Anthropological study of village health volunteers’ (VHVs’) socio-political network in minimizing risk and managing the crisis during COVID-19

Abstract

Since the early stage of the pandemic outbreak between 2019-2020, the capacity and preparedness of Thailand in coping with the crisis were reconfirmed with ranking the country sixth among a total of 195 countries in terms of health security and making it the only developing country worldwide on the top 10 list and number 1 in Asia. In the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) play an important role as a representative and gatekeeper of the community in the response to the pandemic. Previous research paid less attention to explore how local communities in the northeast of Thailand are able to prevent themselves from the pandemic by utilizing certain form of local resources. The research pays attention to the roles and functions of VHVs, as well as to the process of social network formation of the VHVs in Nakhon Phanom. It applies anthropological research methods: focus group, observations and in-depth interviews with five VHVs. Following the “network” and “social capital” concepts (Lin and Huang, 2005), this paper argues that local communities in the northeast of Thailand attempt to cope with the risks and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by mobilizing a variety of local resources, and such mobilization is operated and maintained by numerous local agencies or relevant stakeholders. The VHVs formulate “socio-political networks,” or can be seen as a “pluralistic network” based on a “collaborative system” between numerous agents/stakeholders in the community, including VHV groups, villagers, families/households, local politicians/officials, and private sector actors. This research can be used as fundamental research applying to understand the larger societies where community collaborations, social networks, and social capital are key mechanisms empowering agencies to encounter the invasion of a global pandemic.