Conflict In Thailand Research Articles

Ecosystem management to reduce human–elephant conflict in Thailand

Ecosystem management to reduce human–elephant conflict in Thailand

Resolving the Conflict in Thailand’s Southern Border Provinces: Contentions between Upholding State Authority and Human Rights within the asean Context

Abstract Based on an examination of the peace process in Thailand’s southern border provinces, this article asks what are the important lessons learned for strengthening asean’s role in conflict resolution. The argument of this article is threefold. First, asean’s entrenched norms have prevented a regularised role for asean in the area of conflict resolution. Second, due to this arrangement, asean member states have applied a varied mix of approaches to resolving or managing ethnic conflicts. From a comparative perspective, the Thai approach to resolving the conflict falls in an in-between position along the spectrum of democratic and authoritarian means used by its fellow asean member states. Third, the lack of regularised procedures is not necessarily an obstacle to resolving conflict but it reduces opportunities to deepen regional cooperation. More pressing is asean’s inability to protect minority rights, which has negatively affected asean’s centrality, and its commitment to building a people-centred community.

Exploring the Daily Lives and Well-Being of Orphaned Adolescents Affected by the Armed Conflict in Thailand’s Deep South

Adolescents in Thailand’s Deep South are growing up amid protracted instability, yet limited research has left a critical gap in understanding their strengths, stressors, and unmet support needs. This study aimed to gain understanding of daily lives and well-being of orphaned adolescents in the Deep South to inform future intervention efforts. In total, 10 orphaned adolescents and their primary caregivers were recruited for study participation. Adolescents participated in a visual ethnography study over the course of 2 days to “ show us a day in your life with photos,” with follow-up interviews to discuss their photos. Caregivers participated in a focus group discussion about the challenges of caring for orphaned adolescents and supports that would be helpful in alleviating these challenges. Qualitative transcripts were coded by five researchers from multiple disciplines to identify emergent themes using a grounded theory approach. Themes included tension related to technology use, limited caregiver-adolescent communication, social isolation, financial hardship, and future aspirations. Lacking in peer social interaction, exploration, and opportunities to take risks, the atmosphere of restricted mobility has important implications for adolescents’ social development. Caregivers and their children have little family time for recreation and leisure that would provide opportunities to connect and navigate these issues.

Historical origins of land rights insecurity and implications for conflict in Thailand

This article explores the historical origins of land rights insecurity and its implications for landlessness, poverty, and contemporary conflict in Thailand. The Siamese (now Thai) government adopted the Torrens system of land administration in 1901 as part of a larger strategy to curb colonial territorial expansion in Southeast Asia. Although the Torrens system is generally associated with strong property rights, its incomplete and uneven adoption led to widespread and long-running land rights insecurity and landlessness. This article presents two case studies that demonstrate these consequences. First, the expropriation of land through the exploitation of ambiguous land rights and the implementation of new land laws. Second, the long-run associations between land rights insecurity, low levels of productive investments in agriculture, and poverty. Consequent landlessness and poverty in agricultural communities have, in turn, led to recent protests and violence in Thailand.

Poverty and conflict in Thailand’s Deep South

Thailand’s so-called Deep South has experienced much deadly violence since the early 2000s. This article investigates its determining factors in the context of the larger civil unrest/civil war literature—work on Southeast Asia being sparse and work on Thailand almost non-existent. The focus is on 37 sub-provincial districts of four of Thailand’s 77 provinces covering the years from 2012 to 2019. Centering on descriptive statistics with additional panel regressions, it is found that reduced poverty incidence, increased educational attainment for males, and increased district-level per capita income are all associated with reduced conflict intensity (a smaller number of conflict-related deaths). In contrast, ethno-religious backgrounds and certain geographic features are not associated with either increases or decreases in conflict-related deaths.

