Re-Examining Self-Reliance: Collective and Individual Self-Making in Rural Thailand since the 1980s

South East Asia Research, 23, 3, pp 335–356 doi: 10.5367/sear.2015.0269

Re-examining self-reliance: collective andindividual self-making in rural Thailand

since the 1980s1

Pongphisoot Busbarat and Simon Creak

Abstract: Self-reliance sprang to prominence in Thailand in the 1980s in responseto the socioeconomic upheavals of development, globalization and rural trans-formation. Whereas debates over self-reliance have tended to be polemical,with scholars critiquing its idealistic, nationalist and anti-market features, thisarticle considers the divergent meanings of self-reliance. Redirecting atten-tion from a collective idea of the ‘self’ based on motifs of the self-sufficientvillage and nation, to individual self-making, the authors argue that self-reliancecan equally refer to an entrepreneurial ethic of maximizing one’s potentialunder conditions of rapid rural transformation through active and pragmaticengagement with the market and the state. After introducing the collectiveand individual faces of self-reliance, the article presents a content analysis ofTheknoloyi Chaoban (Villager Technology), a magazine founded in the late 1980sto promote self-reliance among farmers. As a repository of practical hand-book knowledge, the magazine encourages village self-sufficiency and nationalself-sourcing alongside commercial and state-based strategies for boosting pro-ductivity, thus illuminating the complex realities of rural transformation andself-making in Thailand since the 1980s.

Keywords: self-reliance; rural transformation; entrepreneurship; self-making;Theknoloyi Chaoban; Thailand

Author details: Dr Pongphisoot Busbarat is a Research Affiliate at the SydneySoutheast Asia Centre, University of Sydney, Australia, and Dorothy Borg Post-doctoral Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute,Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10027, USA.E-mail: [email protected]. Dr Simon Creak is Lecturer in Southeast AsianHistory in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University ofMelbourne, Level 5, 757 Swanston Street, Victoria 3010, Australia. E-mail: [email protected].

Ideas of self-reliance burst into the Thai public sphere in response to the eco-nomic boom of the 1980s and the widening urban–rural disparity that accompaniedit. The term was at first a key motif of the so-called cultural development perspec-tive, which had conservative and populist features. Following the economic carnageof the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, self-reliance re-emerged as part of a broader

1 This research is part of the Australian Research Council-funded project ‘Handbooks and theEnvironment in Thailand’ (DP0881496). The authors would like to express their appreciation tothe project’s chief investigators, Craig Reynolds and Andrew Walker, for their comments onearlier drafts of this article. Generous assistance by librarians at the Thai section of the NationalLibrary of Australia is also gratefully acknowledged.

336 South East Asia Research

discourse of ‘localism’ and, subsequently, helped to define the related ideologiesof new theory agriculture and sufficiency economy. In this context, self-reliancecaptured the anti-statist and anti-capitalist imagination of leftist academics, reli-gious scholars and non-government organizations. Yet around the same time, Thaiplanning bodies and other state agencies also adopted the language of self-reliance.Indeed, the ethic of self-reliance has been strongly associated with the country’swealthiest person and most prominent public intellectual, King Bhumibol (r 1946–present).

What are we to make of an idea that has appealed to the anarchist, radical fringeas well as to the royalist establishment, the state and the king himself? What arethe features of self-reliance that explain its appeal across such a broad ideologicalrange? Agricultural economist and social movements scholar Shinichi Shigetomirecently addressed similar questions with respect to the related field ofcommunitarian thought in Thailand. Shigetomi highlights the development of threedistinct streams of communitarian thought: ‘community as indigenous Thai cul-ture, community as the rights of local people, and community as a principle ofstate administration’, which respectively exhibited nationalist, anti-statist and re-formist features.2 Linking together these disparate elements of Thai intellectualculture, he argues, were a small number of individuals, such as medical doctorPrawet Wasi and socially minded academics Saneh Chamarik and BorwornsakUanno. ‘Each man could talk about the virtues of community to people in two orthree sectors [for example, NGO, state, business], which often did not get alongwith each other.’3 Over time, especially after the king’s celebrated birthday speechof 1997 (see below), the royal imprimatur added symbolic authority to this mix,further expanding the appeal of communitarian thought.

Although these individuals were indeed important in linking diverse groups,Shigetomi’s insights are less helpful in the more specific case of self-reliance,which he presents as a singular, anti-statist element of communitarian thought.This kind of essentialism is common in academic discussions of self-reliance,which often equate the concept with wariness if not opposition towards the mar-ket and the state. This was certainly true of the landmark book Back to the Roots:Village and Self-Reliance in a Thai Context (1986), in which editor Seri Phongphitcontrasted the self-reliant village ‘community’ of the past and the urbanizing ‘mod-ern society’ of the present; yet it is equally true of a more recent history of Thaiagriculture by agricultural scientist Lindsay Falvey, whose sweeping synopsis of‘Agriculture, Environment, and Values’ since the 1980s argues for the need torecognize ‘the existence of two agricultures in Thailand, self-sufficient and com-mercial’.4 In these views, unlike the broader discourses of communitarianism andlocalism, which Shigetomi and others have shown to be the product of complexsocial and political forces, self-reliance remains static, unitary and defined in op-position to the market and the state.

Such representations have inspired other scholars to critique the political, cultural

2 Shinichi Shigetomi (2013), Development and Institutionalization of Communitarian Thought inThailand, Discussion Paper No 423 (July), Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), Tokyo, p 2.

3 Ibid, pp 29–30.4 Seri Phongphit (1986), ‘Introduction’, in Seri Phongphit, ed, Back to The Roots: Village and Self-

Reliance in a Thai Context, Rural Development Documentation Centre, Bangkok, p 15; LindsayFalvey (2000), Thai Agriculture: Golden Cradle of Millennia, Kasetsart University Press, Bang-kok, p 380.

Collective and individual self-making in rural Thailand 337

and intellectual features of self-reliance and movements incorporating it as a guidingprinciple. The more sympathetic of these suggest that, despite practical limita-tions, ideas such as localism and self-sufficiency offer a source of hope and practicalknow-how under conditions of unprecedented capitalist transformation, an unex-ceptional historical pattern that can be observed elsewhere.5 More strident critics,on the other hand, assert that such thinking is naive or romantic, at best, perhapseven hypocritical or manipulated by the elite.6 The critique of self-reliance as apolitical discourse intensified after the financial crisis of the late 1990s, whencalls for self-reliance also reached a crescendo, and in the feverish political cli-mate between the military coups of 2006 and 2014. While some academic criticsconcede that ideas of self-reliance may provide hope or guidance in a rapidlychanging world, most are careful to stress that it has little prospect of dislodgingor even making inroads into the modern capitalist economy. Modern capitalismand markets are simply too entrenched; and besides, this idealized vision of rurallife never existed in the first place.7

These views provide a healthy corrective to suggestions of self-reliance as thebasis of a distinct, autarkic mode of agricultural development. Yet critiques haveremained quite general and have tended to reinforce the opposition between self-reliance and market-based livelihoods in rural Thailand. There have been fewerefforts to bridge these perspectives or to comprehend, theoretically or empiri-cally, apparent contradictions in representations of self-reliance by delving moredeeply into the term itself. Indeed, for a concept that has provoked such passionssince the 1980s, there is a notable lack of analytical depth in studies that engagewith discourses of self-reliance. In short, the polemical – and political – dimen-sion to which self-reliance is frequently reduced in critical scholarship cannotexplain the richer realities of the concept’s intellectual life and appeal.

The purpose of this article is not to mount a defence of self-reliance or even toenter the debate over its relative merits and drawbacks. Rather, we aim to do twothings: to present a brief intellectual history of self-reliance in Thailand in orderto highlight its divergent meanings; and to consider empirically how theseunderstandings have been manifested in the ideas and representations promotedunder the banner of self-reliance. The first half of the article revisits the emer-gence and development of self-reliance in public discourse in order to discern thecollective and individual strands of self-reliance, an analytical distinction thatprevious literature has overlooked. In the second half, we undertake a detailedcontent analysis of the magazine Theknoloyi Chaoban (Villager Technology), oneof several publications launched in the 1980s in response to the impact of globali-zation and the economic boom. As a repository of practical handbook knowledge,the magazine encouraged village self-sufficiency and national self-sourcing in

5 Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (2000a), Thailand’s Crisis, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai,pp 193–216; Danny Unger (2009), ‘Sufficiency economy and the bourgeois virtues’, Asian Af-fairs: An American Review, Vol 36, No 3, pp 139–156.

