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Sources of Stability and Instability in Rural Thai Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Steven Piker
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Ongoing cultures, by virtue of the personalities they produce and the social arrangements they embody, create tensions or strains for their individual members; and they provide as well for the institutionalized expression and alleviation, if not complete reduction, of these tensions in culturally approved channels. In this view, cultural stability refers not to the absence of persisting conflict on the individual or social level; but rather to a high degree of complementarity between institutionalized sources of strain or conflict for the individual, and institutionalized arrangements for tension reduction or expression. This conception of stability does not assume that all relatively stable cultures are equally productive of psychological well-being, even assuming this nebulous condition could be specified. Nor does it assert that all stable cultures are equally adaptive in the face of external pressures. It does imply, however, that sources of conflict and channels for its expression will be sufficiently balanced to insure perpetuation of culturally standardized social arrangements and beliefs over many generations.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , August 1968 , pp. 777 - 790
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1968

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References

1 Kardiner, A., The Psychological Frontiers of SocietyGoogle Scholar; Whiting, J. W. M. and Child, I., Child Training and PersonalityGoogle Scholar; and Spiro, M. E., “Social Systems, Personality, and Functional Anlaysis”Google Scholar in: Kaplan, Bert (edit.), Studying Personality Cross-Culturally.

2 This analysis applies most completely to the Central Plains of Thailand, in which there is reason to believe that the critical characterological and institutional features are widespread. The North, also heavily populated by ethnic Thai, diverges in a number of respects from the picture sketched in these pages. See: Kingshill, Konrad, Ku Daeng—The Red Tomb; a Village Study in Northern Thailand; Moerman, Michael, farming in Ban Phaed, Technological Decisions and Their Consequences for the External Relations of a Thai-Lue Village. See also: Seidenfaden, Erik, The Thai Peoples, for a survey of cultural diversity in Thailand.

3 The research reported here was carried out during 1962–63, and was made possible by the support of the National Institute of Mental Health (United States Public Health Service). This assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The independence and dependence strivings attributed in this paper to the Thai peasant have been remarked upon by other students of Thai society. L. M. Hanks and H. P. Phillips (“A Young Thai from the Countryside,” in Kaplan, op. cit.) note “dependence-independence” as a “psychic tension” close to the “personality core” of a young adult from another Central Plains village whose life history was studied intensively. See also: Phillips, H. P., Thai Peasant Personality. I am indebted to H. P. Phillips for making available to me an unpublished MS on dependence and independence among villagers in Bang Chan, another Central Plains village.

4 “For most Bang Chaners, all human intentions are forever set within a framework of cosmic, and particularly moral, unpredictabilities.” And, “… assumptions about the indeterminate nature of the universe and human actions are so integral to the villagers' cognitive orientations that Bang Chaners often hesitate to make even the most elementary kinds of prediction.” Phillips, H. P., Thai Peasant Personality, pp. 80–81.Google Scholar

5 “Thai resist strong affiliation as do rejected lovers who fear suffering again … on the level of action and conscious decision, the moral for a Thai runs: invest not thy love in a shadow.” Hanks, and Phillips, , op. cit.Google Scholar

6 Phillips has remarked upon the “… strong undercurrent of unreliability” characterizing intra-family relationships. “The crucial point is that there is nothing over and above the instrumental nature of the relationship to keep the individuals tied to one another.” Phillips, , op. cit., p. 86.Google Scholar

7 Embree, John F., “Thailand—a Loosely Structured Social System,” American Anthropologist, 1950 (52: 181–93).Google Scholar

8 For an excellent discussion of status inequality in Thai society, see Hanks, L. M., “Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order,” American Anthropologist, 1962.Google Scholar

9 See Phillips, , Thai Peasant Personality, op. cit.Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of the idiom of relationship characterizing casual social encounters.

10 Piker, Steven, “Banoi: the Social Organization of a Thai Rice Village,” ms., and “Character and Socialization in a Thai Peasant Community,” unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington, 1964Google Scholar. See also: Embree, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Hanks, and Phillips, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Kaufman, H. K., Bangkhuad: a Community Study in ThailandGoogle Scholar; Phillips, H. P., Thai Peasant Personality, op. cit.Google Scholar

11 Hanks, , op. cit.Google Scholar

12 Hanks, and Phillips, , op. cit.Google Scholar

13 Phillips, , op. cit.Google Scholar

14 Piker, Dissertation, op. cit.

15 Piker, , “Friendship to the Death in Rural Thai Society,” ms.Google Scholar

16 Women in Banoi exhibit greater ego strength—as reflected in capacity for orientation to long range goals, deferment of immediate gratification, and inclination for systematic and methodical activity—and, consequently, the dependence-independence dilemma is often less visibly acute in their lives. This is attributable, in my opinion, in large part to critical differences in socialization experiences for the two sexes. See: Piker, “Socialization of the child in Banoi,” ms.; and, dissertation, op. cit.