Beehive fences as a sustainable local solution to human‐elephant conflict in Thailand

AbstractAs human‐elephant conflict (HEC) increases, a better understanding of the human dimensions of these conflicts and non‐violent mitigation methods are needed to foster long‐term coexistence. In this study, we conducted household questionnaires (n = 296) to assess the prevalence of HEC and attitudes towards elephants in four rural villages in Thailand. In addition, we evaluated a pilot beehive fence as a sustainable solution for HEC. The majority of the households reported seeing or hearing elephants near their property at least once a week (84.9%) and experienced negative impacts from elephants in the last 5 years, (81.0%). The beehive fence deterred 88.4% of individual elephants (n = 155) and 64.3% of elephant groups (n = 28) that approached the fence. Most elephants (70.7%) exhibited behaviors suggesting heightened attentiveness or alarm. The farm owner reported economic and social benefits of the beehive fence. By contributing to farmer income and reducing crop damage caused by wild elephants, beehive fencing may provide an important locally‐managed complement to regional HEC mitigation methods.

Introduction: Conflict in the Deep South of Thailand: Never-ending Stalemate?

The Introduction to this Special Issue lists the background, principal causes, possible future scenarios and potential solutions to the conflict in Thailand’s Deep South. It also presents summaries of the articles in the Special Issue.

Reconciliation as a political discourse in Thailand’s current conflicts

Abstract Why do Thai governments fail in maintaining peace through conducting a reconciliation process? This article answers this question through an assessment of how the term reconciliation has been defined and used by the Thai governments and political leaders during the past decades. This article finds that the political conflicts in Thailand have never been solved because several times, reconciliation in the Thai language is a term that has been dynamically interpreted and applied by leaders of the conflicting groups as a means to defeat the people of the opposing groups rather that a means of resolving problems and reconciling society.

The Religious and Ethnic Issues in Thailand: Impacts to Sustainability in South East Asian and Implications for Vietnam

Ethnic and religious conflicts in Thailand is one of the complex political phenomenons which bring the significant impacts to the region of South East Asia, incluing Vietnam. Over the past decades, the Government of Thailand has adopted a number of policies to tackle ethnic-religious conflicts and regard them as an internal affair of this country. However, in the openness of the region, such conflicts has gradually become a concern for those countries in the rgion. This has forced countries in the region to have critical research, assessment and interpretation in order to propose the appropriate responded policies to maintain the sustainability and security of the region in general and of each country in particular.

Opportunities for inter-ethno-religious engagement in Thailand’s southern border provinces

ABSTRACT As the conflict in Thailand’s southern border provinces shows no signs of abating, this article examines why Malay Muslims have managed to co-exist alongside the Thai Buddhists and the Sino-Thai population. Based on fieldwork, this article argues that while various factors have hardened ethno-religious identities and strengthened boundaries between ‘the other’ which in turn have affected inter-ethnic relations, a variety of opportunities for civic engagement has served to counter the prospect of ethnic relations erupting into communal violence.

A Corpus-Informed Study of Media Attitudes Using the Appraisal Framework: An Analysis of Reports on Yingluck Shinawatra Found in the Nation During the 2013-2014 Political Unrest in Thailand

This corpus-informed study aims to identify typical collocations of the appraising items in each judgement type with an attempt to uncover positive and negative attitudes towards Yinglucks Shinawatra found in The Nation. The corpus data in this study were compiled from English daily online newspaper: The Nation, focusing on political conflicts in Thailand between Shinawatra’s government and the anti-government members which took place between 31 October 2013 and 22 May 2014. Typical lexical items used to express each judgement type based on the Appraisal Theory (normality, abnormality, capacity, incapacity, tenacity, untenacity, veracity, inveracity, propriety, and impropriety), as well as their collocations generated by Antconc corpus analysis software, were identified and analyzed to uncover the media attitudes. The results revealed that Shinawatra was appraised more negatively than positively, and the Prime Minister appeared to have negative evaluation specifically on capacity and propriety. Implications of the study in relation to journalism, news readers, and future research are also discussed.