6 Jonathan Rigg (1991), ‘Grass-roots development in rural Thailand: a lost cause?’ World Develop-ment, Vol 19, No 2/3, pp 199–211; Kevin Hewison (2000), ‘Resisting globalization: a study oflocalism in Thailand’, The Pacific Review, Vol 13, No 2, pp 279–296; Andrew Walker (2010),‘Royal sufficiency and elite misrepresentation of rural livelihoods’, in Soren Ivarsson and LotteIsager, eds, Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, NIAS Press, Copen-hagen, pp 241–265.

7 See, in particular, Hewison, supra note 6, at p 291, and Walker, supra note 6, at p 244.


response to excesses of the market and the state, invoking a collective idea of self-reliance and individual entrepreneurship to take advantage of opportunities in thenew economic conditions, a mode of self-reliance based on the individual self.Analysis of the magazine will help to understand the broad appeal and invocationof self-reliance in the Thai public and political spheres at a transformative mo-ment in the Thai political economy.

The collective self of self-reliance

Calls for self-reliance relate, self-evidently, to notions of the self and other. Butwhich self and which other? And what is the relationship between the two? AsCraig Reynolds argues, a sense of the national self was intrinsic to post-colonialeconomic nationalism in South East Asia – including Thailand – that arose from‘the deep-seated urge to transfer important economic activities from alien to in-digenous control’, and to the economic booms that ensued.8 Given the confidenceeconomic empowerment gave Asian leaders to challenge perceived Westernhegemonic values (democracy, human rights, etc), the boom contained a culturaldimension concerning South East Asian ideas of autonomy, agency, self-relianceand self-determination, which ‘is underpinned by relatively unexamined notions– or discourses – of the self’.

This national self has been forged from many elements, local and foreign. Oneexample is the term phum panya, an ancient-sounding amalgam of old words for‘land’ and ‘wisdom’, which refers to knowledge formed out of interactions be-tween locally specific cultures and ecological systems. Rather than the ancientreferent for ‘Thainess’ the term may appear to be, Reynolds suggests that it isprobably a recently coined calque of ‘local knowledge’, a key word in the alterna-tive development paradigms that emerged as a counterpoint to hegemonic formsof development. While phum panya’s local appearance gave credibility to inter-national development trends, which might otherwise have met with local resistance,the coinage was ‘a hybrid of local and global material’.9

Chumchon, or community, is another relatively recent coinage that gained promi-nence through its use in international development circles.10 First used around the1930s, the Thai term was still ‘in motion’ in the 1950s, solidifying only when itentered the bureaucratic lexicon with American-sponsored community develop-ment programmes of the Sarit regime (1957–63). The first community developmentprojects of the late 1950s led a few years later to the creation of a Department ofCommunity Development in 1962. Moved the following year to the new Ministryof National Development, the department was responsible for agriculture, healthand education, although there were few areas of rural life that were not touchedby the rubric of community development (or ‘CD’). Most of all, Sarit and hisAmerican backers were interested in community development as a weapon of

8 Reynolds, citing economist Frank Golay, in Craig J. Reynolds (1998), ‘Self-cultivation and self-determination in postcolonial Southeast Asia’, in Ruth McVey and Craig J. Reynolds, SoutheastAsian Studies: Reorientations, The Frank H. Golay Memorial Lectures 2 and 3, Cornell South-east Asia Program Publications, Ithaca, NY, pp 20–21.

9 Ibid, pp 23–24.10 Craig J. Reynolds (2009), ‘The origins of community in the Thai discourse of global govern-

ance’, in Andrew Walker, ed, Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia,NUS Press, Singapore, pp 27–43.


anti-communist counterinsurgency in the context of the Cold War. Under the ae-gis of CD, they sought to extend the reach of the state to win hearts and minds andundermine the appeals of insurgents, especially in the relatively poor north andnortheast of Thailand.11 Here, a sense of the ‘free’ national-community-self wasmobilized in the context of Cold War security crises.

Notions of community and the collective self were subject to differing interpre-tations among the emerging NGO movement. Formed in 1969 and recognized asthe first rural issues NGO in Thailand, Puey Ungpakorn’s Thailand Rural Recon-struction Foundation ‘stood for development which benefited the rural people’.12

Puey believed that ‘Sarit-style development’ centralized political power and ben-efited the cities at the expense of the countryside. As rector, he also establishedthe Thammasat University Graduate Volunteer Service, which sought to give gradu-ates experience of rural areas and train them to ‘understand “ordinary people”’.13

Around the same time, scholar and social critic Sulak Sivaraksa condemned Ameri-canization and greed and advocated the engaged Buddhism of reformist monkBuddhadasa Bhikkhu, including self-improvement through self-reliance.14 By thefree politics period of 1973–76, the village community – a distinct sense of thecollective self – was becoming something ‘to be valorised for values and normsthat were being eroded by modernity’.15

Self-reliance (phueng ton eng) emerged along a similar intellectual trajectory tothat of local knowledge and community, and at first glance developed accordingto a similar, collective notion of the self. Parallel with domestic developments ofthe 1960s, international disillusionment with the failure of industrial or ‘top-down’development to benefit the rural poor led to the emergence of self-reliance within‘alternative development’ approaches. Already prominent in the ideas of Mao andGandhi, self-reliance entered the international development lexicon in the late1960s with Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere’s back-to-roots Arusha Declara-tion.16 This was the logical corollary of Marxist and neo-Marxist dependency theory,which held that industrialization had intensified Third World dependency on theWest. Together with ideas of needs satisfaction, harmony with nature and struc-tural change, self-reliance duly emerged from the mid-1970s as a key principle of‘alternative development’. NGOs and others adopted this phrase as something ofa mantra, arguing that development was a ‘complex whole’ rather than an eco-nomic process, and had to ‘arise endogenously from deep down inside eachsociety’.17 Here ‘society’ emerged as a distinctive self, a unit that was larger thanthe village, but one with more specific and equitable associations than the nationaleconomic self.

In Thailand, changing international ideas of what constituted development ranheadlong into the social upheavals of economic boom, diversification of liveli-

11 Ibid, pp 31–35.12 Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (2002), Thailand: Economy and Politics, 2 ed, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, Kuala Lumpur, p 398.13 Rueng Suksawat (1995), ‘Behind the Thai NGOs’, in Jaturong Boonyarattanasoontorn and Gawin

Chutima, eds, Thai NGOs: The Continuing Struggle for Democracy, Thai NGO Support Project,Bangkok, p 54.

14 Pasuk and Baker, supra note 12, at p 398.15 Reynolds, supra note 10, at pp 34–35.16 Gilbert Rist (2002), The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, 2 ed,

Zed Books, London and New York, p 123.17 Ibid, pp 155–156.


hoods, increasing rural–urban migration and rapid socioeconomic transformationin rural areas. As export-oriented growth replaced import substitution as the guid-ing principle of economic policy, investment, manufacturing and exports blossomed.Gross domestic product (GDP) doubled between 1985 and 1992, with annual growthpeaking at over 13% in 1988. By the end of the decade, Thailand was positionedto become the world’s next newly industrialized country (NIC; simply nik in Thai).The benefits of the boom were not felt evenly, however. As agriculture’s share ofthe economy halved between 1980 and 1990, prices fell, markets faltered andexpansion of the land frontier, the primary basis for agriculture’s phenomenalgrowth since the nineteenth century, was reversed.18 Rural–urban disparity wid-ened, with the rural northeast especially hard-hit. Intra-regional inequality alsogrew.19 New avenues to prosperity led to the city, causing a sharp fall in the coun-try’s pool of wet-season agricultural workers. In some villages in the northeast, itseemed that only the very young and very old remained.20

