a new world for children in rural Thailand. For instance, it shifted people‘s lives to engage more with the bureaucratic system (ibid: 89). At the same time, the mushrooming of primary schools caused a shortage of trained teachers. The Ministry of Education increased the number of teaching colleges from a few regional teaching colleges to 36 institutions throughout the country in the 1970s (Phongphit and Hewison 1992: 102-103). The enormous expansion of modern education and state-sponsored schools brought drastic changes to rural Thailand. Beyond the expanding of opportunities, the school became a venue for the social mobility for those people who could afford and invest more in the education (Vaddhanaphuti 1991: 161). 67 Education is viewed as a form of investment. Higher education is desirable for a better job and better pay. Everyone does their best to achieve their dreams. It can be much easier for wealthy urban people, especially because most of the best schools are in the city. For the villager, the decision to send children to higher education is a massive one, which begins with the calculation of financial resources. Rural villagers need to pay even more expenses than urban people, since all the good schools are located in the cities. To reach the level of tertiary education, especially the government university, it is strongly recommended to send children to the provincial secondary schools. In essence, in addition to the school fees, daily allowance and extra classes, the students from rural area have to pay either dorm fees or transportation costs. Aunty Wi is a 44 year old, the mother of three. She is working very hard to support her oldest daughter who is studying Secondary 5 in the provincial girl school: Sirindhorn School. I want Mo (her daughter) to do her best in her life. I want her to have a secure job. I hope that she could become a nurse or someone who works in the hospital. Her life will be much better than her parents. I know people are talking about how I am spoiling my daughter. I do the laundry for her. I bought her a computer and I have planned to install the internet for her if her wants. I do not want to spoil my daughter. I just want her to have more time to study so she can do her best on her studies, thus I do everything for her. Mo has to study very hard. She gets up at 4 am to go to school and she comes back at 6 pm. And she still needs to do her homework some more. During the weekend, she still needs to go to school for her projects and tuition. Can you imagine how tiring it is? Everything I am doing now is for my children‘s future. The cost of Mo‘s education is very expensive. Aunty Wi decided to let Mo to go to study secondary school in the provincial town instead of the district school because the provincial school provides a much better education. In Thailand, the education is free for 12 years but aunty Wi still needs to pay and donate money to the school on various occasions. Every month, aunty Wi has to pay 1800 THB (54.13 68 USD) for the school bus, 500 THB (15.03 USD) a week for her daily expense excluding other expenditures such as the project and special tuition fee for her daughter ‗that is a lot and I still need to work hard for another 6 years for Mo‘. Education: the Access to the Privilege The modern government was established to serve as a tool to manage bureaucracy instead of the absolute monarchy. At the beginning, the bureaucracy system still could not run itself automatically. The key factor expanding the state power depended on the individual government officials (Sattayanurak 2008). To supply the expanding of bureaucratic system, state needed more educated people to serve the duties. It is interesting looking at how Thai state installed the education system to have an impact on the economic and social status, which means that noblemen, or people who have the knowledge, will receive honour, fame and money. The uneducated one has to work hard, sell their labour or be a servant or slave (ibid). From mid-1970s to the early 1980s there were great opportunities for those whose parents could support them for their college education. In 1977, the teaching collage was established in Surin. My mother was from the first batch of the Surin Teaching College, finishing her education in 1979. She told me that In my batch, there were 16 classes with 45 students each class. For my class, there is only one student who did not become a teacher since she got pregnant and did not have a chance to sit for the teacher exam. I am not sure about other classes but I am sure that it is more than 90% of the people became teachers. Becoming a school teacher is very easy. Look at aunty Chuchuen, she did not even sit for the exam. She was delivering her first son hence it was her twin who took the exam instead of her. And you can see; she is a teacher until now. To be a state-sponsored school teacher is one of the best choices for those whose parent can afford to support them. By the mid 1980s, there were thousands 69 graduates from the teaching college. They, however, had a hard time finding employment, since most vacancies were already filled (Phongphit and Hewison 1992: 103). Teaching is considered one of the lowest paid jobs in Thailand. State school teachers receive a relatively low salary. However, being a teacher provides social capital (class/social profile), economic capital (money), and cultural capital (knowledge). The higher status is not only given to the teachers themselves. As a teacher as a privilege ‗Will Khun Khru (teacher) come back and attend the making a spirit offering?‘ ‗No. She will not. How can she come back? She got a school meeting.‘ A conversation between aunty Wi, a grocery store owner, with her customer in the late morning of 18 September 2009. It was a san don ta day; a ritual to pay homage to the ancestral spirits, is a most important ritual where all the Khmer descendants gather and pay respect to their ancestors. Aunty Wi‘s sister aunty Nit, or teacher (khun khru) Nittaya, is a teacher in secondary school. Aunty Wi told me that she is very busy; apart from her busy business day, she still has to prepare the offering things herself. I asked her about other people. Aunty Nit was supposed to come back and help to prepare the offering. However, according to aunty Wi ‗Nit is busy at school. She is a teacher. She must go to school‘. Aunty Wi is an oldest daughter of a district secondary school janitor who died 11 years a ago from motorcycle accident. She has 5 siblings. Aunty Wi and uncle Thuean, the fourth son, had to quit school after finishing primary school to help his mother with rice farm and taking care of his youngest handicapped sister. Two of them gave way to uncle Mot and aunty Nit to study. Uncle Mot is a successful senior 70 government official in ministry of Education and aunty Nit is a school teacher. Aunty Wi told me about how they choose who can and who cannot continue their studies. My father had to go to work and I have a handicapped sister to take care of. How can I continue studying? My brother, Mot is different. He is a man. It is not the right choice to make him stop going to school, since he would not help much on the housework. And for uncle Thuean, it is better for him to take care of the farming activities. Hence, my parents chose to send aunty Nit to continue her studies. Moreover, at that time, Mot was a teacher; he also helped my parent to finance Nit for her college studies. The Contestant of the Dream and the Reality As discussed, sending children to pursue higher education is a massive decision. The rationale supporting someone‘s education is very interesting: it is up to the parents. Like in aunty Wi‘s family, the privilege is given to the oldest son and youngest daughter. Uncle Mot, the oldest son, has to help to support aunty Nit‘s education. It is his responsibility to do this since he was given the chance to study. Everything seems to be nice if everything goes according to the plan. However, there is not such a paved way for every family. To choose one child to study is not always the better one will be chosen. In aunty Chani‘s case, Grandmother Kul decided to support aunty Chani, her ‗not so smart‘ daughter‘s education instead of the supporting the better one, aunty Tan. Grandmother Kul believes that the smarter one could easily survive by herself. Thus, she has