A Corpus-Informed Appraisal Analysis of Thai Media Representation and Attitudes Towards Red-Shirt Protesters in Political Conflicts in Thailand

This paper aims to analyze and compare representation and attitudes of media towards Red-shirt protesters in the political conflicts in Thailand between two Thai English-language newspapers: Bangkok Post and The Nation. The data were retrieved from Political online news in Thailand written in English published from 31 October to 31 December 2013. Terms related to red-shirt protesters were selected on the basis for high frequency and high keyness scores, suggesting that they played a key role and received media attention during the political turmoil. Collocations, and connotations associated with the selected terms were analyzed to show how much they reveal media attitudes. Appraisal (Martin & White, 2005) focusing on attitudinal positioning: affect, judgement, and appreciation were employed as the main analytical framework in this study. The results, based on the Appraisal analysis, showed that red-shirt protesters were evaluated in terms of affect: desire, undesire, insecurity, and dissatisfaction in Bangkok Post, and The Nation; happiness in Bangkok Post; and unhappiness in The Nation. Red-shirt protesters expressed affect on political activities, politicians, and political organization in Bangkok Post and The Nation. Types of judgement included: incapacity, and impropriety in Bangkok Post and The Nation; and tenacity, veracity, and inveracity in Bangkok Post. Red-shirt protesters were appraised by Red-shirt member opponent, and news reporter in Bangkok Post; and opponent and news reporter in The Nation. The results from judgement revealed that The Nation expressed higher negative attitudes towards Red-shirt protesters than Bangkok Post. In terms of implications, Corpus Linguistics and Appraisal Theory are beneficial for discourse analysis, particularly textual evaluation of media discourse.

The potential of online sampling for studying political activists around the world and across time

Parties and social movements play an important role in many theories of political science. Yet, the study of intraparty politics remains underdeveloped as random samples are difficult to conduct among political activists. This paper proposes a novel procedure to sample different parties over time and space by utilizing the advertising option of the social media webpage Facebook. As this method allows for quotas and the collection of large samples at relatively low cost, it becomes possible to improve the representativeness through poststratification and subsample robustness checks. Three examples illustrate these advantages of Facebook sampling: First, a Facebook sample approximated intraparty decisions and the outcome of a leadership contest of the Alternative for Germany. Second, a weighted Facebook sample achieved similar estimates as a representative local leader survey of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Third, by evaluating subgroups of key demographics for parties with unknown population parameters, two Facebook samples show that the color-coded conflict in Thailand was driven by different concepts of regime type, but not by a left–right divide on economic policy-making. Facebook sampling appears to be the best and cheapest method to conduct time-series cross-sectional studies for political activists.

Malaysia’s role in two South-East Asian insurgencies: ‘an honest broker’?

ABSTRACTThe conflicts in Thailand’s southern border provinces and Mindanao have not only posed a challenge to the Thai and Philippine governments, but have also affected the respective governments’ relations with Malaysia. From a comparative perspective, this article aims to illustrate how a complicated web of interactions between domestic and international factors has not only shaped domestic decision-making, but also influenced how states interact with one another in regard to the conflicts, which has resulted in a mix of cooperation and contention. It is argued that despite past downturns in bilateral relations, various developments have paved the way for Malaysia to play a role in the current peace processes in Thailand’s southern border provinces and Mindanao. However, Malaysia has been able to accomplish more in Mindanao’s peace process due to several favourable conditions, including the Philippine government’s openness towards third-party involvement, regional security concerns and politics that have been less polarised until 2016.

