| Abstract: | The ‘redshirt’ movement in Thailand is commonly portrayed in media and scholarly accounts as a class-based, pro-Thaksin social movement that draws fervent support from the poor rural-born masses, especially peasants, in the north and northeast. The movement leaders, including Thaksin, have supposedly won these people's support by framing urban-based political elites as ammart (aristocrats) who have stakes in suppressing the needs of phrai (serfs) – a contrasting label for the rural-born poor. I question this analysis that highlights the polarisation of Thai society along class lines. Combining data from election results and fieldwork in Chiang Mai Province – Thaksin's birthplace and the putative redshirt heartland – I show that despite their relative poverty, some peasants remain cynical opponents of the redshirt movement. They have autonomy to penetrate and reinterpret the redshirts' class-centric collective action frame – a fact that cautions us against linking rural poverty causally to rural support for redshirts. Peasants are a more diverse, politically divided lot than we are led to believe. |