to choose to support another not so good one in order to ensure that she can survive in the real world. Sister Chiap graduated from a Provincial University where she finished her teaching degree since 2000. She worked for a while as an administrator and hoped that she can pass the exam to become a government school teacher someday. She did not work there for very long since she quit the job in order to prepare for the teaching exam. Sister Chiap went to teacher exams but she could not pass even the written 71 exam. Finally, she gave up and became a diary product hawker seller since 2008. ‗I could not wait for another exam; I have to give up the dream since my son is getting older and older‘. Yet, there are some successful stories. Ueng, 24 years old, is a teacher on a five year contract in Ban Nongyang School; she told me her hard time when she was a student, I decided to travel back and forth to school rather than stay in town when I was doing my Bachelor. It was cheaper for me to ride the bus, although I was usually late for some classes since they were too early. I had to spend around two hours to reach university. Ueng decided to stay at home not only for financial reasons but also because she wanted to take care of her father and her sick brother. Her mother died from cancer when she was in junior college. And her older sister went to work in Bangkok, only remitting money once in a while, but seldom coming back home. She had been struggled for four years traveling almost 90 kilometres a day to school and come back home. She found a job as an English teacher in a monk secondary school for where she worked for one year. Later, she passed the exam and has been a long-term contract teacher since May 2009. If she is able to pass the yearly evaluation and the final evaluation in the next five years, she would get a permanent teaching position at Ban Nongyang School. Conclusion Education is part of the national agenda everywhere. In Malaysia, there is a phase ‗Education makes the son of Malay farmer become a better farmer‘ (Thomson 2007: 135). Education as Thailand‘s national policy aims to train people who live under Thai sovereignty to become Thai citizen. Charles Keyes sees the role of the 72 village school as a proposed world in instilling a development orientation in the villagers. The types of knowledge that villagers learn from school are notably literacy, numeracy and a sense of time as a product that can be used efficiently. These serve as bases for new, more productive economic action. Besides that, education plays a role in preparing villagers to accept subordinate position in the centralised bureaucratic world of the Thai nation-state (1991: 89). For the children, schooling marks a significant shift in the accustomed routine of life – routines shaped by the tempo of the family life, the agricultural cycle and play with friends (ibid: 89). By contrast, school follows the official calendar based on a five-day work week and a two-day weekend, while the agricultural calendar refers to lunar calendar (ibid:110). Hence, it is common that a school day will conflict with a religious holiday (ibid: 111). Apart from making people more literate, education has also become one of the social determinants of the individual in modern times (Inkeles and Smith 1974: 49). This fits well with Sherman‘s study (1990) about Batak in Sumatra, Indonesia shows that education is a skill to access opportunities in the modern economy. Education serves as a social ladder for status-seekers, while farming becomes less and less attractive, as being a farmer not only earns lower income but it is also a low status occupation to avoid (Sherman 1990: 50). However, to pursue the dream of being educated, living the better life and enjoying higher social is not always easy. To achieve the goal, massive effort has to be input. To become successful in life is harder for the rural people compared with the urban people who have better resources. I have presented stories from people in everyday life in order to illustrate how much rural people need to struggle in order to achieve the ideal of modernity. 73 Chapter 7 Experiencing Modernity in the Kitchen Anath Ariel De Vidas‘s (2008) illustrates the changes in social and productive relations brought about by the engagement between rural life and the growing participation in capitalist markets. Social and technological changes are characteristics of modernisation which involves a continuous transformation of individuals into consumers and their progressive integration into a market-led economy. The transformation of individuals into consumers indicates that increased integration in the capitalist system is associated with the culture of consumption. This chapter looks at the rural communities‘ confrontation with the results of accelerated processes of modernisation (Ariel De Vidas 2008: 258). The process of village transformation from the traditional to modern is usually linked to the processes of commercialisation and commoditisation (Rigg 2004: 124). The Tale of Charcoal and Gas Stoves: the Modern and Traditional Dichotomy ‗Let‘s go, the bus is coming‘ my mother told me to stop watching television and went down to the roadside to wait for the bus from town. It was a Saturday afternoon in the mid 1990s; my father, mother and I were waiting on the roadside right in front of our house. I was so excited to see the gas stove, a contraption that I had seen before on television. My aunt who bought the gas stove before us recommended my father buy it. The gas stove came safely. It cost 1,200 THB (36.10 USD) for a set of gas stove and tank. She said it was very expensive. It cost one-fifth of my mother‘s monthly salary. We put it in the kitchen. The kitchen looked much nicer than before. Everyone was happy with new blue, four-leg aluminum gas stove. 74 Initially, my mother told me the gas stove was very expensive but she did not need to waste time to light up the charcoal stove. With the new gas stove, she had to pay 200 THB (6 USD) every three months to refill the gas tank instead of buying charcoal. Later, apart from refilling the tank of gas, my mother had to buy sacks of charcoal for the charcoal stove also. Most of the time, we still use the charcoal stove since the gas stove cannot grill or roast anything. As our main diets consist of various kinds of chili paste, the charcoal stove is still required to grill the ingredients, such as fish, chicken, and mushrooms. My father added that gas stove cannot provide a charcoal smell. I accept that food cooked by using a charcoal stove does give a nicer smell, but I do not really care as much as my parents do. Thus, the charcoal stove was used every day and remained the preferable stove for my parents. Despite the limited use of the gas stove, my father still insisted that the gas stove was good to have (mi wai ko di). My father claimed that the gas stove is convenient to have. Since there is no gas station nearby, the gas stove is not actually as convenient as my father has claimed. The nearest gas station is located 35 kilometres from our house. Every time the gas runs out, my parent needed to ask the local bus to drop by at the gas station to refill the tank. My parents managed to pay an additional 20 THB (0.6 USD) for their service. Later, when we had our own pick-up truck, my parents drove to the gas station to refill the tank themselves. Since the gas stove is not really needed, sometimes we have a gas stove with an empty tank for months. Even today when we can simply order a tank of gas from the local grocery, my parents still forget to refill the tank. In this sense, the gas stove has acquired a new meaning. Rather than a useful kitchen utensil, it became an ornament of modernity. 