Although the NGO movement in Thailand was curtailed by the crackdown of1976–77, it blossomed again in the 1980s, thanks to gradual political liberaliza-tion, the international turn towards alternative development and domesticsocioeconomic change.21 By one count, over 200 organizations were formed inthe decade.22 Drawing on alternative development paradigms, many NGOs pre-sented agricultural development in Thailand in sharply dichotomous terms –top-down versus bottom-up, large-scale versus small-scale, foreign versus local,and modern versus traditional – in which the former was the problem and thelatter the solution. Underlying these moral couplets was the meta-distinction be-tween ‘market-based’ and ‘people-centred’ development. Such NGOs criticized‘the concentration of political power, economic inequality, and destructive andinequitable development’, which they argued had resulted from state-led devel-opment approaches since the 1960s. Their ultimate goal was to ‘challenge statedevelopment policies and promote social justice and democratization’.23 Marxistscholar Kasian Tejapira portrayed the battle as a boxing bout between ‘globalizers’and ‘communitarians’. Although both camps opposed the bureaucratic state, theyhad different ideas of how to transform state–society relations.24

In this model of basic oppositions, village-based self-reliance became valor-ized as something lost in the rush to modernize. As already mentioned, this wasexemplified in the well known volume Back to the Roots, published in 1986 bythe Rural Development Documentation Centre (RDDC).25 In this book, scholarsand activists presented the ‘community’ and ‘village’ as the essential Thai selfunder threat from ‘macro-scale’ development, which had made communities

18 Pasuk and Baker, supra note 12, at pp 81 and 156.19 David Feeny (2003), ‘The political economy of regional inequality: the Northeast of Thailand

1800–2000’, Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol 17, No 1,pp 29–59.

20 Pasuk and Baker, supra note 12, at p 87.21 Bruce Missingham (2003), The Assembly of the Poor in Thailand: From Local Struggles to National

Protest Movement, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai, p 16.22 Shinichi Shigetomi (2002), ‘Thailand: a crossing of critical parallel relationships’, in Shigetomi,

ed, The State and NGOs: Perspective from Asia, ISEAS Publications, Singapore, p 128.23 Missingham, supra note 21, at pp 30–31.24 Craig J. Reynolds (2002), ‘Thai identity in the age of globalization’, in Reynolds, ed, National

Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand Today, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai, pp 318–319.25 Seri, supra note 4.


‘dependent on outside society’.26 These and similar views could be stridently anti-market. In his influential Thai Village Economy in the Past (1984), ChatthipNartsupha, founder of the neo-Marxist political economy group at ChulalongkornUniversity, contrasted the ‘natural’ pre-capitalist village community with the townor mueang, which ‘had to be set up artificially’. Whereas the state, foreign tradeand Buddhism had made a limited impact on the pre-capitalist village, which hadthus been able to achieve self-sufficiency, the state and capitalism were unnaturaland detrimental to village sustainability.27 Religious organizations – both Catho-lic and Buddhist – also propagated alternative development discourses. The traineddoctor, academic and NGO activist Prawet Wasi ‘construed the village as the siteof true Buddhist values against the state as the weapon of capitalism’.28

Such figures emerged as the most prominent participants in an intellectual move-ment centred on the NGOs, universities and newly established research centres.They saw their work as overtly political and progressive, as a ‘struggle for de-mocracy’ against the entrenched power of the military and bureaucracy. As midwivesof the so-called community strategy (naeothang chumchon),29 they argued thatthe solution to failed ‘outside’ development lay in reclaiming ‘inside’ culture.Over the course of the decade, such approaches assumed their own orthodoxy asthe key notions of culture, community and self-reliance hardened into categorieswith political resonance of their own. This transformation was no better illus-trated than in the ‘community culture’ (watthanatham chumchon) movement, whichdisplayed a coherence approaching that of a new social movement.30 This move-ment held up concepts of village, community and self-reliance to be quintessentiallyThai in the face of a changing national landscape. These ideas of self-relianceinvoked collectivist notions of the self, based on rural communities and the Thaination. At a time of socioeconomic upheaval, they implied that the search for thetrue national self led to the village community.

The individual self of self-reliance

As introduced earlier, such ideas have been critiqued as idealistic, romantic andnationalistic, and for offering little practical benefit to farmers facing new socio-economic challenges.31 The most common response to such criticisms has been toquestion whether self-reliance and similar terms represent useful conceptual cat-egories.32 By contrast, it may be more productive to probe divergent meanings of

26 Apichart Tongyu (1986), ‘Village: autonomous society’, in Seri, supra note 4, at p 53.27 Chatthip Nartsupha (1999), The Thai Village Economy in the Past, trans Chris Baker and Pasuk

Phongpaichit, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai (first published in Thai in 1984). Also see Reynolds,supra note 10, at pp 37–38.

28 Pasuk and Baker, supra note 12, at p 401. As elaborated below, Prawet would later adopt a muchmore moderate tone. Michael Connors (2005), ‘Democracy and the mainstreaming of localism inThailand’, in Francis Lok Kok Wah and Joakim Öjendal, Southeast Asian Responses to Globali-zation: Restructuring Governance and Deepening Democracy, NIAS Press, Copenhagen, andISEAS Publications, Singapore.

29 Pasuk and Baker, supra note 12, at p 401.30 Reynolds, supra note 10, at pp 40–41.31 For example, see Rigg, supra note 6. For summaries of further critiques, both before and after the

financial crisis, also see Pasuk and Baker, supra note 5, at pp 210–211; and Shigetomi, supra note2, at pp 24–26.

32 For example, Hewison and Walker adopt this approach with respect to related ideas of localismand sufficiency economy respectively. See Hewison, supra note 6, and Walker supra note 6.


the self that are contained within ideas of self-reliance. Reynolds touched on theissue of different selves – and the connection between them – in his discussion ofself-cultivation and self-determination in South East Asia, discussed above. Whilestudies of nationalism have revealed much about the processes involved in na-tional self-making, ‘the construction of the subject as person-individual-citizenthrough this period of subject-nation-building, and the problematized connectionbetween the two’, remains relatively unexamined.33 Despite being largely over-looked, this sense of the individual self and individual self-making was central tothe ideas of self-reliance that emerged in the context of rapid socioeconomic changein the 1980s.

In its individual sense, the Thai phrase phueng ton eng (literally to rely or de-pend on oneself) implies not a romantic retreat to uncomplicated village life, butrather an ethic of drawing on one’s own wits, resources and creativity. This defi-nition of self-reliance as a form of self-making stresses the benefit of harnessingone’s entrepreneurial spirit in order to maximize one’s potential for personal growthand success. It emphasizes not just reliance on one’s local resources, althoughthese might help, but identification and exploitation of a range of opportunitiesfor personal improvement and self-making.34 Far from eschewing the market orthe state, such an outlook is likely to involve their strategic utilization as promis-ing sources of opportunity and prosperity. Unlike the idealism or romanticismassociated with collective ideas of self-reliance, then, individual self-reliance ishighly pragmatic in nature.

This pragmatic spirit of entrepreneurship draws on a long tradition of self-help, self-improvement and success literature in Thailand. The chief architectin this project of self-making was Luang Wichit Wathakan, a Sino-Thai borninto a family of humble means who worked his way up the bureaucratic ladderto serve in several governments in the first half of the twentieth century. A pro-lific author of historical, biographical and dramatic works, Wichit also wrote anumber of ‘how-to’ manuals offering step-by-step advice on personal achieve-ment and growth, cobbled together from his reading of similar guides in English,his diplomatic experience in the West, and from Buddhist precepts and homiliesthat came naturally to him from his early education.35 As Wichit’s status as oneof Thailand’s most prominent nationalists suggests, his notions of individual

33 Reynolds, supra note 8, at p 21.34 The examples that follow should be sufficient to demonstrate that the Buddhist theory of non-self

(Pali: anatta; Thai: anatta) represents no impediment to this notion of self-making. Buddhismscholar Steven Collins distinguishes between ‘ultimate’ and ‘conventional’ truth, which corre-spond respectively with ‘primary’ or theoretical knowledge on the one hand, and ‘secondary’ orcommon knowledge on the other. In Buddhist Thailand, the theory of non-self relates to theformer value in each of these oppositional couplets, but does not characterize everyday lay life oreven the lives of monks. Rather, in practice, the unitary identity of the self endures throughsocial, legal and behavioural practice. See Steven Collins (1994), ‘What are Buddhists doingwhen they deny the self?’ in Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy, Religion and Practical Reason:New Essays in the Comparative Philosophy of Religions, State University of New York Press,Albany, NY. For recent works that focus on Theravada practice and cultural production, andchallenge doctrinal notions of non-attachment and renunciation of the body, see Justin McDaniel(2011), The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand,Columbia University Press, New York; and Simon Creak (2011), ‘Muscular Buddhism for mod-ernizing Laos’, Journal of Lao Studies, Vol 2, No 2, p 17.

