The Good Life: Agriculture Transformation and the Pursuance of Goals in Two Rural Villages of Northeastern Thailand

Agricultural transformation of the developing world encompasses a broad set of subjects, usually revolving around the change in the mode of production and related aspects of production. However, the extent to which the transformation shapes subjective wellbeing is largely under explored. This paper examines how the constructed life goals of local people are shaped by the process of agricultural transformation and how they strive to attain wellbeing. We are especially interested in the ways rural dynamics are changing as a result. The empirical data is based on a two-village study using qualitative methods. The good life of rural people is classified into five types of life goals, including good health, decent quality of education and future employment opportunity for youth, good family relationships, having enough for living and eating, and self-sufficiency. Good health encompasses both the strength of the physical body and spiritual. The agricultural transformation has emerged new challenges to health, particularly the chemical use in agriculture that deteriorated the quality of the environment. The decent quality of education and future employment are attributed to education qualification and jobs with monthly salary. The high competition and the lack of social and political networks have lowered the expectation of rural people from getting government jobs. The transformation resulted in sprit types of family due to migration, while rural people remain highly valued good family relationships, in which modern technology such as cell phone play a part in maintaining distance interaction and good relations. Having enough for eating and living reflects the high priority that rural people giving on foods and housing. This is associated with the growing indebtedness that is threatening the loss of lands and property that are used for debt collateral. Finally, the self-sufficiency that was initiated by King Bhumipol is seen and adopted as a promising means to achieve a good life, however, self-sufficiency is variously defined

Cold War, state-building and social change: perspectives from two Southeast Asian borderlands

10.1080/14672715.2021.1872391Critical Asian Studies5311-2

<Articles>The Extension of State Power and Negotiations of the Villagers in Northeast Thailand

This article is part of a Sociology dissertation in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University, titled "The Construction of Social Space by the Thai Nation Development Cooperators of the Phutai Ethnic Group."This article explores the extension of state power through which local people are controlled, and the ways in which local people deal with and face this control. A Phutai (ผู้ไท) ethnic community in Northeast Thailand, which at one time sided with the Communist Party of Thailand and was thus referred to as a "Communist village, " was selected to serve as the study site. Data collection was by the qualitative method through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The study found that the expansion of state power to seize a locality at two different times met with different types of responses and negotiations from the local people. In the late nineteenth century the Thai state, responding to the presence of Western colonial powers, was able to assert its control over local communities through various administrative changes, for example, through state-appointed village heads and the taxcollection system. In this way, the state was able to integrate most outpost areas under its control and avoid being colonized by Western powers. In the twentieth century state power was again seriously contested, this time by the presence and growing influence of Communism in rural areas. However, the state regained political space after the decline of Communism. This paper argues that within the political space that was under the control of the state, local people were able to find their own ways to deal with state power as they constantly negotiated by using their history of involvement with the Communist Party of Thailand