75 Being up to date (thansamai) is the negotiation between people and modernity. In this case, the gas stove becomes that which people use as a symbol to achieve modernity and a rural-urban lifestyle (Thomson 2007). Rural-urbanisation is a term I coined to explain the situation of my family with a gas stove like other consumer commodities. It functions beyond its utility value. It symbolises social status in the eyes of people in the village. Moreover, it also becomes a symbol of an up-to-date lifestyle with this comfortable and luxurious product. In addition, having the gas stove which is not only useful but a comfortable and luxurious product as a good to have kitchen item represents the way rural people consume the idea of modern urban life. A good to have item in this case does not only implicate the functional necessity of the stove, but also its image associated with modern lifestyle. This image also entails the trend of consumption in general. The gas stove has become increasingly affordable and popular. It is not as difficult to buy a gas stove as before when my family first bought one. Many villagers have a gas stove at home. However, people still rely much of their cooking on the charcoal stove. In the households of my village, it is quite typical to see a gas stove at one corner of the kitchen and a charcoal stove at another. Gas stoves became additional kitchenware. The concept of good to have acts as evidence of how modernity and being up to date penetrates and plays in rural people‘s everyday life. The gas stove does not only aim to make rural peoples‘ lives more convenient, but it is also helps the villager confirm that they are up to date and not left behind in the traditional world. In the kitchen where we have the charcoal stove and gas stove placed next to each other, it shows the representation of charcoal stove and gas stove in terms of symbols. 76 For a charcoal stove, you need to be patient and know how to start a fire. It takes some time from the time the fire is started until the fire is ready to use. While for the gas stove, you just need to turn the switch with a twist of your hand, and the fire is ready to use. The presence of gas stove automatically relegates the charcoal stove into a pre-modern or out-of-date cooking utensil, forcing it into a semi-retired status. Ironically, people still can never completely get rid of the old-style stove. It still retains a special function. In this case, people in the older generation still prefer it to barbeque. The heat and the smoke from the burning charcoal stove gives authenticity to home cooking, such as barbeque chicken or grilled fish. My parents and villagers love their chili paste. Cooking chili paste requires the dry-heating of ingredients like garlic, onion, fresh chili over a fire before we grind the ingredient using earthen mortar and pestle. Here, I adopted the relationship between consumption and villager desire for modern identity for discussion. The relationship between rural people and the commodified life is complex. The production of up-to-date (thansamai) located in an attractive modern setting and engaged in activities that are predominately urban and/or cosmopolitan in style and association. Bangkok produced primarily the image of thansamay Thai life. Bangkok‘s modern image is distributed across the nation and thus has a profound effect on the self-imagination of the rural Thai resident. The Thai discourse of development and modernity are best represented by the seductive imagery throughout the country made extensive by the mass media. The modernity that identified urban- rural dichotomies engages the powerful cultural opposition and symbolic hierarchies that define rural communities in term of their distance from 77 standards of modernity, progress, and development both within the Thai nation and on a global scale (Mills 2005: 389). The stove case shows that the socially-inspired consumption became more tangible in villager‘s everyday life. Buying a gas stove causes more burden and expenses, but people still prefer to have it as a the assumption that customers are not greatly influenced in their purchase decisions by consumption patterns of 'relevant other' in their social environment, has not been sustainable, for as discretionary incomes have risen at all levels, so consumer expenditures have increasingly reflected society's growing preoccupations with style, with identity, and with a social standing and prestige based, in a large part, on the conspicuous consumption of statusconferring goods and services . The proportion of purchase and consumption was now being undertaken not for conventional utilitarian purposes, but for social and psychological motives associated with attempts to improve relative social standing and prestige (Mason 2000: 123). The Negotiating with the Modernity One evening, I listened to a salesperson that came to demonstrate a convection oven at my aunt‘s house. They said that with the convection oven, we can cook western dishes such as baked chicken and cake. Two of my aunts who shared a kitchen together decided to buy the convection oven by paying monthly installments. My aunt said that it is good to have a convection oven in each house just in case. My mother did not buy one; she said that she does not have money to buy one. Even though I baked cakes several times with my aunt and my cousin, it has never been successful. Sometimes, the cakes were burnt, and sometime they were too hard to eat. My cousin said that maybe we needed to buy a cake mixer so she can mix the flour 78 and eggs together. My aunt refused to buy that for my cousin. She said it is not necessary. This shows the negotiation between the urban taste for western food and the local palate and way of life. The local does need to accept passively or refuse everything propagated by the urban. People do choose what they want and do not want. Her kitchen has a rice cooker, gas stove and convection oven. They will help her to explore the urbanised way of life. Apart from financial limitations, the reason that it is not necessary (mi cham pen) is more important and reasonable. To enjoy the modern life does not mean that people need to follow or mock the urban lifestyle, but it is about adaptation. The urban never becomes rural, and the rural never become urban. There is their own space to explore and occupy with their own limitations. The power of the negotiation is still with the individual. They make the decision on how much they want to accept, choose, adapt and use this urban lifestyle. How far do they want to go, in following the urban trend? The convection oven is seldom used, and it is much cheaper today and therefore much easier to have. However, both of my aunts are satisfied to have these expensive convection ovens in the kitchen, not as kitchen utensils but as decoration. People imitated things that they heard are fashionable. The gas stove, convection and cake mixer story tells us more about how groups of villagers experience modernity. It is usually deep and vivid though the adopting of or buying modern luxurious technology has the direct implications on their everyday lives. To take part in the modern lifestyle, villagers add gas stoves, convection and other modern kitchen utensils to their kitchen space. It could mean to add modernity into their existing life style. However, in the add-in process, we still can see the difference in acceptance for each product. In this paper, the gas stove seems to be more useful as 79 it is able to play a part in the local cuisine. Villagers still use it to cook sometimes, even though not as frequently as the charcoal stove. The convection oven on the other hand, is placed in the kitchen cabinet as a part of kitchen decoration. Conclusion After years of experiencing development and encountering modernity, the villagers have shifted their lives to engage more with the outside world. Nowadays, people are living beyond the basic need. It is the age of consumption where the satisfaction is more important than the utility. To have television, refrigerator, gas stove, bed, stereo or even computers are not new things in people‘s lives. Ironically, people who have all these modern items may not need or use of above mentioned items in their everyday life. However, all these electronic applicants are ‗good to have‘ items in their everyday life. In this chapter, I illustrated how local practices link with modernisation and relate to the western notion of consumerism which access or contact with Western notions of aesthetics and fashionable tastes (De Vidas 2008: 259). Moreover, conspicuous consumption and the positional economy explain the socially-inspired consumption when people give more consideration to social standing and prestige rather than notion of value or utility. The stoves could be the best while the villager wants to occupy the modernity by having a gas stove in their kitchen, but they also need the charcoal stove to facilitate their cuisine. 