35 Craig J. Reynolds (2005), ‘Nation and state in histories of nation-building, with special referenceto Thailand’, in Wang Gungwu, ed, Nation-Building: Five Southeast Asian Histories, Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, Singapore, p 30.


self-making were never far removed from national self-making.36

In the context of the 1980s and 1990s, a pragmatic outlook was required toprosper in the ‘hybrid political economy’ that increasingly replaced the subsist-ence-based economy.37 Although wet-season rice cultivation continued to play akey role in agricultural life, the rural economy diversified, with widespread adop-tion of cash cropping and contract farming, increased seasonal rural–urban migrationand wage labour, and greater rural–urban integration via advances in communica-tion technologies. Emerging from these changes was a new kind of ‘middle-incomepeasant’, in Walker’s expression.38 Far from subscribing to romantic ideas of ruralregression, this middle-income peasant was actively engaged with the market andthe state. By extension, while this new rural citizen was certainly a product of achanging economy and world, he or she sought to maximize his or her incomethrough active engagement with the market, state and other sources of potentialopportunity. It is this sense of individual self-making, in which the self referredliterally to oneself (or one’s household) rather than the village or nation, whichprevious discussions of self-reliance have overlooked.

The state and business were central to rural economic diversification. Governmentspending on agriculture almost tripled in the decade from the late 1980s. Much ofthe new money went to irrigation, extension services and rice subsidies. In addition,new regulations helped to boost rural credit, first from private banks and then fromthe Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).39 New credit andinvestment helped to promote contract farming, which expanded rapidly thanks tohigher commodity prices, tougher regulation of agribusiness firms, and the result-ing decision by these firms to market fertilizers, seedlings, animal food and othertechnologies directly to smallholders.40 To increase the competitiveness of cashcrops in the global market, contract farming was mainstreamed in the Sixth NationalEconomic and Social Development Plan (1987–91). The plan’s ‘Four-Sector Co-operation Strategy to Develop Agriculture and Agro-Industry’ (known as the nayobaisi prasan, or four-sector strategy) encouraged collaboration among the state, business,financial institutions and farmers to improve production systems. The intentionwas to ‘reduce price risk and market uncertainty while farmers improved their tech-nical knowledge and raised production efficiency and the quality of raw materials’.41

As this implied, the diversified economy came with income risks as well asopportunities. Sections of rural society and the NGO movement responded not byeschewing state-promoted capitalism – as some others were doing – but ‘by bar-gaining with the market and the state’.42 This approach highlights the state and

36 Scot Barmé (1993), Luang Wichit Wathakan and the Creation of a Thai Identity, Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, Singapore, p 53.

37 Chris Baker (2000), ‘Thailand’s Assembly of the Poor: background, drama, reaction’, South EastAsia Research, Vol 8, No 1, pp 5–29, at p 10.

38 Andrew Walker (2012), Thailand’s Political Peasants: Power in the Modern Rural Economy,University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.

39 Ibid, pp 50–53.40 Nondh Nuchmorn (2013), Kaset phanthasanya phap ruam lae bot samruat praden panha nai

prathet Thai [Contract Farming: Overview and Survey of its Problems in Thailand], Penthai,Bangkok, p 16.

41 Songsak Sriboonchitta and Aree Wiboonpongse (2008), Overview of Contract Farming in Thai-land: Lessons-Learned, ADB Institute Discussion Paper No 112, Asian Development Bank Institute,Tokyo, p 2.

42 Baker, supra note 37, at p 14.


market orientation of many within the so-called localist or communitarian move-ment.43 These activists responded to changes in rural livelihoods by seeking toreform state–subject–society relations and promoting better understanding of howto prosper from the market economy. For Connors, this reformism must be viewedas part of a broader royalist project to create new forms of democratic subjectivitybased on participatory ideas of democracy and nationalism.44 Writing in a similarvein on the king’s sufficiency economy philosophy (SEP), Danny Unger suggeststhat ‘the SEP is an effort to provide a normative grounding for capitalism in Thai-land, to indigenize capitalism among broad social groups (i.e., the rural poor) thathave fared comparatively poorly in Thailand over the past half century’. Drawingcomparisons with bourgeois disciplinary pedagogy in the nineteenth-century USA,he argues that the SEP functions as a ‘primer’ or ‘survival guide for poor Thaisenmeshed in globalized markets’.45 Despite understandable criticism of the royal-ist disciplinary project as paternalistic, undemocratic and hypocritical,46 thisemphasis on the disciplinary features of localism suggests a promising means ofexamining self-reliance as a body of knowledge with constitutive social conse-quences.

Efforts to promote self-reliance represent a similar programme of furnishingfarmers with the knowledge and know-how to prosper in the new rural economy.However, whereas Connors and Unger stress the centralizing, royalist and nation-alist character of the subject-making pursued by urban elites, strategies presentedunder the rubric of self-reliance highlight the disciplinary, self-making possibili-ties of smallholder capitalist entrepreneurship. In the pages that follow, we explorethese articulations in the content of the magazine Theknoloyi Chaoban, which weread as a handbook on how to implement ‘smart’ agriculture in the new ruraleconomy. Handbooks, as Wichit recognized, provide an ideal means of promot-ing self-reliance, for they furnish the reader with practical tips about how to prosperon his or her initiative. In this respect, both the medium and the message ofTheknoloyi Chaoban captured the process of individual self-reliance and self-making in the new rural economy.

Theknoloyi Chaoban magazine

Theknoloyi Chaoban was founded in October 1988 by the Matichon Group, aleading publishing group established a decade earlier by journalists KhanchaiBunpan and Phongsak Phayakwichian.47 Originally called Matichonnabot, a clevercompound of the group’s name and the Thai for countryside (chonnabot), themagazine started as a free monthly focusing on agriculture and village life with acirculation of about 50,000 copies a month. In October 1988, its name was changed

43 Connors, supra note 28, at pp 266 and 269; Shigetomi, supra note 2, at p 22.44 Connors, supra note 28, at p 266.45 Unger, supra note 5, at pp 139 and 147.46 For example, see Andrew Walker (2008), ‘The rural constitution and the everyday politics of

elections in Northern Thailand’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol 38, No 1, p 85. Giles Ji Ung-pakorn (2009), ‘Thailand’s battle for democracy’, 18 February, website: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/17/thailand-democracy/.

47 Matichon Group (2006), Annual Report 2006, Matichon Group, Bangkok. Besides TheknoloyiChaoban, the Matichon Group also publishes two leading dailies, Matichon and Khao Sot, a lead-ing news weekly, Matichon Saphada, a prominent cultural monthly, a major news website, andowns one of the biggest serious publishing businesses in the country.


to Theknoloyi Chaoban and it became a fully commercialized publication. In March1992, it moved to fortnightly publication, indicating a degree of commercial suc-cess. By 2006, the circulation had reached a respectable 150,000 copies per fortnight(Matichon Group, 2006) and in 2010, it boasted of being the country’s leadingpublication on agriculture.

