Running after Development: How people have Engaged Modernity in a Northeastern Thai Village.

Abstract

State-sponsored development has most effectively transformed the Thai countryside through series of institutionalised form of modern infrastructure and quality of life improvement works. This thesis adopted the ethnographic approach in examining everyday development situations in a Northeastern Thai village, Ban Nongyang located in Surin province. The participatory observation approach was employed to study how and why have villagers engaged with the state-led development and modernity. Informal talk and loosely-structured interview with the informants were also carried out throughout the course of fieldwork. This thesis aims to illustrate 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, this thesis argues, has created a situation in which the villagers have to assert themselves in the position has guaranteeing that they would not left out of the developmental process. In order to catch up with the fast pave of development, they have to `run after¿ it rather than being an active part of its initiations. In this sense, the Thai village development stories, seen through the narratives of the people of Ban Nongyang, could be simultaneously considered both as a success and a failure.

The main contribution of the thesis is the finding of how development works in village setting through various governmental institutions and agencies. Development establishes institutions and public infrastructures at the grassroots level, such as village school, local administration unit, public health station and transportation network. These institutions and infrastructures have in turn, instilled a modern worldview upon generations of villagers. In other words, development as a form of modernisation has transplanted in them a new set of consciousness called an awareness of being up to date (thansamai). By looking at this changing public mindset in the narratives produced by Ban Nongyang¿s villagers, I reveal villagers conscious motivation of how the villagers, being subjects to the State¿s initiatives, have to `run after development¿ rather than merely participating in it.