80 Chapter 8 Leader, Mother, and Spirit Medium: Stories of the Individual Encountering with Development and Modernity This chapter focuses on the individual social memory and memory of time. Sharon R. Roseman (1996) writes on the politic memory of building roads in rural Spain. It looks at a characteristic of local histories or social memories. She points out the distinguishing features of the local histories from official and academic accounts. It shows the specific details that evoke for listeners a clear picture as well as other sensual entrees to the memory of the speakers. One way in which the past can be revealed to later generations is the organisation of memories around local topography, both that which is still visible and what only remains in memory (1996: 854). Roseman considers the history embedded in the transformations of the landscape that different generations perceive differently (ibid: 844). Reading the Thai rural development, modernisation and transformation from below, I suggest that the meanings of development and modernity are best captured through a close analysis of stories of individuals in their contexts. In this chapter, I discuss three different stories of people experiencing village development and modernity from three different generations representing groups of villagers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, human actions, responses and experiences of village people who are both targets and actors of development. My aim is to gain some reflective understanding pertinent to state and development. Development introduces many new experiences to indigenous life, which subsequently change people‘s perceptions. 81 I adopt an agency-oriented approach to understand actions, responses, and experiences of village people. How do they articulate modernity and development in their everyday life practices? The three different individuals whose stories are presented represent groups of villagers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds: one is a leader, another is a mother, and the third is a spirit medium. They all are deeply involved in the state-sponsored development programmes, which have produced immense transformations in villagers' life at the individual, family, and community levels. It leads to an interpretation of development and engagement with modernity which does not necessarily fall into the same lines of those conceived by the state authorities. I would like to use the stories of individuals in their contexts to give a clearer picture of how development and rural people live together. The Troublesome Leader Sawai Songnuan or Grandmother Sawai is a 50-year-old female leader of the community. She is a daughter of the first sub-district chief, Kamnan Chang. Grandmother Sawai was brought up in a big house under her father‘s tutelage. People said that she developed leadership qualities and an outspoken personality through her father. Unfortunately, Sawai was not the selected child. She had to stop schooling after she finished her compulsory Primary 6. Her parents had nine children, making it impossible to send all of them to school. Limited education, however, was not a barrier for her to become a community leader. She spent most of her life engaging in community work. After a long period of volunteer work, she decided to jump into local politics. She won the first election and served as a village headwoman from 2005 to 2008. Four years later, in October 2008, she lost the election to the current village headman. She actually received the same number of votes as her opponent in 82 the village election, thus making the election a draw. The tie was then decided by a blind lottery (50-50 draw) held by the election committee. She lost this draw to the current headman. For me, it was a big surprise that grandmother Sawai was no longer in the position. Before I went back to do fieldwork, I thought she was a good village headwoman. She has fine ideas and plans to develop the village. One of the reasons she lost the election could be that the opposition used vote-buying tactics. After talking to her and other people, several people expressed a negative feeling towards her. They suspected she took part in corruption or was not transparent in her dealings. Sawai initiated a lot of projects even though most of them were not successful, such as the village cooperative grocery shop. People questioned the transparency of the shop‘s management. They expressed several thoughts on this topic such as ‗it is hard to believe that running the grocery shop is that difficult‘ and ‗after several attempts and many years, our village cooperative grocery cannot make a profit. It is enough‘. The first election for the members of the municipal district was scheduled on 25 October 2009; after the Mueang Kae Local Administrative Organisation (Or Bor Tor) has changed their administration system to the Mueang Kae Municipal District. Sawai decided to join the old mayor‘s team, but she lost the election. The rumour was that Sawai spent about 200,000 THB (6015.03 USD) for the election. Even in this local politics, the candidate cannot be the standalone candidate . Sawai put her money together with the team and ran the campaign together. However, Sawai team‘s was at a disadvantage because they had less money the opposing team, which was supported by one of the Members of Parliament at the national level. Both elections results show the unwritten rule of politics that the winner does not need to be the most suitable; credential popularity is also important. With her outspoken character and dictatorial manner, some villagers said they feel like they are 83 getting smaller when they talk to her. One informant replied that ‗Sawai always thinks that she knows us well and can make decisions for us. But we can do it ourselves‘. Sometime people felt like she is too involved. It is strange when we see someone who talks, asks questions, and presents a lot of opinions in the village meetings, especially since she is a lay woman with no formal education. Her involvement made some people biased against her. It is interesting to look at the politics on the ground, and how people exercise their power. One thing Sawai has to accept is when her role is too prominent in the public, she easily gets attacked. I would like to discuss one case as an example. It concerns the village‘s special budget allocation under the populist policy. To get the allocated money, the villagers need to agree on what they want to use the money for. Normally, it is intended for village development or improvement projects. Under Ban Nongyang Moo 16‘s development projects, Sawai as the village headwoman received allocations two years in a row. However, due to the government‘s process, last year‘s budget was just distributed in February this year. Sawai proposed to take care of the budget herself. She gave the reason that it is the budget for her period even though she is already out of the post. At the meeting in March, Naret, the current village headman‘s father-in-law, raised the question of why Sawai wanted to manage the budget since she is not the in position anymore. In addition, he also added that there were other unclear things about the village fund of which Sawai was the fund manager. Sawai contended that the villagers agreed to spend the SML budget 13 to subsidise the organic fertilizer group and expand the village rice mill. Hence, the project should continue to be under her supervision. Sawai also explained every item 13 SML Project is one of populist policies created since 1970s and introduced again in Thaksin administration. SML budget aims to encourage villagers to practice self-help schemes by making decisions on how they will spend money on various village matters or problems. The government categorised the size of villages into three categories, small, medium and large, and allocated the budget accordingly. 