Conflicts in Thailand during 2013-14: An Analysis of Conflict News in Mass Media

Thailand’s current conflicts have strikingly increased political, social, and economic instability, reduced legitimacy of governance, and undermined the rule of law. The purpose of this research was to examine types of conflicts in 6 social situations in Thailand during 2013-14. A sample of 1,200 conflict news reports from 3 daily newspapers, 2 weekly newspapers, and 3 television news channels were analyzed using content analysis and discourse analysis. The findings revealed that the conflict news reported from the deep southern regions of Thailand showed more violent behaviors than the other five conflict situations- the political conflict, the economic conflict, the environmental conflict, the public policy, and the violence against children and adolescents. All conflict news showed higher proportion of structural conflicts rather than other types of conflict. Moreover, conflict news during the 3 political periods showed differences based on writer’s biased opinion and personal ideology. Keywords : news analysis, conflicts in Thailand

The Role of Intra-Religious Conflicts in Intrastate Wars

Many civil wars are fought between members of different religious communities. It seems plausible to focus on these communities’ interrelations to identify the causal factors responsible for the escalating effects that religion can have in such conflicts. A closer look, however, reveals that processes within religious communities can be crucial in influencing the role religions play in intrastate wars. Within single communities, factions of religious elites compete for material and dogmatic supremacy. Such intra-religious conflicts can motivate religious elites to search for support from political allies to prevail over their religious rivals. In return, they legitimize their political patrons’ claims for political power and their violent campaigns against members of other religious communities. Thus, intra-religious conflicts can effectively contribute to the religious escalation of intrastate wars between different religious communities. This argument is exemplified with reference to conflicts in Thailand, The Philippines, and Iraq.

Staging history for Thailand's far south: fantasy for a supposedly pliant Muslim community

If the current conflict in Thailand's far south could be interpreted as a revival and full retelling of the 1940s modernist Islamic awakening, why have local Muslim elites and various state agents in the historical present circumvented such a reawakening? Instead, what was broadcast was another history, namely a certain glorious Patani past that supposedly featured a harmonious relationship with Siam. My stipulation of the 1940s Islamic reawakening refers not only to what followed the awakening in Thailand's far south in the long twentieth century but, more broadly, to the meaning of that past in the politics of the twenty-first. This essay argues that the absence of any serious attempt to interpret the resurgence of violence and to account for incidents of unnecessary deaths remains an important barrier to an understanding between the government and ordinary Muslims in the far south.

Thai Forest Debates and the Unequal Appropriation of Spatial Knowledge Tools

The illegal occupation of legal forest land has been at the centre of prolonged and often violent conflicts in Thailand. Since 1990, forest debates have been characterised by an intense polarisation between a conservation-oriented perspective (called 'dark green') and a counter perspective (called 'light green') supporting both the rights and interests of forest occupants as well as forest conservation. Cartographic and remote sensing tools have come to play an immense role in this debate. However, their use has been mostly concentrated in the hands of forest authorities and other dark green actors. Through an analysis of knowledge claims made by the two coalitions, I discuss how the low involvement of light green groups with spatial information tools contributed to their uncritical acceptance of problematic dark green truth claims of the environmental efficacy of conservation measures and the non-existence of recent positive forest cover change. In light of the emergence of multiple claims of 'forest transitions' in developing countries and the recent push towards the establishment of schemes that financially reward reforestation and avoided deforestation, light green groups and, by extension, sympathetic political ecologists, should carefully analyse the implications of their incomplete involvement with cartographic and remote sensing tools.

How do international development agencies approach peacebuilding in a sub-national conflict?

