Cracking Hegemony in Thailand: Gramsci,Bourdieu and the Dialectics of Rebellion

Gramsci's notion of “hegemony,” like Bourdieu's concept of “habitus,” seems designed to explain accommodation to existing social structures, rather than resistance. In this paper, however, I draw from the Prison Notebooks some arguments that contribute to a Gramscian understanding of how hegemony may break apart under the weight of the same uneven development processes central to hegemony. Drawing also from Bourdieu, I argue that the conceptions of “hegemony” and “habitus” inscribe the possibility of resistance within the embodied experience of accommodation to class rule. I then elaborate a dialectical, Gramscian-Bourdieusian account of the Red Shirt movement in Thailand, showing that the seeds for the destruction of royalist hegemony in Thailand have been sown in the embodied processes of accommodation to ruling class hegemony. The breadth and depth of challenges to this hegemony, moreover, are evident not only from the activities of the Red Shirt movement and regional discontent in Northern and Northeast Thailand but from the resistance of working class women to attempts to police their sexuality and limit their consumerism. The refusal of Thai elites to accept the breadth and depth of Thailand's dispositional transformation has legitimised – in their eyes – the brutal crackdown on Red Shirt protestors that resulted in the April-May 2010 massacres. Yet repression can only kill off political leaders and specific parties; it will not likely derail the growing resentment of ordinary Thais over elitist class rule.     

Network monarchy and legitimacy crises in Thailand

Abstract

This article argues that widely used ideas such as bureaucratic polity, constitutional monarchy, transitional democracy and political reform fail to characterize accurately the recent politics of Thailand. Instead, Thai politics are best understood in terms of political networks. The leading network of the period 1973–2001 was centred on the palace, and is here termed ‘network monarchy’. Network monarchy involved active interventions in the political process by the Thai King and his proxies, notably former prime minister Prem Tinsulanond. Network monarchy developed considerable influence, but never achieved the conditions for domination. Instead, the palace was obliged to work with and through other political institutions, primarily the elected parliament. Although essentially conservative, network monarchy also took on liberal forms during the 1990s. Thailand experienced three major legitimacy crises after 1992; in each case, Prem acted on behalf of the palace to restore political equilibrium. However, these interventions reflected the growing weakness of the monarchy, especially following the landslide election victories of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001 and 2005. Thaksin sought to displace network monarchy with new networks of his own devising. This article suggests that conventional understandings of the power of the monarchy need to be rethought.     

试析泰国中华总商会的演变

泰国中华总商会成立于1910年,至今已整整一个世纪。在百年的历史发展进程中,泰国中华总商会从无到有,从一个小规模的社团发展到当地最有影响力的社团之一。它的影响力辐射到整个泰华社会,甚至于在泰中两国的友好合作、经贸往来、文化交流等方面都有着深远的影响。1975年泰国与中华人民共和国建立外交关系,两国在取消泰国华人双重国籍问题上达成一致,加快了泰国华人加入泰籍获得公民权利的进程。在这个背景下,泰国中华总商会作为当地重要的侨团组织,随着20世纪70年代泰华社会的转变,其性质也发生了重大转变,即从"华侨社团"转变为"华人社团"。     

世界粮食危机中泰国粮食政策研究

粮食是重要的农产品,事关人民基本生活和国家经济社会的稳定与发展.今年发生的世界粮食危机让许多国家陷入饥荒与混乱.泰国是世界上重要的粮食生产国和出口国,面对这场"无声的海啸",机遇与挑战并存,泰国政府从容不迫,从维护本国政府和人民的利益出发,着眼于粮食的可持续生产及农业的长远发展,制定出行之有效的粮食政策.这些政策主要涉及保护农民的种粮积极性、敦促利益分享机制的执行、整合农业发展、粮食生产的资金投入和增强国际协商与合作等方面.目前泰国的粮食政策运行良好,可资其他粮食生产国和出口国借鉴.     

