東北タイにおける地域開発と農村社会の対応 ドンデーン村周辺地区の事例から

Abstract

The social organization in Thai village is highly conformable with the concept of social networks: in Thai village, independent villagers form networks of consummatory social relationship in order to secure one's existence. By the way, a survey report shows that, in northeastern Thai villages, incidental modernizing influences, e. g. urbanization, had led to economic heterogeneity within the village, but the disparity was increasing only because of the difference in rateof progress among villagers. The characteristic of social organization can rationalize this finding. First, there are not any social groups which put a curb on a villager's activity. So the rise in income is bacically a private affair. Therefore the increase in economic disparity might be an inevitability. But second, the “social networks are established on the premise that each person is “independent”. So even when individualistic activities has been actualized in changing economic environment, the social networks among villagers might be maintained. Then the increase in economic disparity shows the pattern described above, because the social networks function as a channel of information and loan. The validity of above rationale is supported by the findings from Don Daeng village and its vicinity in Northeast Thailand. The survey results consist of three parts: (1) . precondition: villager's life under subsistence conditions, (2) . economic changes after 1960 s, (3) . maintenance of social networks among villagers.