Thailand's last peasant

Abstract

Does Thailand still have peasants? Does it still have a peasant society? How dynamic are Thailand's chaona? To answer these questions we begin with an interview of a septuagenarian farmer who discusses rural change over his lifetime and provocatively claims he is ‘the last peasant’ of his village. We use this rural anecdote as a catalyst to highlight agrarian change in Thailand and to expose the hazards of employing static concepts to describe contemporary rural political economy. By analysing the use and meanings of the term ‘peasant’ and its Thai equivalents, we demonstrate how static concepts obscure Thailand's rural evolution and contribute to misleading assumptions, harmful agrarian myths, and extant political cleavage.