The aims and objectives of Theknoloyi Chaoban were diverse, pragmatic andoften ambivalent. On the one hand, the magazine explicitly promoted the conceptof ‘self-reliance’ among farmers as its central theme, a sense of self-reliance definedin early issues as applying or utilizing what was available locally. Recalling thelanguage of the community culture school, writers argued that, while Thai villag-ers or farmers had traditionally had a culture of self-reliance, this lifestyle changedwhen Western influences infiltrated Thai culture and Thai villagers were forced toalter their beliefs and accept foreign influences. The most explicit goal of themagazine was to recover this concept of self-reliance that had putatively existedin the Thai village tradition. Ultimately, the magazine’s editors hoped that self-reliance would help Thai villagers progress in an appropriate fashion that wouldprotect their way of living and that of their children.48

Mirroring the two kinds of self-reliance discussed above, the advice providedin the magazine was less ideological and more pragmatic than these goals sug-gest. The magazine pursued its objectives by introducing or reintroducingknowledge, techniques and technology to farmers and villagers, whether thesewere already available locally, invented by villagers themselves or introduced byprivate or public organizations. Many of these ideas were no different from thoseintroduced through conventional agricultural extension and communication ac-tivities. Indeed, extension officers were prominent among the magazine’s writersand audience. As well as presenting ideas and techniques of how to improve farmingproductivity at an affordable cost, the magazine profiled successful farmers andsmall farm business. Reflecting this broad and pragmatic approach, the MatichonGroup more recently summarized the magazine’s objective as ‘offer[ing] exam-ples and suggestions on progressive agricultural techniques’.49 The word‘progressive’ is important here, since it superficially contradicts clichés of return-ing to an imagined village of the past. Indeed, this pragmatism is captured in themagazine’s very title, in which the loanword theknoloyi (technology) representsvillagers’ aspirations and willingness to adopt modern solutions, and Chaoban(villager) indicates the benefits of drawing on local and existing forms of agricul-tural knowledge and practice.

Considering this range in content, Theknoloyi Chaoban can be read as a hand-book for farmers, housewives, rural dwellers and even state functionaries, presentinga wide range of practices, ideas and knowledge that can be pragmatically appliedin response to new products, situations or socioeconomic settings. Handbooks areinteresting for scholars precisely for this reason, assembling knowledge from ap-parently discrete or even contradictory elements, such as local and foreign, secularand scientific, elite and popular, and so on.50 By incorporating ideas of a diverse

48 Theknoloyi Chaoban [hereafter TCB], January 1989, p 3.49 Matichon Group, supra note 47.50 Craig J. Reynolds (2006), ‘Thai manual knowledge: theory and practice’, chapter 10 in Seditious

Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts, University of Washington Press, Seattle,WA, and London.


nature – state and non-state, commercial and non-commercial, local, national andglobal – into a single publication for farmers and rural dwellers, Theknoloyi Chaobanoffered insights into the range of technologies and ideas available to them as theysought to get ahead during this period of rural economic transformation.

Themes and content of the magazine

For the purpose of summary, the content of Theknoloyi Chaoban can be groupedinto five broad and interrelated themes: (1) agricultural techniques and technol-ogy; (2) profiles of best practice; (3) reintroducing traditional practices; (4) spiritualleaders; and (5) general interest. Across the board, the information presented is ofa practical and often mundane nature.51

Techniques and technological pedagogyThe focus on farm management techniques to improve productivity andsustainability is typified by the Theknoloyi Kankaset column, which recommendsfarm management strategies based on mixed farming as a hedging strategy againstprice fluctuations in traditional crop varieties. Readers are also advised to utilizeorganic materials as opposed to relying on synthetic chemicals such as in fertiliz-ers, pesticides and herbicides. Four articles featuring in the Theknoloyi Kankasetcolumn in July 1992 are demonstrative of this trend. First is the story of UncleSanit Phonakngoen in Chiangmai, who turned part of his rice paddy over to flow-ers. This article details a number of flower varieties selected by Uncle Sanit togrow on his farm according to their popularity in the market.52 The second articleintroduces techniques of growing gerberas based on the experience of a farm inKhukhot, Pathumthani province.53 The next article urges farmers to plant avo-cado, with cultivation tips and how to overcome common problems.54 The finalarticle recounts the experience of a man who had grown sweet tamarind for thefirst time in Namyuen, Ubon Ratchathani province, suggesting that other farmersshould adopt a similar innovative spirit.55

Likewise, the Theknoloyi Pasusat (Livestock technology) and TheknoloyiPramong (Fishery technology) columns advocate effective techniques and tech-nology to improve livestock and fishery productivity. Two Theknoloyi Pasusatarticles in September 1995 were related to duck farming: one about the experi-ence and techniques of Mr Thongsuk Phiphatsiri in Ban Khok Thai, Prachinburiprovince in breeding ducklings;56 the other about common diseases found in ducks,especially duck plaque and fowl cholera, and how to prevent and cure them.57 Theother Theknoloyi Pasusat article in this issue suggests different feeding methods

51 Hewison noted this feature of similar publications in the early 1990s. Kevin Hewison (1993),‘Nongovernmental organizations and the cultural development perspective in Thailand: a com-ment on Rigg (1991)’, World Development, Vol 21, No 10, pp 1699–1708. As noted above, Hewisonwould be far more critical of the ‘new localism’ that emerged after the financial crisis, but drewa distinction between this and earlier ideas such as the cultural development perspective. Hewison,supra note 6.

52 TCB, 1 July 1992, pp 14–15.53 TCB, 1 July 1992, pp 20–21.54 TCB, 1 July 1992, pp 24–25.55 TCB, 1 July 1992, p 34.56 TCB, 15 September 1995, pp 44–45.57 TCB, 15 September 1995, p 46.


and appropriate food mix for water buffaloes. Theknoloyi Pramong articles in thesame issue focus on farming techniques and breeding soft-shelled turtles: onebased on the individual experience of a certain Mr Charat; the other drawn fromthe experience of the Chaoren Pokapan (CP) Group agribusiness giant. The othertwo articles give advice on new fish-farming techniques: one on using 17 Beta-oestradiol or diethylstilbestrol hormone to facilitate sex change and increase thefemale population of gourami; the other on nursery techniques and techniques forselecting healthy Thai climbing perch (pla mo thai) for breeding.58 As this selec-tion of articles suggests, ‘alternative’ or small-scale approaches have often beenfound side by side with commercial and scientific approaches.

Promotion of best practicesThe second major theme in the magazine is the introduction of best practice methodsthrough profiles of successful farmers or villagers. Articles of this kind have oftenbeen closely related to the first theme, outlining successful careers before draw-ing out lessons of how readers could apply such techniques in their own agriculturalactivities. Best practice articles have appeared most often in columns such asBanthuek wai pen kiat (An honourable record), Phuean khong chaoban (Friendsof villagers), Trawen muban (Village wandering), Achip soem (Side jobs), Khonsu chiwit (Man fights for life), Yat nguea raeng ngan (Sweat and labour) and Raina suan phasom (Mixed farming).

A Banthuek wai pen kiat column in mid-1998 opened with the common lamentthat, although farmers produced the world’s food, farming tended to be dismissedas a career for the desperate.59 To counter such negative stereotypes, the articleoffered the example of a dynamic young man, Mr Chatri Bunnak, who had stud-ied agricultural science, became an agricultural extension officer, and later startedhis own nursery business. Based on an interview with Chatri, the article presentsvarieties of his nursery’s flowers and decorative plants, as well as detailing thetime management required to balance his formal occupation as a public servantwith his own business. The implication is that, with a good education and plan-ning, farming offers a good career with decent financial rewards, especially ifmatched by perseverance and a strong work ethic. Similarly, a 2009 article intro-duces the experience of Mr Thanawat Rattanaphawon farming lime trees in cementtanks in Chiang Mai. Detailing Mr Thanawat’s techniques for producing out-of-season fruit in these tanks, the article reports that Mr Thanawat could yield returnswithin a year.60

Advocating traditionsMost explicitly reflecting village-based ideas of self-reliance, the third theme in-volves the promotion of ‘traditional’ practices. Some articles of this kind giveadvice on household management using ‘local’ materials or techniques that werethought to have been used previously, but had disappeared from village practices.These include such diverse advice as how to preserve food, clean toilets and curecommon illnesses. Columns addressing this theme have included Yang mai ru koru wai (Learning things you don’t know), Ru laeo ru ik (If you know, know more),

58 TCB, 15 September 1995, pp 48–59.59 TCB, 15 June 1998, pp 12–13 and 16.60 TCB, 15 August 2009, pp 18–19.


Ya klang ban (Nostrum), Phum panya thai (Thai local knowledge), which, as dis-cussed earlier, epitomizes the resonance of ‘the local’ in Thailand, and Lek lek noinoi (Miscellaneous).