84 and showed the accounting and evidence for the village fund management to the public. The villagers were satisfied with her explanation. In a democracy where everyone has one equal voice, people may not speak in public, but they are able to express their opinion in other ways like in the case of Sawai losing power to the new village headman. Vote-buying, gossip, and slander were used by the opposition. The form of resistance can be in the form of gossiping, disobeying, and keeping silent. They chose to reply to her by not electing Sawai as a village head woman again. Yet, it does not mean that during Sawai‘s tenure the villagers could do nothing. From several conversations with the villagers, I found that when they choose to keep quiet or say ‗we agree with you, do what you think it is good‘, it actually meant they would like to keep their opinion to themselves and critique Sawai‘s ideas later when they are amongst themselves. In addition, to say ‗do what you think it is good‘ expresses some sense of ‗let her do whatever she wants‘ more than a normal agreement or approval. Sawai‘s case shows how state ideology is imposed upon and used by villagers. Sawai represents a pattern of a good villager who leads the creation of community (Vandergeest 1996). According to the state idea of development, the villager should be willing to participate in village activities, to help the state to develop the country. Village development (kanphatthana muban) seeks cooperation from villagers in helping the state take care of state property. This involves such activities as cleaning the road, getting rid of weeds and rubbish along the roadside, or making each house a bamboo fence to improve the village‘s physical surroundings. A good example is when Sawai told me that I am proud of what I have done for the village and I will continue doing the village voluntary work regardless of my current status-- a village headwoman or an ordinary villager. For Sawai development means ‗cleanness, orderliness and harmony among the villagers. 85 Transformed Mother Grandmother Phong is my paternal grandmother. She was hawker seller who became a mother of four teachers. Grandmother Phong was born in a rich rice trader‘s family. Back in early nineteenth century before the road and railway were built, all the rice from the southern Isan was transported to Korat by the steam boat. Her parents died when she was very young. Grandmother Phong had to quit school when she was in Grade 2 at primary school and moved to stay with her sister who married a teacher. She married my grandfather who was also a teacher. She said that my grandfather‘s salary was not enough for the family so she had to become a hawker seller14. Grandmother Phong did not want her children to have to work as hard as she did. She decided to send her oldest daughter, Aunty Piab, who was ten years old at the time, to continue her Primary 5 schooling in town even though the nearest primary school was in Tha Tum, 9 kilometres away. My grandmother wanted to send aunty Piap to school in Surin town, 44 kilometres from the village, for the best education. At first, my aunt did not want to go to school. Aunty Piap told that Can you imagine? Staying alone in town and only coming back home at the weekends was very painful. Moreover, I did not understand why I need to study while all of my friends stopped studying after they finished Primary 4. Grandmother Phong told that the first semester was the worst. She had explained my aunt several times that she wanted my aunt to be a teacher hence my aunt had to continue her studies. However, it did not seem that my aunt understand anything. Sometimes when my aunt refused to take the bus go to town on 14 Hawker seller in this context means someone who earns a living by carrying goods on their shoulder using a pole. In my grandmother‘s case, she sold ‗Chinese goods‘, meaning goods sold in Chinese shops such as kerosene, medicine, clothes, consumer goods, etc. She accepted both cash and barter. 86 the Sunday evening, my grandmother lost her tempered and hit my aunt cruelly and said, ‗You must go or I will beat you until you die‘. Grandmother Phong said that being a hawker seller is a tough job. She commented that To have enough money to support everyone‘s education, I had to go out twice a day, early morning and late evening. Sometime, I had to accept a very bad deal, but since I wanted sell fast I had no choice. I would get around 50 baht for two days work. After aunty Piap finished her teaching certificate and became a teacher in the private school. It was the time for her to help my grandmother to support her siblings. Finally, my grandmother‘s dream to see all the children become teachers became true, even though it was not easy. To achieve the dream, my grandmother not only had hard time earning money for her children‘s education, but she also had to contend with an ongoing ideological battle. In 1970 when the Thai state was fighting the spread of communism in northeastern Thailand, my father had some communist books. He said, At the time I only thought that it was cool to have those books with me; I did not really have any faith in communism, I just got some books from my friends. Still, the police suspected that my father was a member of the Communist Party since they got a report that my father had this book and that he was a student. The police was about to come to my father‘s house to arrest him. My grandmother heard the rumour of this impending purge. She burnt all those books and forced my father to go into hiding. She wanted my father to be a teacher in a public school so my father could not have any police record. Another hard time was when her youngest son, uncle To, did not want to be a teacher after he finished teachers‘ college. Instead, he ran away to Bangkok to be 87 a guitar player in a café15. Furthermore, the Bangkok of the 1980s was simply too enticing for the people of uncle To's generation. With the success of economic development, Bangkok became of one of the biggest metropolitan in Southeast Asia. The urban excitement was a rite of passage, a fulfillment of one's adolescent (or adult) dream. Bangkok is where you can earn more money, meet new people from all over the country, and live free from village tradition. Mills (1997: 42) suggested that the rural youth see moving to Bangkok consider as a way to open their ears or eyes in the centre of contemporary Thai Society and to earn enough money to purchase the commodity symbol of an up to date identity (thansamai). Living in Bangkok was fun; I earned much more than being a teacher in the village. I could wake up at anytime I wanted, and there was plenty of food to choose from right at my doorstep. The conversation with Uncle To shows the penetration of modern life idea in the rural people‘s worldview. A few years later, Grandmother Phong asked my father to come back and apply for the exam to become a public teacher. My uncle finally came back few months later. He sat for the exam and now is working as a music teacher in the secondary school in Surin. What Grandmother Phong told me was, At the time, I really wanted to go to Bangkok myself. But I never had been to Bangkok. I did not know where to find him. I wanted your uncle to come back and become a teacher. The job is secure. You do not need to rely on the weather, flood or drought; you will get a salary regardless. In the age of rural development, several things changed. The number of bureaucrats was growing very fast. More people became civil servants and engaged with the bureaucratic system. According to Tanabe and Keyes (2002), a secure job represents a form of modernity. A government job is not only a secure job but it is also an honour to the family. It is a process of modernity entailing the integration of people into the modern state. In the age of development when the market-led 15 In Thai a café means a combination of restaurant or pub, with a live band mostly playing lukthung or Thai country songs with some live comedy shows. 