Suchergebnisse

In this article an attempt is made to trace back as far as possible a history of Bang Chan, a rice-growing village in the central plains of Thailand. Documents existed which might have offered some clues, but help could not be expected from court records, land registration deeds or the census. All that existed lay in bundles in the District Office store rooms, a bit mouldy and perhaps chewed by silverfish. It would take a year at least to dig out the relevant papers, and then since family names do not appear until about 1915 and place names changed frequently, one would never know whether the case of Chan vs. Chya referred to incidents in Bang Chan or some other part of the district.

Bang Chan traces the changing cultural characteristics of a small Siamese village during the century and a quarter from its founding as a wilderness settlement outside Bangkok to its absorption into the urban spread of the Thai capital. Rich in ethnographic detail, the book sums up the major findings of a pioneering interdisciplinary research project that began in 1948. Changes in Bang Chan's social organization, technology, economy, governance, education, and religion are portrayed in the context of local and national developments.