These columns discuss a range of traditional methods. In January 1991, the Yaklang ban column advised how to collect herbs by season and time according to Thaitradition in order to make herbal medicine: summer was good for collecting rootsand kernels; the rainy season for leaves, flowers and fruits; and winter for skin,barks, body and sapwood. The article also made recommendations according to thetraditional Thai divisions of time (yam). During the daytime, yam nueng (6–9 am)was good for collecting leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds; yam song (9 am–12 pm) forbranches and limbs; yam sam (12–3 pm) for body, barks, skin and sapwoods; andyam si (3–6 pm) for roots. At night-time, yam nueng (6–9 pm) was good for roots;yam song (9 pm–12 am) for body, sapwoods and barks; yam sam (12–3 am) for limbsand branches; and yam si (3–6 am) for leaves, flowers and fruits.61

As the name suggests, Lek lek noi noi involves miscellaneous aspects of dailylife, from tips for farming and preserving food to hygiene and household decora-tion. Among a diverse range, examples include how to preserve limes;62 the use oflime to cure urticaria (hives); ways to preserve the colour and aroma of fish sauce;the use of bamboo for decorating plant pots;63 cleaning bronze wares with tama-rind juice;64 and the use of wild Barleria strigosa leaves (Th. Sangkorani) to makeherbal medicine for flu and diabetes.65 As one might expect, the Phum panya thaicolumn has often spoken most explicitly on the theme of local sourcing. For ex-ample, a recent issue introduced a locally made machine that changes unwantedplants into charcoal, including the example of a certain Mr Phonsathit’s smallcharcoal business.66 In a similar spirit of local ingenuity, a late 2010 issue extolledthe benefits for household cooking of virgin coconut oil and biofuel made frompig faeces.67

Exemplar of leadership

Spiritual leadership, the fourth theme of the magazine, emerges in profiles ofspiritual leaders in the provinces, especially Buddhist monks. According to thesearticles, monks are well respected by people in the provinces and offer a goodexample of a simple lifestyle, including ideas, teaching and practices that peopleshould observe and follow. The primary example of this theme is the columnPhra khong chaoban (Villagers’ monks), which profiles revered monks aroundThailand such as Abbot Sim Phutthacharo of Tham Pha Plong monastery in ChiangMai,68 Abbot Khao Analayo of Tham Klong Phen monastery in Nongbualamphuprovince, including his mediation techniques,69 and Abbot Chan Khemiyo, a pioneerof the Thammayut Sect in Nakhon Phanom province.70 Apart from demonstrating

61 TCB, January 1991, p 33.62 TCB, January 1989, p 41.63 TCB, January 1991, pp 7 and 15.64 TCB, January 1993, p 23.65 TCB, July 1992, p 31.66 TCB, 15 August 2009, p 21.67 TCB, 15 November 2010, pp 36–44.68 TCB, January 1991, pp 6–7.69 TCB, 1 July 1992, pp 6–7.70 TCB, 15 January 1993, pp 20–21.


the spiritual leadership of these monks, this column discusses monks who havedevoted themselves to being development leaders. In March 1994, the Phra khongchaoban column introduced the work of Alongkot Tikkhapanyo, the abbot of amonastery in Lopburi province, who set up a care centre for final-stage HIV patients.The article describes the objectives of Abbot Alongkot’s project, the cost of con-struction and maintenance, along with the situation of HIV patients at the temple,and calls for funding from the public.71

General interestThe magazine’s final theme might be summarized as ‘general interest’, includingsuch diverse areas as crop farming, agricultural development in other countries,general legal knowledge, travel experience, career options and social issues. Al-though some of these columns have appeared only a few times, others have continuedfrom the founding of the magazine until today. The breadth of articles demon-strates the wide range of information presented to aspirational farmers and villagers.Ruchak sattru phuet (Knowing plants’ enemies) introduces different weeds or dis-eases harmful to crops or plants, their characteristics and possible ways to preventor terminate them. Such enemies includes root rot disease in durian,72 and wormsthat destroy coconut trees, oil palms, betel nut trees, banana plants and sago palms.73

Thong thiao sabai chai (Happy travels) relates anecdotes of travelling to differentplaces, such as a story on the Karen lifestyle on Doi Mae Sariang.74 Ha kin tangdaen (Working overseas) introduces possibilities of working overseas and essen-tial concerns and tips for interested workers. The job market in Bahrain is a commonexample, including living conditions for interested Thai workers.75 This sort ofhandbook knowledge provided Thai rural dwellers with tips on how to benefitfrom globalization, suggesting that the magazine has provided a rural equivalentto popular ‘how-to’ manuals offering business people, civil servants and manag-ers advice on how to benefit from regional and global markets.

External influences, the market and technology

While some of the tips contained in Theknoloyi Chaoban are consistent with com-mon ideas of rural self-sourcing, they typically represent a pragmatic range ofoptions to help the individual farmer maximize opportunities at a time of rapidsocial change. This position is reflected in the magazine’s open-mindedness tocapitalism, globalization and other ‘external’ influences, the very factors againstwhich localism is typically considered to have emerged in Thailand.76 Opennessto the outside is exemplified in the introduction of basic technologies. A July2007 article profiled a village in Saraburi province that had adopted a simpletechnique to filter underground water, bottling and selling it locally. Far frombeing unique (or ‘local’), the filtering technique was similar to that used by manyother small businesses around the country. A villager interviewed about the costof production revealed that the business started after purchasing a filter for

71 TCB, 1 March 1994, pp 6–7.72 TCB, January 1990, p 46.73 TCB, January 1991, p 21.74 TCB, January 1991, pp 42–43.75 TCB, 15 January 1993, p 35.76 Hewison, supra note 6.


30,000–40,000 baht, a considerable investment (approximately US$1,000).77 Thiswas not so much an instance of acquiring technology through local knowledge asidentifying and filling a gap in the market by looking outside the village for suit-able technology – entrepreneurship at work.

The views of Theknoloyi Chaoban’s authors often correspond with the govern-ment’s own market-based development policies. The use of local wisdom (phumpanya) to promote local production fits nicely with the former Thaksin adminis-tration’s One Tambon (subdistrict) One Product (OTOP) scheme, introduced in2001. This can be seen in the column Withi chaoban (Villagers’ ways), whichcontains articles introducing unique local products that can be marketed to gener-ate extra income. There is also a regular column entitled ‘One Tambon One Product’(Nueng tambon nueng phalitthaphan) to promote the OTOP scheme. One sucharticle in 2002 discussed a group of housewives producing caramelized pomelo inPho Prathap Chang district in Phichit province. In an interview, the group leaderAuntie Kaeo suggested that although the pomelo was being grown locally, thegrowers were not relying on local knowledge. Rather, district and provincial agri-cultural extension officers had provided technical help in how to process the pomelo,and the group had relied on loans from the Provincial Industrial Office and Depart-ment of Agricultural Extension to start and continue its business.78

Such attitudes typify Theknoloyi Chaoban’s openness towards the marketeconomy. The magazine may from time to time express its concerns for farmerssuccumbing to big business and losing their independence and bargaining power,but these views are balanced against other articles and columns that are quiteexplicitly in favour of market-based approaches. In September 2004, the Cho talat(Market penetration) column discussed sweetcorn as an important cash crop forThailand, suggesting that farmers should grow it because its relatively short cul-tivation period makes it perfect for quick profits and a brighter future. As thearticle puts it: ‘this is an important economic crop of Thailand that can be proc-essed for export and generate much money’.79

Regular advice on how to navigate the global market economy and benefit fromtrade liberalization suggests a similar openness to globalization. In 2003, fourarticles discussed the Thailand–China Early Harvest scheme established underthe ASEAN–China Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The articles outlined basic in-formation about the FTA scheme, listed produce affected under the Early Harvestscheme, detailed Chinese market opportunities, and outlined competition in theChinese market from other countries.80 Despite the expectation that certain Thaifarmers such as those producing garlic, mushroom and temperate fruits would beworse off under the treaty, the magazine remained neutral towards the FTA. Inadopting this stance, it concurred with the government and the Thai–ChineseChamber of Commerce that the agreement represented a trade-off through whichThailand could reap benefits from the products in which it boasted a comparativeadvantage. As one report mentioned:

‘When Thailand and the PRC agreed to reduce their import tariff on vegetables

77 TCB, 15 July 2007, pp 110–111.78 TCB, 15 November 2002, pp 106–107.79 TCB, 1 September 2004, p 96.80 TCB, 1 August 2003, pp 43–44, 46–50, 52–57 and 62–63.


and fruits to zero, they created an opportunity for Thai businessmen, includingpotential farmers, to produce and export these products to the Chinese marketmore conveniently. But in order to achieve that, we need to study all of China’spossibilities and challenges.’81

The writer urged farmers to avoid fierce competition from China by switching toproduce that would benefit under the scheme, especially tropical fruit and vege-tables, and to improve the quality of production.