88 economy has prospered in Thailand, money has become the most important thing. The perception has been shifted from having rice crop fertility as the most important thing to be having a secure job with regular income. Growing up in a bureaucratic family and married to a state teacher, Grandmother Phong experienced the benefit of having a salary and respect from people. She adopted modernisation and became a development agency by supporting her children‘s education. She told me, I only want my children to have a better life; being a farmer or hawker seller like me is a hard job. Thus, I sent them to school (because I think they will get a job after the graduation). It echoes my mother‘s opinion: ‗In my generation, if you had chance to study to completion, you could get a job in the government sector. It is because not so many people studied at that time. Thus, if parents were smart, they supported their children‘s education‘. Education became a ladder which leads one to a new social status in the modern world (see chapter 6). Rising-Star Spirit Medium This part presents Tom‘s story, whom I wish to call a rising-star spirit medium. It is a story of a village-born young man who has fully embraced modernity yet still deeply engaged himself with traditional mode of self expression as noted spirit medium. He is a 24 year-old with a Bachelor‘s degree in Business Administration from a local university. After graduating from university in 2007, Teacher Tom came back to the village and had an initiation rite (phiti yok khru) to embrace the spirit who chose him as a medium. He has gained more and more followers as the year‘s progress. I first heard about his story through my aunt, who was taking part in one of his spiritual ceremonies. My aunt dances as an ‗offering‘ to the spirit, a common ritualistic gesture of repayment. The reason for all of this was 89 because my aunt had an itch all over her body, and modern medicine could not help. Teacher Tom, the medium, told her that her itch came as a punishment from a spirit of a termite hill she had destroyed. I know teacher Tom since my childhood. He is my sister‘s good friend. As school children, we used to walk home using the same route every day. For me, he was just a normal boy in the village but he had feminine look. In Thai context, boy who has a feminine look is always seen as fun-making person. Later, in 2007, I was surprised and shocked. I knew from my mother that teacher Tom has girlfriend and came back to hometown to become spirit medium. In the interview, teacher Tom told me that he experienced mysterious faints several times since he was young. He was getting more serious when he was an undergraduate student at the provincial university. The situation is like a sign. He experienced the strange moments twice a month in the first and fifteenth days of Thai lunar calendar. Teacher Tom told me that, I sometimes passed-out and spoke unknown language or acted differently on the Buddhist Holy Day. When I recovered, my friend told me what happened. I did not know that. Many friends told me that I was possessed by the spirit. Thus one day, I decided to join the paying homage ceremony of one of the spirit mediums as my friends suggested. I hoped that I would know what happened to me. The spirit medium told me that I have a calling from god back in my hometown in Tha Tum. She explained what happened to me and told me to receive the god. My problem was to receive god, I must held the ritual and I need a lot of money to do so then I came back home and talked to my parent. They helped me and I became a spirit-medium since then. So, Ae (my sister who is his primary school classmate) and I went to university. After graduated, Ae becomes nurse but I become spirit medium. Normally, to go out from the village to study, people expect you to find some secure job but not come back to stay home or become farmer. Here, it is interesting to look at Teacher Tom‘s parent who worked hard to support their child for his tertiary education. However, when Tom asked 10,000 Thai Baht (307.13 USD) from them to hold the paying homage ceremony, his parent just simply agreed and found the 90 money. That amount of money is equal to one third of family annual income of farmer in my village. It shows that while people are working hard to support their children for modern education but to support the ritual that seems to be contradictory. What Uncle Lan, Teacher Tom‘s father, told me was ‗I do not know but Tom said it is only way to heal his mysterious sign‘. Teacher Tom‘s mysterious moment was witness among villagers. Now, his parent calls his son ‗Teacher Tom‘ as well. Teacher Tom shows the process of process of self-adjustment to the modernity. His case demonstrates the relationship between people, spirituality, development, and modernisation in everyday life. The confirmation of his popularity could be seen in the third month in Thai lunar calendar. It is the busiest period for the spirit medium. Those people who have deities with them need to pay homage to their teaching spirit. The spirit that Teacher Tom mediated was considered a high ranking spirit, and thus Teacher Tom was invited to many rituals. His schedule is full every day. On Buddhist holy days he will not conduct any rituals, but people still come and visit him. In my opinion, the most important reason that Teacher Tom is very popular is his respectful personality and the way he communicates with his followers. As my mother said, Teacher Tom speaks like an educated person. He impressed me with his logical explanation of the rituals and beliefs. His followers are both male and female. They come from various backgrounds and occupations such as farmers, teachers, nurses, police and even monks. Teacher Tom has commanded respect amongst the neighbours and fellow villagers. For the villagers, such respect is indicated by consumer status and wealth which they see from outward signs such as dress and jewelry, as well as the vehicle they drive when they visit Teacher Tom. Aunty Ian, Teacher Tom‘s neighbour, said 91 When I see a strange pick up or car drive passes my house, I know they are going to Teacher Tom‘s house. Some of them stopped at my house and asked me for directions to Teacher Tom‘s house. Sadly sometimes people could not meet him since Teacher Tom was out performing rituals‘. Aunty Tru, another neighbour confirmed that ‗there are more and more cars with other provinces‘ registration numbers coming to visit Tom. The popularity of Teacher Tom the spirit medium shows how people negotiate with development and adapt development to fit with their beliefs. In the age of advanced technology, almost every mystery can be explained in a scientific way. In Thailand, where the majority of people are Buddhist, we still see the spirit medium, fortune teller and other supernatural practices. It is because the Thai style of Buddhism is composed of Theravada Buddhism, folk Brahmanism, and animism (Pattana 2005: 210). Each spirit medium has his or her own universal explanation about the origin of individuals‘ bad luck, bad fate or unidentified magic. For Teacher Tom, his secular educated style enhances his explanation to be even more powerful. Moreover, the way the medium explains or answers the question shows the role of the state in people‘s everyday life. Disciples who come to visit the medium have common, shared problems or concerns. Sister Kate told me about her daughter‘s name When I was pregnant, I went to met Teacher Tom. He suggested that I give birth in May. April is too hot and it may make daughter be moody. Hence he adopted one of a female deity‘s names to be her registered name. The registered name and surname are created by the state to construct the citizen database and control its people. The bestowal of a meaningful registered name shows that the medium accepts the power of the state. However, the influence of the month of birth with the child‘s emotions seems illogical. It is contrasted with modern medicine that believes that children‘s emotions are based on the way parents raise them. Yet somehow it remains intrinsically linked to the village. It shows that 92 modernity in Thai style does not mean an eradication of culture per se, but it is selectively adapted by people. Conclusion These three stories represent as much as they reconfirm some complex relationships between people and development or modernisation in everyday life of the people in the ground. Development does not only mean physical change, but it also deals with the changes in people‘s perceptions. These three people have different background. Grandmother Phong was born in 1930s and brought up in the predevelopment era. She represents the first generation experienced the development project that started coming in the 1960s. She demonstrates the role of mother who has to raise her children in the development era. Grandmother Sawai was born 1960s and brought up in the village and never been out of the village. Grandmother Sawai‘s generation is the unique generation who was born and brought up in the development era. Her generation is the first at everything. She experienced all the key infrastructure