International development agencies often promote approaches that link aid and peacebuilding. However, the gap between what agencies say and what they actually do is demonstrated by the mixed response to subnational conflict in Thailand's Far South between 2007 and 2012. Over this period, numerous agencies demonstrated little interest in addressing the conflict. Some agencies did over time try to support peacebuilding, although domestic government resistance and practical barriers generated obstacles. Conflict guidelines and toolkits were rarely used, while only a few agencies implemented the context-driven and knowledge-based approaches to local partnerships that peace promotion in a complex and politically sensitive environment demands.Comment les agences de développement internationales abordent-elles la construction de la paix lors d'un conflit infranational ?Les agences de développement internationales promeuvent souvent des approches qui relient l'aide et la construction de la paix. Cependant, le fossé entre les dires des agences et leurs actions est démontré par la riposte peu constante au conflit infranational dans l'extrême sud thaïlandais entre 2007 et 2012. Durant cette période, de nombreuses agences n'ont guère fait preuve d'intérêt concernant la résolution du conflit. Certaines agences, au fil du temps, ont tenté de soutenir la construction de la paix, mais la résistance gouvernementale au sein même du pays et les barrières d'ordre pratique ont engendré des obstacles. Les lignes directrices et les trousses à outils pour remédier aux conflits ont été rarement utilisés, et rares ont été les agences qui ont mis en œuvre les approches impulsées par les contextes et basées sur les connaissances concernant les partenariats locaux que requiert la promotion de la paix dans un environnement complexe et politiquement sensible.¿De qué manera las agencias de desarrollo internacionales abordan la construcción de paz en un conflicto subnacional?Frecuentemente, las agencias de desarrollo internacionales promueven enfoques que vinculan la ayuda con la construcción de paz. Sin embargo, la brecha entre lo que dicen las agencias y lo que en realidad hacen queda demostrada por la respuesta matizada ante el conflicto subnacional que tuvo lugar en el Extremo Sur de Tailandia entre 2007 y 2012. Durante este periodo, numerosas agencias demostraron poco interés en abordar el conflicto. A pesar de los obstáculos que representaron la resistencia del gobierno nacional y las barreras prácticas, con el transcurso del tiempo algunas agencias intentaron apoyar la construcción de paz. Sin embargo, en pocas ocasiones usaron las normas y los manuales existentes en torno a conflictos. Sólo unas pocas agencias implementaron los enfoques basados en el contexto y en el conocimiento para crear alianzas locales, las cuales resultan imprescindibles para promover la paz en un entorno complejo y políticamente sensible.Como as agências internacionais de desenvolvimento abordam a construção da paz em um conflito subnacional?As agências internacionais de desenvolvimento frequentemente promovem abordagens que fazem a conexão entre ajuda e construção da paz. Porém, a variação entre o que as agências afirmam e o que elas realmente fazem é demonstrada pela resposta mesclada a um conflito subnacional no extremo sul da Tailândia entre 2007 e 2012. Durante esse período, várias agências demonstraram pouco interesse em abordar o conflito. Algumas agências realmente tentaram, no decorrer do tempo, apoiar a construção da paz, embora a resistência do governo local e barreiras práticas geraram obstáculos. Orientações e kits de ferramentas sobre o conflito foram raramente utilizados, enquanto que apenas algumas poucas agências implementaram abordagens direcionadas ao conflito e baseadas no conhecimento de parcerias locais que a promoção da paz demanda em um ambiente complexo e politicamente delicado.

Understanding the Sustainability of Insurgency Conflict in Thailand

This article seeks to model the insurgency conflict in the three southern border provinces of the Kingdom of Thailand: Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. In so doing, it will explore the sustainability of the conflict by representing it in terms of a conflict life cycle that is responsive to complexity and change. The cycle arises from the cybernetic viable systems theory of ‘living systems’, and is able to foster a better understanding of what is happening empirically on the social level in these provinces, in respect to a situation characterized as one of incessant conflicts. This conflict model that arises suggests that there is an interconnection between the agents involved, and their individual and interactive dynamics. The conflict involves five types of politically related behaviours that occur between two interactive agents: the state (engaged in searching for and making arrests of insurgents) and the insurgents (engaged in violent acts of shooting, bombing, and arson). These agents are studied to the end of being able to determine the precise interactive nature of the political conflict in which they are engaged. In carrying out this investigation both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. The research was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, time series techniques were used to determine inferentially whether the conflict is both rational and involves interactive behaviours. Stage two adopts the Weibull distribution technique to assess the political conflict. In the third stage, a statistical analysis is conducted of the conflict situation in political terms. Finally, it is explained how the model and the methods used in this article may be used to deal with intractable conflict in other social environments, incidentally tracking the likelihood of conflicts being sustainable. Other agencies could utilize this approach in examining other political conflicts so as to be better able to prepare suitable approaches for