Sponsorship and advertising also point to Theknoloyi Chaoban’s market orien-tation. The number of advertisements in the magazine has increased considerablyover the past 25 years. In the January 1989 issue, there were only five majoradvertisements, all but one of which were for banks. A year later, the number ofadvertisers had increased to seven, and these were more diverse, including agri-cultural products, agribusiness companies, banks, sprinklers and liquor.82 InSeptember 1995, over 30 advertisements could be found, and today, the numberof advertisements in each issue varies between about 25 and 40. Not surprisingly,advertisements in Theknoloyi Chaoban tend to promote goods and services asso-ciated with agriculture and rural life: fertilizers, pesticides, plant and livestockfood supplements, agricultural machinery, irrigating tools, farm management com-panies, nursery businesses, banks, energy sector companies, consumer productsand commercial and government services.

The nature of these advertisers is suggestive of the magazine’s target reader-ship. The biggest advertisers – banks, agribusiness and fertilizer/pesticide companies– are those with interests in promoting contract farming and cash cropping in thenew rural economy. In Thailand’s sophisticated advertising industry, such adver-tisers would hardly bother advertising in the magazine if sales or market researchdid not indicate that its rural readership represented a potential growth market forthem. The same logic works in reverse. Had the magazine truly represented an-tagonistic attitudes towards capitalism, these businesses would surely have foundit an unattractive place to advertise. Like the farmers it targeted, the magazine’scommercial interests were served by maintaining a pragmatic rather than ideo-logical position on the role of capitalism in Thailand’s rural transformation.

Theknoloyi Chaoban has been similarly pragmatic on the issue of traditionaland modern technology. The Matichon Group’s 2006 Annual Report contendedthat, while Thailand had industrialized its economy by adopting modern technol-ogy in the industrial sector, the agricultural sector had missed out:

‘Surprisingly, modern technology has not played as much of a role in Thai-land’s agricultural sector as it should have. Most Thai farmers conduct agriculturalactivities using primary technology derived from invention, their experiences,and inheritance from previous generations. A number of them have been suc-cessful and able to generate good income for themselves and families.’83

In this sense, the magazine was trumpeting local ingenuity and adaptability. Atthe same time, the magazine has also advocated modern technology, pesticides,

81 TCB, 1 August 2003, p 50.82 TCB, January 1990.83 Matichon Group, supra note 47, at p 4.


inorganic fertilizers and market mechanisms. Articles rarely advise against theuse of synthetic products, but rather recommend how to balance them with thosemade locally so that farmers will not be overly dependent on them. The messagemight be summarized as ‘use but use wisely’.

In other respects, it is possible to question the degree to which the magazineadvocates local knowledge. Many articles create the impression that the majorproblem in agriculture is a lack of the ‘correct’ knowledge to improve productiv-ity. This knowledge is usually of a technical nature, suggesting that the magazinetends to disseminate modern and scientific knowledge. In this sense, phum panya,or local wisdom, is a hook that sources ingenuity locally, even if the technicalknowledge and other innovations come from outside the village or nation.

The importance attached to modern technology and knowledge can also be ob-served in the fact that much advice and information comes not only from staffwriters, but also from specialists, including officials from the Departments ofAgricultural Extension and Fisheries, as well as researchers and academics. Manyuse scientific names and foreign-language terms for plant varieties or animal breeds,such as in, for instance, a Theknoloyi Pasusat (Livestock technology) article inApril 1990 giving information on the causes of bovine reproductive difficulties.One explanation related the condition of corpus luteum, a Latin term written onlyin Roman script and without translation.84 Likewise, a 1998 Kret Kaset (Agricul-tural tips) article discussed Maejo-97, a new melon variety developed at MaejoUniversity in Chiang Mai. This article included foreign terms such as ko no makuwauri, a Japanese melon variety; ‘recurrent selection’; ‘Japanese Net Melon’, a groupof melon varieties; ‘gummy stern blight’, a disease affecting melons; and ‘super-market’.85

Foreign-language terms such as these are used as if readers can understandthem. Although this seems unlikely for many readers, such usage probably re-flects the goal of disseminating agricultural and rural development knowledge tolocal officials in provincial areas. Far from the archetypal farmer in an autarkicvillage, the audience is thus a diverse group including extension workers, small-holder farmers seeking knowledge of modern techniques, and those who want todiversify income generation more broadly, such as housewives and farmers alreadyequipped with skills, technical know-how and financial means. This audienceaccounts for the large number of articles offering suggestions and technical advicenot directly related to agriculture.

To summarize, Theknoloyi Chaoban does not offer an alternative to state-led orcommercial agriculture, but a diverse range of ideas and knowledge. These ideasare directed at an equally broad audience. The magazine can be considered aneffort to boost the prospects of entrepreneurial smallholders to prevent them frombeing swallowed up by expanding industrial farming. While there is a degree ofromance in the idea of smallholders warding off corporate threats, the magazine’scontent betrays the reality that village-based self-reliance alone could never achievethis. Alongside images of community-based self-reliance, simple lifestyles andtraditional ways of living, an equal emphasis has been placed on advanced tech-niques and technologies that are consistent with state and commercial efforts to

84 TCB, April 1990, p 30.85 TCB, 15 July 1998, p 37.


improve agricultural productivity and transform rural areas. The diverse andpragmatic pool of ideas presented in the magazine leaves the main decisions ofidentifying problems and choosing appropriate solutions to readers themselves.This act of applying appropriate solutions from a range of options constitutesself-reliance in its broader, pragmatic, individual sense, as discerned earlier inthis article.

Self-reliance and new localism

Despite Theknoloyi Chaoban’s varied content and the pragmatic sense of indi-vidual self-reliance it appeals to, the magazine’s editorial voice has continued toemphasize village-based self-reliance, matched with real-life examples of idealvillage communities that live up to this rhetoric. This rhetoric produced incoher-ence between the stated aims of the magazine and the actual representations of rurallife contained within the articles. In 1990, for instance, the magazine discussed thevillage community concept in relation to the Future Farmers of Thailand (FFT)initiative instigated by a group of college lecturers.86 One lecturer, the village adviser,explained that village members must be diligent, responsible and physically fit:

‘There is no problem amongst members sharing in this FFT village because werespect each other like brothers and sisters. We “eat from the same rice cooker”as we have a communal kitchen. Members take turn to cook … we respect eachother and don’t fight. Despite the current village head not being from the senioryear, he never has any problems in governing issues.’87

Such initiatives demonstrated the measures some activists and practitioners tookto realize the ‘discourse of village’ in Thailand at this time, despite the more var-ied and engaged image of rural life projected in the magazine.88

This rhetoric of self-reliance intensified with the Asian financial crisis of thelate 1990s. As is well known, the backlash against globalization produced a do-mestic coalition of elites and public intellectuals led symbolically by King BhumibolAdulyadej, who had advocated self-reliance, community-based cooperation andlocal knowledge since the late 1960s.89 In his celebrated birthday speech in 1997,the king outlined principles of setthakit pho phiang, usually translated as ‘suffi-ciency economy’, but better understood as the ‘economics of enough-ness’.90 Hismessage was one of promoting moderation and limiting greed. ‘Being a tiger[economy] is not important,’ he famously declared. ‘What is important is … tohave an economy which provides enough to eat and live.’91 Emboldened by the

86 TCB, June 1990, pp 18–19.87 TCB, June 1990, p 19.88 Philip Hirsh (2002), ‘What is the Thai village?’ in Reynolds, supra note 24, at p 265.89 Reynolds, supra note 24, at p 319; and Reynolds, supra note 10, at p 28.90 Reynolds, supra note 10, at p 28; Peter Warr (2009), ‘The economics of enough: Thailand’s

“sufficiency economy” debate’, paper presented at the Second International Conference of theBuddhist Economics Research Platform, 9–11 April, Ubon Ratchthani University, Thailand.

