Northern Thai peasant society: Twentieth‐century transformations in political and Jural structures

Abstract

This article describes changes in politico‐jural structures in a peasant sector of Northern Thailand as between two specific periods 1910–50 and 1950–70. Peasant households and local communities, village elders and headmen, ideological practice and changing types, causes and means of settlement of disputes and trouble cases are analysed in a context of increasing socio‐economic differentiation. Changes and continuities are theorized in terms of two transitional conjunctures in a shift from a precapitalist mode of production. The small‐scale anthropological study is set in the theoretical framework of the Thai social formation as a whole, whose agricultural sector is shown to be increasingly dominated by capitalist relations of production.