constructions in 1970-1980. Teacher Tom was born in 1980s. He was brought up in the village and went to the college in town for four years. Teacher Tom comes to present the new generation after the development has been situated in the village for a while. The development era that all the project is not a new thing and people start questioning and criticising development. These three persons have the generation gap, hence it may shape their development experience and interpretation differently. However, they have the same way to get to know and learn about development as it is derived from their real experiences. We can see the changing perceptions of how education leads one to the good life and how regular income becomes preferable. Stories connote a two - way 93 communication between people and development. It also created local development agents to spread the ideology of development and modernisation to other villagers. As part of modernising the country, the state instilled middle-class values and practices in its people. Education became a signifier of social status that everyone wants to pursue; some are successful and some encounter tragedy. The perceptional shift, like in the case of grandmother Phong, is such that a white-collar profession with monthly income is considered to be better than working the land in the paddy field. Thus the right to choose or not choose anything is still with the villager. The state plays the role as a giver, but as a receiver, the villager does not have to agree about everything. They still exercise their power by choosing if they want it or keeping quiet, disobeying if they do not want it. For Sawai, people did not like her outspoken and dictatorial manners, and responded by not electing her again. In teacher Tom‘s story, a person who is product of modern education and seemed to adopt modern ideas by going through formal education turned down the middle class lifestyle and ended up becoming a successful spirit medium. His case shows the way his explanations negotiate with state power. At the end, the power to receive, choose and adjust development ideas or state power to everyday life still lies with the villagers themselves. 94 Chapter 9 Conclusion Buying expensive things is okay in a consumerist lifestyle. You cannot take worldly possessions with you when you die. We just ‗make do‘ with what we can, like all others in this world (Todsapon Pimsri, 4 November 2009). My father‘s responsed to my complaint about my sister‘s new car. The response helps to reaffirm people‘s perception of consumerism. In this case, we can adopt the conspicuous consumption theory to understand that consumption serves to intensify positional competition among individuals seeking to improve their social status and prestige rather than notion of value or utility (Mason 2000: 124-131). Here, I would like to emphasise my father‘s make do idea. Doing what other people do could be evidence to show the society that you are a member of that society. Living in a distant rural village in the poorest region of Thailand during a rapid social transition is challenging. Development is one of the important factors of social change and encourages the emergence of new social phenomena. In the discourse of economic development, two pervasive symbols of progress and modernity (Roseman 1996: 840) are introduced to people‘s lives. Development creates conditions and constraints for village people to run after development. People also have to run after modernity created by their participation in development. The villagers have to modernise themselves to be a part of the modernisation process and not be left-behind villagers. In the thesis, consumption indicates that the villagers have pursued development with the intent of effecting improvement in their standard of living (Keyes 2002: 29). I would like to add that such improvement often goes beyond the basic needs, especially for rural villagers. 95 This thesis has discussed the transformation of the village, the relationship between rural people and development and how rural actors engage with modernity and urbanisation. Development opened tremendous space for different actors to encounter each other and cause changes in both visual and sensual landscapes in the rural villages throughout the world. To run after development, the stories presented in the thesis help to illustrate how villagers struggle to pursue having a modern and up to date status. Villagers‘ experiences and everyday life practice was the core method of this thesis in examining modernity and village transformation. Understanding development can be made possible only through the perceptions and actions of villagers. The thesis points out the penetration of modernity into the rural villager‘s mind. I profiled my village in detail, and described the changes of the village as it engages with the modernity and development. This thesis illustrates the way some Ban Nongyang villagers responded to modernity in their everyday life through a close analysis of individual stories in their contexts. This engagement with modernity through state-led development created a situation where the villagers are sometimes left out of the developmental process, and have to run after it rather than being an active part of its initiations. In this sense, the Thai development story, seen through the narratives of the people of Ban Nongyang, can be considered both as a success story, while at the same time it could also be viewed as a tragedy. To become a modern person, to create more chances to pursue a better life, to access privileges, the stories of migrant workers were presented. It shows how the migrant workers try their best to pursue the dream of becoming a modern man by leaving the village to work in the city. Education is the tough decision for those villagers who have limited access to it or are at a resource disadvantage. Villagers 96 have accepted education as important, as an avenue for social mobility. Investing in education needs much more sacrifice from not only individual but the whole family for one‘s education. The concept of being modern comes along with the consumption. Here, the example of a kitchen ware, the gas stove, comes in and eclipses the charcoal stove, the traditional utensil, and becomes a semi-premodern item in the kitchen. However, practicing the being up to date does not really change the way people live and eat. Modern items have become symbols of modernity more than items of actual utility. The main contribution of the thesis is to show how development works and operates at the village (micro-level) with institutions and agencies. Development is the work of power, and power, according to Foucault, works through the technology of power such as tools, including the establishment/arrangement of local development institutions and imposing a modern way of thinking and behaving on individual villagers. Thai state-sponsored development has most effectively transformed the Thai countryside through a series of institutionalised forms of modern infrastructure and quality of life improvement works. Development establishes institutions and public infrastructure that have direct impact at the grassroots level for example, the school, administrative units, public health agency and public roads. These institutions and infrastructures in turn, instilled a modern worldview upon the public where people constantly want to be up to date (thansamai). Through looking at this public mindset in the narratives of Ban Nongyang‘s villagers, I hope to show how the villagers, being subjected to the state‘s initiatives, have to run after development rather than merely participating. 