Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-vqtzn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T18:51:35.302Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructing Thailand: Regulation, Everyday Resistance, and Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Peter Vandergeest
Peter Vandergeest
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studies of what we call modern societies frequently take one of two major perspectives. The first emphasizes an ever-increasing constraining or regulatory power (Weber's iron cage [1976], or Foucault's discipline and regulation [1979, 1980]). The second tradition seems to contradict the first by emphasizing trends, such as a “democratic revolution” (de Tocqueville 1969:702–5; Laclau and Mouffe 1985:152) or the extension of citizenship rights (Marshall 1973; Bendix 1977). In this essay I argue that the twin processes of increasing regulation on one hand, and institutionalization of individual rights on the other, are closely linked. I make this argument by interpreting the transformation of relations between the state and peasants in Siam (Thailand) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and through an assessment of two books which have been particularly influential in comparative studies during the 1980s: James Scott's Weapons of the Weak (1985) and Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983).

Information

Type
The Politics of Peasants and the State
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 133 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCE

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1978. “Studies of Thai State: The State of Thai Studies,” in The Study of Thailand, Ayal, Eliezer B., ed., 193–234. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Southeast Asia Program.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bateson, Benjamin A. n.d. “Sakdina Nationalism.” Bangkok: Thailand Information Center, Chulalongkorn University. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Bendix, Reinhard. 1977. Nation-Building and Citizenship. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berman, Marshall. 1982. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bunnag, Tej. 1977. The Provincial Administration ofSiam 1892–1915. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buttel, Frederick. 1987. “Extraordinary Insights on Ordinary Conflicts.” Contemporary Sociology, 16:3, 301–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalermpow Koanantakool, Paritta. 1980. A Popular Drama in its Social Context: Nang Talung, the Shadow Puppet Theatre of South Thailand. Cambridge: Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology Department, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Chalermpow Koanantakool, Paritta. 1982. “Traditional and Modern Styles in Southern Thai Shadow Puppet Theatre.” Paper presented at the Second Thai-European Research Seminar, 06 14–18, Saarbruecken, Federal Republic of Germany.Google Scholar
Dennis, John ValueJr. 1982. The Role of the Thai Student Movement in Rural Conflict, 1973–1976. Ithaca, NY: M.S. Thesis, Sociology Department, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Diller, Anthony. 1987. “Syntactic Shifting as a Social Resource for Thai Speakers.” Paper presented for the conference, “The Role of Theory in Language Description,”Ocho Rios, Jamaica,10 31–11 8, 1987.Google Scholar
Diller, Anthony. 1988. “Thai Syntax and “National Grammar.” Language Sciences, 10:2, 273–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeny, David. 1989. “The Decline of Property Rights in Man in Thailand, 1800–1913.” Journal of Economic History, XLIX:2, 285–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, James C. 1971. Economic Change in Thailand. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kasemsup, Preeda. 1986. “Reception of Law in Thailand, A Buddhist Society,” in Asian Indigenous Law In Interaction with Received Law, Chiba, Masaji, ed., 267–300. London: KPI Limited.Google Scholar
Keeler, Ward. 1987. Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Keyes, Charles F.; and Valentine Daniel, E., eds. 1983. Karma. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto; and Mouffe, Chantal. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Landon, Kenneth Perry. 1968 [1939]. Siam in Transition. University of Chicago Press. Reprint, New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Lysa, Hong. 1984. Thailand in the Nineteenth Century: Evolution of the Economy and Society. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Marshall, T. H. 1973. Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1848. The Communist Manifesto.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education. 1944. Baep Riam Pausua Thai (P.S.2487), Book 2, Lessons 22, 23.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education 1958. Nangsue Aan Phuumisaat (P.S.2501). Bangkok.Google Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 1987. Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Petchsiri, Apirat. 1987. Eastern Importation of Western Criminal Law: Thailand as a Case Study. Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman and Co.Google Scholar
Poggi, Gianfranco. 1978. The Development of the Modern State. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabibhadana, Akin. 1969. The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program Data Paper No. 74.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Craig J. 1976. “Buddhist Cosmography in Thai History, with Special Reference to Nineteenth-Century Culture Change.” Journal of Asian Studies, 35:2, 203–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Craig J. 1987. Thai Radical Discourse: The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Frank E.; and Mani, B.Reynolds. 1982. Three Worlds According to King Ruang. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1987. “Resistance without Protest and without Organization: Peasant Opposition to the Islamic Zakat and the Christian Tithe.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29:3, 452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 1989. “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31:1, 134–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tambiah, S. J. 1976. World Conqueror and World Renouncer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terwiel, B. J. 1983. “Bondage and Slavery in Early Nineteenth Century Siam,” in Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia, Anthony, Reid, ed., 118–37. New York: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1969. Democracy in America. New York: Anchor.Google Scholar
Turner, Bryan. 1986. “Personhood and Citizenship.” Theory, Culture, and Society, 3:1, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turton, Andrew. 1980. “Thai Institutions of Slavery,” in Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Watson, James L., ed., 250–92. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Vandergeest, Peter. 1990a. “Contending Representations: Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Polity in Late Nineteenth Century South Siam.” Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 04 5–8.Google Scholar
Vandergeest, Peter 1990b. Siam into Thailand. Ph.D. Disser. (05). Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1976. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Wichiankhiri, Prayaa. 1962. Phongsawadan Muang Songkhla (The Songkhla Chronicle), vol. 3, 35–80, of Prachum Phongsawadan. Bangkok: Ministry of Education.Google Scholar