91 Bhumibol Adulyadej (1997), ‘Praratchadamrat praratchathan kae khana bukkhon tang tang thikhao fao thawai chaiyamongkhon nueangnai okat wan chaloem phrachonmaphansa na sala dusidalaisuan chitlada phrarachawang dusit wan pharuehatsabodi thi 4 thanwakhom 2540’ [Royal speechgiven to an audience of well-wishers on the occasion of HM the King’s birthday, at DusidalaiHall, Chitralada Villa, Dusit Palace, on Thursday 4 December 1998], website: http://kanchanapisek.or.th/speeches/1997/1204.th.html (downloaded 28 June 2012).


king’s lead, activists and intellectuals denounced globalization and internationalinstitutions such as the International Monetary Fund, demanding that solutionsshould be sought within the country. Dichotomies between mainstream and alter-native development previously promoted by NGOs now found a much broaderaudience. The result was what Hewison terms a ‘new localism’, an increasinglynationalist, populist and conservative brand of communitarian thought.92 Morethan before, the rhetoric of self-reliance invoked the nation as the self to be pro-tected from the global other.

Theknoloyi Chaoban increasingly reflected this rhetoric, with articles stressingthe impact of the crisis on farmers and rural areas and reiterating its main objec-tive of promoting means of self-reliance for Thai villagers. The magazine advisedreaders to spend cautiously as it was difficult to maintain a good income andliving standards, and criticized the government for understating the impact onfarmers at the beginning of the crisis in July 1997. Although it accepted that urbansociety was affected more severely than rural areas, the magazine stressed: ‘in-come does not increase but expenses [do], so how can you say the farmers are notsuffering’.93 Villagers ‘should take this opportunity to rebuild rural society bycorrecting its weaknesses and laying out a new direction for rural areas’.94 Themagazine again invoked an ideal rural society of the past: ‘From ancient times therural society of Thailand was based on love and unity as a family. There was helpextended between one another, whether in one’s career, daily living or illness,hence binding everybody closely together both in the terms of life and tradition.’It warned urban returnees against ‘bringing back to rural areas the urban lifestylefilled with materialistic values,’ and urged that restraint ‘will be the best way torevive the rural society at this time’.95

With these events, the royalty-associated terminology of setthakit pho phiangand thritsadi mai (‘new theory’ agriculture based on risk diversification) alsostarted to appear more often in Theknoloyi Chaoban. An editorial in July 1998declared: ‘Thai people are fortunate that we have HM the King. He has given usdirections as to how we can survive by ways of setthakit pho phiang and self-reliance. By merely growing vegetables, farming chickens and fish, and living asimple life according to our traditions, we should be able to continue our life.’96

Usage of the terms thritsadi mai and setthakit pho phiang was initially infre-quent, and writers often appeared to deploy them to imply royal endorsement. AThritsadi mai column was published in early 1998, but it was sporadic and short-lived.97 However, a change took place the following decade when a Setthakit phophiang column appeared in September 2005, around the time that elite criticismof billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s capitalist excesses was in-creasing. Introducing the concept and experiences of farmers who followed it,the Setthakit pho phiang column became established in the magazine after the

92 Hewison, supra note 6.93 TCB, 15 July 1997, p 4.94 TCB, 1 November 1997, p 4.95 TCB, 1 November 1997, p 4.96 TCB, 1 July 1998, p 4.97 The June 1998 issue, for instance, had only one article referring directly to the concept, which

appeared in the Theknoloyi kankaset column and discussed the relevance of thritsadi mai for sustain-able agriculture and self-reliance. The article gave the example of a successful farmer in UbonRatchathani, who had adopted this approach on his 12-rai plot. TCB, 15 June 1998, pp 18–20.


2006 coup, part of the ‘unprecedented spate of enthusiasm’ for this concept underthe post-coup junta.98

Nevertheless, the explicit emphasis on setthakit pho phiang did little to changethe content of the magazine, which continued to offer a pragmatic variety of solu-tions for farmers to navigate difficulties and get ahead. For example, the discussionof the China–ASEAN FTA mentioned earlier took place in 2003, well after therise of new localism. The main result of increased attention to setthakit pho phiangand tritsadi mai was to add another layer to the existing idealistic rhetoric of self-reliance. In 1997–98, this rhetoric demonstrated how the self in self-reliance shiftedfrom the village community to the national self during a period of economic crisisblamed on global economic integration. This focus on the national self increasedfurther after 2006, when royalist intellectuals and elites embraced self-sufficiencyas a byword of royalist nationalism in righteous contrast to Thaksin’s crony capi-talism. But beneath the mounting rhetoric, the majority of articles continued topromote practical techniques for individuals to generate income, survive the cri-sis and continue the ongoing task of self-making in the new rural economy.

Conclusion

In a trenchant critique of the economic principles embraced by the 2006 coupmakers, Andrew Walker argues that ‘sufficiency economy became the moral un-derpinning of “sufficiency democracy”’, in which self-righteous but unelectedmilitary figures and bureaucrats tasked themselves with restoring morality to asystem corrupted by Thaksin’s populism and money politics.99 This recent twistin the career of self-reliance emphasizes again the term’s many faces over the pasthalf-century. Seemingly contradictory forms of self-reliance can coexist becausethey refer to different notions of the self: the entrepreneurial, individual self, whichseeks to get ahead by drawing pragmatically from a range of ideas and resources;and the collective, often national subject-self, perceived to be under threat by theforeign and its local bidders. These notions of the self are connected, not onlylinguistically in the term phueng ton eng, but in the sense that self-reliant or entre-preneurial individuals may collectively foster national self-making.

The tendency to idealize and misrepresent rural livelihoods as removed fromthe global economy can be seen as the latest phase of a trend that began in the late1950s. Since becoming the target of the first community development programmesinitiated by the Sarit regime, rural populations have been the target of state rheto-ric and interventions based on certain assumptions about their way of life. Thetrigger for each wave of rhetoric has been a national crisis or transformation: thesecurity crises of the late 1950s and 1960s; the political crisis of the mid-1970s;rapid change in rural livelihoods in the 1980s; the financial crisis of the late 1990s;and the political crises of the past decade. In their different ways, these episodeshave triggered successive and cumulative bouts of national introspection on thecore values of being Thai. In the heightened rhetoric of self-reliance that emergeson such occasions, the resounding answer to such reflections is that the essence ofbeing Thai is to be found in the countryside in an autarkic, pre-industrial way oflife of rural self-reliance.

98 Walker, supra note 6, at p 241.99 Walker, supra note 6, at p 261.


The force of this yearning and the rhetoric it produces is palpable, extending farbeyond the images of nostalgia typically produced in advertising and tourismimages. But it should not obscure the diversity of modern rural livelihoods, whichdraw on a wide range of epistemological and practical sources. Despite TheknoloyiChaoban’s frequent statements in support of an autarkic image of self-reliance,particularly at these moments of national introspection, the magazine’s contentprovides an excellent guide to this diversity and the entrepreneurship that hascharacterized rural life since the 1980s. As noted earlier, the ambivalence of themodern peasantry can be gleaned from the very title of the magazine: theknoloyias a marker of the modern and innovative; chaoban or villager as a marker oflocal sourcing and technology that can also assist one in maximizing one’s poten-tial. This ambivalence is not stifling or ruining, but calls for new forms of innovationand adaptation, highlighting how self-reliance constitutes a form of individualself-making as well as reinforcing anti-market and anti-state messages of localand national self-sourcing. The resultant bricolage of ideas defies erstwhile di-chotomies such as commercial versus alternative development, state versus NGOapproaches, and modern versus traditional techniques. In its title and content, ifnot in some of its more excited rhetoric during moments of national crisis, therepresentations of rural entrepreneurship contained within Theknoloyi Chaobanembody this defiance.

Re-Examining Self-Reliance: Collective and Individual Self-Making in Rural Thailand since the 1980s

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