97 Limitation and Further Discussion My limitation as an insider researcher is the subjectivity or biases opinions I often heard from people around me, especially my family. They always already have answers or explanations for any of my research questions. Moreover, in collecting ethnographic data and doing anthropological research, fieldwork is very important. I would like to talk to as many people as I can and I want to spend time in the village as much as I can. However, my family always asked me to accompany them since they think I am home and free all day. Sometimes, I found that I spent too much time on my family matters rather than working on my research. Another limitation is the history and the background of the village. There is no written history or any document relating to village settlement. It also applied to oral history when I could not really get any answers. The collective history of the village tends to start only from the political administrative unit, which was introduced to the village in the early nineteenth century. I have been trying to trace back to the village‘s settlement before that. I could only find that the old location of the village is two kilometres away from where the current village is located. Further discussion should be on language use. I am interested to see the way people define, interpret and use language in everyday life. I would suggest that we need to look closer into the definition of the each word. People have different ways to interpret the meaning of words; especially the research has been carried out in the non-Thai speaking community. People have one more level to translate from Thai language into their language. 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This Thai proverb indicates a high degree of consumerism and urban life when you have to pay for everything Chaoban Lay-villagers, village folks Isan Thailand‘s Northeastern region Kabot phu mi bun The Holy Men Rebellion in 1901-1902 in the North and Northeast Thailand to contest the centralised reform initiated by the Siamese government Kamnan Sub-district chief Kanphattana/phattana Development/ developed, make thing better Kanphattana chonnabot Rural development Kanphattana muban Village development Khon bannok Country bumpkins Khon Isan Northeasterner Khon mueang People who live in the city, urban people Khrongkan Isan khiao Isan Khiao Project introduced ny the Royal Thai Army in late 1980s with an aim to improve infrastructure and quality of life of Northeastern Thai Villagers. (Khun) khru Teacher Korat The informal name of Nakhon Ratchasima 104 province, the biggest province in Thailand Mai Champen Not necessary, not a necessity, things that are not essential Mi wai kodi Good to have Monthon A unit of territory in the thesapiban system. King Chulalongkorn (reigned 1868 - 1910) divided countries into 19 regional territories included 72 township which most of them become in the provinces in the current political administration system Muban Village Nong Swamp, pond Phaenphang Layout Phithi yokkhru An initiation rite to pay homage to the respect teacher, alive or dead. Phra rattana trai The holy triple gems in Buddhism; Buddha, Dharma and Sangha Phuyai (ban) Village headman Saen don ta A Khmer ritual of paying homage to ancestor. All Khmer decedent Thais are expected to come home for the ritual. This annually event usually takes place around September and October. Songkran Thai New Year. It is celebrated every year from April 13 to April 15. It is common for 105 rural people working in Bangkok to return home during the Songkran holiday Tambon Sub-district Thetsaban tambon District municipality is a local government organisation for small township. It aims to decentralise administrative power by increasing the autonomy of local self-governance. Responsibility of district municipality are to maintain order and cleanliness of the district, as well as providing infrastructure, and provide appropriate public services for its constituency Thanon yai Main road, highway Thansamai Up-to-date, to be modern Thesaphiban A centralisation of administrative power initiated by during the Chulalongkorn in 1897. reign if King He did this by replacing local lords with official appointed by the center of government in Bangkok Top di di Give some good answer Wai Traditional Thai gesture of greeting or showing honorific expression 106 [...]... to expand the virtual power of the state 25 through roads, schools, and health stations In this chapter, I use education and state policies to examine how the state transform and integrate Northeastern Thailand The Birth of Isan in the Nation Building of Modern Thailand Geographically speaking, Isan is located in the elevated vast land called Korat Plateau There are Mun and Chi River, tributaries of... Mueangkae, Tambon Makmi shifted to be under Tambon Buakhok And in 1972, Tambon Mueangkae was established and Ban Nongyang became Moo 1 of Tambon 8 Khrong Khan Isan Khiao (Isan Khiao Project) is a development project ran by the Northeastern Army in 1987 - 1990 It aims to improve conditions in farming areas and water sources in northeastern provinces 35 Mueangkae Ban Nongyang became moo 1 instead of Ban... cannot retain water in the rainy season When it rains, the canal bank will collapse as a result of there being too much water The water flow will erode the canal‘s bank Furthermore, the canal has no water in the dry season and 21 floods in the rainy season Hence the canal sometime causes more problems than it is worth I listened and agreed with Aunty Tan I started to re-think about what I have heard... Mueangkae because the head of a group of villages at that time is Ban Nongyang village head man Later in 1976, the Ban Nongyang, moo 1 was spilt to 3 units; Ban Nongyang unit 1, Ban Takdad unit 14 and Ban Nongtae unit 16 Politics of Village Name In the government document, Ban Nongyang is only a state administrative unit But in dweller mindset Ban Nongyang is the gathering of 3 political units Phuyai... came into the village nationwide starting from 1960s, there have been tremendous changes in the village landscape In this chapter, my approach is to understand development as a process of transformation of Bang Nongyang from traditional to modern In the process of development and modernising, there are various features at play in the push and pull of village transformation Here, I examine how villagers... Socio-history and Political Background of Ban Nongyang Village Settlement Ban Nongyang, a Khmer speaking village, is located close to the natural swamp Ban is village in Thai Nong means ‗the natural water reservoir‘ Yang is ‗wild rubber tree‘ Ban Nongyang, therefore, means a village located along the swamp that surrounded by the wild rubber trees‘ Ban Nongyang was settled close to the natural water resources... Korat Plateau, Ubon Ratchathani and Nakhon Ratchasima (Wipakpotjanakit 2003: 605-606) A new system of administration called the ‗thesaphiban‘ system (provincial system) was established, which entailed a form of internal colonialism in which the national decision-making and policy implementation was highly centralised by the elite in Bangkok (Mikusol 1984:7) The local lords were abolished and replaced... Third World My thesis adopted the anthropological approach to examine the everyday situation in the rural village in Northeastern Thailand The participation approach was employed to investigate the engaging with development and modernity of villagers In addition, informal talks and loosely-structured interviews with the informants were carried out Towards the end of the chapter, I also penned my methodology... The Thai state introduced bureaucratisation to the villagers by establishing village headmen, who represent the state as its mouths, eyes and ears in order to help bureaucrats to control or take care of the state‘s interests in the village (Puanghet: 1213) 33 Engaging Village with the National Politics The dominant definition of a modern state entails the following set of criteria: the presence of a. .. other people Every Friday or Saturday night, I would be at my grandmother house Pam, my cousin, always came back home during the weekend In some occasions, Nuk, my cousin, also came back We would always come together for family dinner and stay around to chat My two aunts would update what ‗happened in the past week‘ to us I found it interesting, boring and annoying at the same time My two aunts are teachers ... locating my research in a village named Ban Nongyang The village is located at a natural waterway, running five kilometres from Phanom Din hill The main road which runs through the village, however,... the rural village in Northeastern Thailand The participation approach was employed to investigate the engaging with development and modernity of villagers In addition, informal talks and loosely-structured... 35 Mueangkae Ban Nongyang became moo instead of Ban Mueangkae because the head of a group of villages at that time is Ban Nongyang village head man Later in 1976, the Ban Nongyang, moo was spilt