Diglossia and identity in Northeast Thailand: Linguistic, social, and political hierarchy

The paper explores diglossic relations between Central Thai and phasa isan, a variety officially known as a dialect of Thai, but linguistically close to Lao. Phasa isan is spoken by almost one-third of Thailand's population but its speakers in the Northeast are often stigmatized as uneducated and backward. We conducted field research mainly among university students in Ubon Ratchathani, a northeastern border province, by drawing upon data from survey questionnaires, reflective essays, interviews, and field observations. The findings suggest a transitional diglossic relationship in which Central Thai is the High and phasa isan the Low variety. These relationships are discussed in terms of nationalism, social hierarchy, and language maintenance and shift

The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa, and Thailand, 1850–2000

This article argues that because of the perceived and real biological characteristics of the different species of the genus Eucalyptus, imperialists and settlers, and later governments and the elites of developing nations, planted eucalypts widely and created new socio-ecological systems that encouraged and reinforced divergent patterns of economic, social, and ecological development. Planting eucalypts changed local ecologies and encouraged a movement towards market-based capitalism that benefited settlers, large landowners, urban elites and middle classes, and capital-intensive industries at the expense of indigenous groups living in and near forests. This article analyses the globalization of eucalypts in four broad phases: first, an enthusiastic expansion and planting from 1850–1900; secondly, failure in the tropics from 1850–1960; thirdly, increased planting and success rates in the tropics from 1960–2000, and fourthly, a growing criticism of eucalypts that began in the late nineteenth century and blossomed in the 1980s during an intense period of planting in India and Thailand