Pasuk Phongpaichit, and Chris Baker, eds. Unequal Thailand: Aspects of Income, Wealth and Power

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Unequal Thailand: Aspects of Income, Wealth and Power Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker, eds. Singapore: NUS Press, 2015, 216p.Does Thailand have an Oligarchy? If so, how do we define it for the national case of And most importantly for this collection of essays, what is the empirical proof of this in contemporary These are some of the main questions which pervade Unequal Thailand: Aspects of Income, Wealth and Power, edited by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker. Translated and reworked from a Thai-language edition, Su sangkom Thai samoe na (Toward a more equitable Thailand) published in 2014 by Matichon, this volume is a timely and useful review of some of the political economy issues facing Thailand today.With nine chapters by Thai scholars and technocrats, the aim of the book is to provide contemporary data and analysis on those material foundations which have fostered a growth in inequality and a strengthening in in recent years. Some chapters do this better than others, but all provide insight into these issues. In terms of raw empirical analysis all of the research essays are a success, particularly the second chapter on land distribution as an indicator of both inequality and oligarchy. For those interested in the possible material foundations of recent turmoil in Thai political society, this volume is an absolute gem and is more than worth adding to one's library.Theoretically speaking, the introductory chapter by the editors utilizes very recent publications on inequality and to frame the research-based chapters which follow. Noteworthy out of this list are Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Jeffrey A. Winters' comparative political economy treatise (2011). Those familiar with either of Piketty's or Winters' ideation on these topics will find evidence for both within the volume. In terms of the latter's theory on oligarchy, however, the editors seemed to have disvalued the analytic nuance of Winters' repositioning of toward its original Aristotelian meaning-one which highlights the unique power position of agential material wealth without falling into the structural (or teleological) constraints of Marxist historical materialism. In its place, the editors create the moniker flexible oligarchy to mean any kind of group of elites (whether they be military, political, bureaucratic, royal, business, or so on) which in order to rule the nation. This is somewhat frustrating, because the insights on how wealth is defended, why oligarchs fight, and what this means for a political society are lost. At best then means any network of individuals that are somehow more powerful or more influential than the average Thai person. Networks there are in Thailand, but to elide the difference between an oligarch and an elite is to misunderstand the challenge which inequality and in Thailand pose.Yet to be fair, Winters' conceptualization of has been challenged-most directly in a collection of essays edited by Michele Ford and Thomas Pepinsky (2013, 8) on oligarchy's power within the Indonesian context. This critique has four areas of contestation against as a political force: explanatory capacity, political ontology, methodological orientation, and level of attention paid to non-material sources. And, indeed, within the discussion of theory itself, not everyone agrees on what means. For example, scholars like Richard Robison and Vedi Hadiz (2004) are more than willing to allow to stay within the boundaries of a Marxist understanding of materialism. Yet, the most direct application of Winters' approach to political society in Thailand, at least on the national-level, is by T. F. Rhoden (2015) in the journal article Oligarchy in Thailand? Here, Rhoden argues that Thailand does have an oligarchy, not in the sense of a regime or even as a class that rules everything within the country, but rather in the sense of an empirical fact of Thailand's political economy, which cannot be ignored. …