Thailand’s economic meltdown in 1997 challenged assumptions of the inexorable triumph of globalisation. The recovery package promoted by the IMF galvanized an unlikely coalition of civil society actors to vehemently condemn the Thai model of capitalist industrialization. What does civil society have to offer in its place? How realistic are the proposed remedies?

An analysis from the University of Warwick adds to the limited literature on alternative local responses to issues of equity and justice raised by the impact of globalisation.

The crisis in Thailand was an unexpected reversal of fortune after four decades of uninterrupted growth and urbanisation fuelled by an explosive growth in manufacturing (contributing 80 percent of exports, compared with 1 percent in 1960). The dramatic devaluation of the baht led the economy to contract and to spectacular bankruptcies, allowing foreign capital to take control of key economic sectors. Unemployment and reduced real wages seriously impacted rural areas heavily dependent on remittances from urban workers.

Response to the crisis in the form of tight monetary policy, civil service reform and liberalisation of foreign investment, only served to further inflame nationalist sentiment. Alternative local, anti-globalisation responses have been proposed by NGOs and authoritarian forces associated with organised Buddhism, the monarchy and the military. This ‘localism’ blames consumerism, industrialisation, cash crops, western farming techniques and a brainwashed Americanised technocratic elite for bringing Thailand to its knees. It argues that a self-sufficient nation, its moral core sustained by Buddhist, rural and national values, does not need to be forced into international trade with duplicitous foreigners.

The analysis draws heavily on Thai sources to show the romantic, chauvinist and reactionary nostrums underpinning localism. Among the key points are:

• The community that localists aspire to is an ethical construction, not a real place for existing villagers.
• The anti-urban bias in localism exacerbates Thailand’s rural-urban divide. Localism is especially dismissive of the role of organised labour in Thai life.
• Localist aversion to the market and trade leads them to idealise the self-sufficient rural household as the basic production unit. There is no evidence that this is achievable.
• NGOs and pro-democracy activists, who before 1997 played a prominent role in tempering Thai authoritarianism, are allowing themselves to be manipulated and co-opted.

The report shows that, for all its seeming irrationality, there are elements in Thailand’s vigorous anti-globalist discourse which should give policy-makers food for thought. Among the issues for future consideration are:

• The recognition that the rural sector (in Thailand and elsewhere) has been ignored or exploited, and that rural discontent is high, is a salient corrective to capitalist triumphalism.
• As long as the dominant neoliberal perspective on globalisation continues to neglect equity it will open itself to deserved challenge.

Source(s):
‘Localism in Thailand: a study of globalisation and its discontents’ by Kevin Hewison, CSGR Working Paper #39/99, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, September 1999 Full document.

Funded by: CSGR

id21 Research Highlight: 2 May 2001

Further Information:
Kevin Hewison
Southeast Asia Research Centre
Department of Applied Social Studies
City University of Hong Kong
Tat Chee Avenue
Kowloon Tong
Hong Kong

Tel: +852 2788 8965
Fax: +852 2788 8960
Contact the contributor: sskevin@cityu.edu.hk

City University of Hong Kong

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
UK

Tel: +44 (0)24 7657 2533
Fax: +44 (0)24 7657 2548
Contact the contributor: csgr@warwick.ac.uk

Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, UK

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