Middlemen in the Politics of Rural Thailand: A Study of Articulation and Cleavage

In: Modern Asian studies, Band 14, Heft 3, S. 441-464

Abstract

The growth of modern nation states seems to have inevitably entailed the progressive encapsulation, incorporation and integration of local, relatively autonomous systems into a broader political and socioeconomic framework, generating in the process new pressures on local systems as they are forced to reformulate their relationship with the encompassing state. Even in the case of peasant societies where there is, by definition, a relationship between local community and an overarching political and economic structure, there has, historically, been a high degree of decentralization in many spheres, and a relatively low demand for the integration of the total society. The process of modernization, however, is generally accompanied by increasing central interference in subordinate systems, leading to new pressures, opportunities, interests and alignments.