The informal politics of rural livelihoods in Northern Thailand: A case study of Chiang Mai’s songthaeo drivers
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis adopts a livelihoods perspective to explore the historical transition and contemporary lives of a group of northern Thai villagers who exited village-based farm work in the 1970s and 1980s to enter the emerging public transport sector of Thailand’s northern capital – Chiang Mai. Through an ethnographic study of these songthaeo drivers, the thesis draws on the story of the drivers’ shift from farm to urban-based, wage labour to interrogate dominant portraits of rural Thai history and to explore the politics through which the drivers have forged and consolidated comparatively healthy livings. In so doing, the thesis contends that rather than a monochromatic history of peasant economic passivity or political resistance to state intervention, the drivers demonstrate an adaptive, aspiration-oriented agency in pursuing enhanced livelihoods. Further, they symbolise a rural politics of actively seeking to cultivate connections with state actors identified as supporting desired exit options away from the land and into more productive labour fields. The thesis proceeds to describe the labour-world ‘invented’ by Chiang Mai’s songthaeo drivers, in terms of both its relatively stable economic dimensions and its familiar rural cultural sociality. It notes that despite the generation of modestly healthy incomes, the drivers remain discontent with their economic position. Describing their livelihoods in desultory terms, the drivers’ pessimistic outlook reflects the ‘status games’ in which they are implicated, indicative of comparisons with men from the professional ranks, and demonstrative of anxieties arising from a new historical epoch marked by the potentially disruptive realities of the Asian Economic Community. To negotiate the new economic era now dawning upon them, and to defend their livelihoods and familiar way of life, the drivers engage in a largely informal mode of politics. Reflective of what Partha Chatterjee has termed ‘political society’, this politics d…
abstract: This thesis adopts a livelihoods perspective to explore the historical transition and contemporary lives of a group of northern Thai villagers who exited village-based farm work in the 1970s and 1980s to enter the emerging public transport sector of Thailand’s northern capital – Chiang Mai. Through an ethnographic study of these songthaeo drivers, the thesis draws on the story of the drivers’ shift from farm to urban-based, wage labour to interrogate dominant portraits of rural Thai history and to explore the politics through which the drivers have forged and consolidated comparatively healthy livings. In so doing, the thesis contends that rather than a monochromatic history of peasant economic passivity or political resistance to state intervention, the drivers demonstrate an adaptive, aspiration-oriented agency in pursuing enhanced livelihoods. Further, they symbolise a rural politics of actively seeking to cultivate connections with state actors identified as supporting desired exit options away from the land and into more productive labour fields. The thesis proceeds to describe the labour-world ‘invented’ by Chiang Mai’s songthaeo drivers, in terms of both its relatively stable economic dimensions and its familiar rural cultural sociality. It notes that despite the generation of modestly healthy incomes, the drivers remain discontent with their economic position. Describing their livelihoods in desultory terms, the drivers’ pessimistic outlook reflects the ‘status games’ in which they are implicated, indicative of comparisons with men from the professional ranks, and demonstrative of anxieties arising from a new historical epoch marked by the potentially disruptive realities of the Asian Economic Community. To negotiate the new economic era now dawning upon them, and to defend their livelihoods and familiar way of life, the drivers engage in a largely informal mode of politics. Reflective of what Partha Chatterjee has termed ‘political society’, this politics d…
author: Lane, Ryan
language: en_AU
date published: 2017
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:46Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/155630