Sites of repression and resistance: political space in refugee camps in Thailand

Refugee camps are frequently perceived as spaces of emergency and exception. However, they are also spaces where millions of people live their everyday lives, sometimes for extended periods of time. As such, refugee camps are political spaces where struggles over the right to influence life in the camps and shape how they are governed are continuously ongoing. In this context, what are the opportunities for political participation for refugees living in camps? How and to what extent are refugees able to carve out political space where they can engage with and affect their lives and their situations? This paper addresses these questions through an analysis of refugee camps in Thailand. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics, the analysis demonstrates how key strategies employed to govern refugees, namely spatial confinement and development interventions are also creatively subverted by refugees and appropriated as bases for resistance and political mobilization. The article provides new insights into the relationship between power and resistance, demonstrating how specific technologies of governance create opportunities for subversion, reinterpretation, and appropriation.     

Inequality,Wealth and Thailand’s Politics

ABSTRACT

Acemoglu and associates argue that resistance to democratisation will be stronger where inequality is high. Piketty shows that shifts at the upper end of the distribution may be historically more significant than overall measures of inequality. In Thailand, the high level of income inequality has eased slightly since 2000, but there is a “1% problem” as peak incomes are growing faster than the average. Newly available data show that inequality of wealth is very high. At the top of the wealth pyramid, family holdings of commercial capital are growing. A significant proportion of top entrepreneurs have emerged within the past generation. A second tier of the wealth elite has developed over the past generation from rising property values, financial investments and professional incomes. Although their individual wealth is much less than the corporate elite, their numbers are much greater. The existence of the prospering “1%” and the emergence of the second-tier wealthy may corroborate Acemoglu’s proposition, but there are tensions within the wealth elite which may favour democracy.     

The Resilience of Monarchised Military in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that conventional notions of Thailand’s military must be re-examined because they misrepresent the military’s role in politics. Instead of examining its material interests, one must also scrutinise the power and legitimacy of Thailand’s armed forces in terms of its connection to monarchy over time. The relationship between monarchy and military represents a “parallel state”, whereas the ideology, rituals and processes within this relationship result in what can be termed a “monarchised military.” The purpose of this nexus is to sustain a palace-centred order from which the military obtains legitimacy. From 1991 until 2014, the monarchised military mostly operated behind a defective democracy, although it occasionally carried out coups to re-assert the palace’s authority. Its more recent political intrusions have enhanced the military’s power on Thailand’s political stage. Civilian prime ministers have unsuccessfully sought to reign in the military, but to no avail owing to the armed forces’ close association with monarchy.     

基于政策视角的泰国有机农业发展分析

近10多年来,泰国有机农业蓬勃发展,不仅在国内外拥有了知名度比较高的有机农产品,还在有机产品标准和认证体系实现了新突破。这与近年来泰国农业政策的制定与实施是密不可分的。本文分析泰国有机农业的现状及发展历程,并从政策的视角分析该国有机农业发展的动力和经验,为我国在有机农业发展的政策方面提供借鉴。     

泰国高等教育的国际化进程

面对经济全球化的迅速发展,泰国把高等教育国际化作为至关重要的对策之一,在培养各领域国际事务人才方面成就斐然。本文就泰国高等教育国际化的进程、特征及因素进行分析,以期对中国高等教育的改革和发展带来一些有益的启示。     

军事政变和独裁交替下的泰国民主化道路——泰国民主化的特征与未来

比其他亚洲国家起步早的泰国民主化道路走得并不平坦,军事政变和政治独裁的交替似乎成为了近70多年来泰国政治的主线。这种奇特的政治现象和泰国的政治文化、宗教意识、教育水平、社会结构等因素密切联系在一起。最初由精英发起的泰国民主化运动,如果得不到整个国民的回应,没有获得成熟市民社会的支持,真正的民主主义也就不可能在泰国扎根。