17 Phillips, Herbert, “Relationship Between Personality and Social Structure in a Siamese Peasant Community,” Human Organization, Summer, 1963 (vol. 22, no. 2).Google Scholar

18 In a three year period, including the year we were in Banoi, only one marriage was ruptured beyond repair. This finding disagrees with the condition reported by Hanks and Phillips (op. cit.) for another Central Plains village: “Marriages are singularly brittle.”

19 According to the Sakdi Na system, according to which subjects of the King were ranked by a graded system, freemen were accorded the right to all of the land they and their families could use, officially up to 25 rai. Thompson has described the traditional system in the following terms: “In return for his services to the Government, a Siamese freeman cherished his ancient right to as much land as he and his family could cultivate, which, as it worked out, did not exceed twenty-five rai. When a Siamese desired to clear new land for cultivation, he had to apply to the district official for a year's authorization. … If it (the land) went unclaimed, a title deed was drawn up; and … the applicant was given usufruct rights over the land. … Actually the system did not work out this way. … The cultivator of the land came to regard it as his private property. …” Thailand: the New Siam, p. 313Google Scholar. See also, Wales, H. G. Q., Ancient Siamese Government and AdministrationGoogle Scholar, for an accounting of the Sakdi Na system.

20 Piker, , “Banoi: the Social Organization of a Thai Rice Village,” op. cit.Google Scholar

21 Phillips, , “Relationship Between Personality and Social Structure …” op. cit.Google Scholar

22 Kaufman, , op. cit., pp. 14, 15.Google Scholar

23 Wales, , op. cit., p. 58.Google Scholar

24 Lasker, G., Human Bondage in SE Asia, p. 58.Google Scholar

25 Ingram, James, Economic Change in Thailand Since 1850, p. 13.Google Scholar

26 Lasker, G., Human Bondage in SE AsiaGoogle Scholar; Wales, H. G. Q., Ancient Siamese Government and AdministrationGoogle Scholar. Bowring, Sir John, The Kingdom and People of Siam.

27 Lasker, , op. cit., p. 284.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 284.

29 Ibid., 284.

30 Ibid., 285.

31 Wales, Quaritch, op. cit., p. 63.Google Scholar

32 A prominent aspect of Thai peasant personality not taken up in this paper is the thorough-going aversion to the open or direct expression of hostility. Hanks and Phillips have referred to “… the mail percept of social contact: ‘Avoid face-to-face conflict’” (op. cit., p. 647). Here it must suffice to not that the ease of personal disengagement from social encounters and relationships, as described in thes pages, facilitates the implementation of this prescript.

33 Ingram (op. cit., pp. 7, 45–46) estimates the population of Thailand for 1850 as between five and six million, and as seventeen million in 1947–a 300% increase. Figures are disputed, but the order of magnitude of these estimates is widely accepted. Today, the population of Thailand exceeds thirty million.

34 Ibid., 61–3.

35 Ingram (Ibid., p. 39) reports an approximate twenty-five fold increase in rice exports between 1857–59 and 1930–34.

36 Villagers of Banoi report that, in pre-war days, the majority of village residents owned land, and some of the older villagers remember a time when landlessness was relatively rare. Today, however, 60% of village families are landless, although many of them are children or grandchildren of landed families. For 1930, Zimmerman reports 36% as the average rate of landlessness for the Central Plains on the basis of surveys carried out in twelve provinces. The Province of Ayuthaya (in which Banoi is located) recorded a 42% figure for landlessness in 1930; two of the twelve provinces yielded landlessness rates above 75%, and four more (including Ayuthaya) above 40%. Figures are based only on village families. Zimmerman, C., Siam: Rural Economic Survey, 1930–31.

37 Phillips (“Relationships Between Personality and Social Structure in a Siamese Peasant Community,” op. cit.) has remarked upon the same problem: “The fundamental problem emerging today, however, and one that will become increasingly acute in the future, is that there simply is not enough land left for individuals to select either option in comfort or security. The consequence of this is the emergence of considerable social and psychological strain at several points.”

38 Hanks, , “Merit and Power …” op. cit.Google Scholar

39 The dependence-independence ambivalence has been documented in this paper, and related to the workings of the rural Thai social system. No questions have been raised, however, concerning its origins in the individual. For an account of the ontogenesis of the critical personality elements, see: Piker, S. “Socialization of the Child in Banoi,”Google Scholar ms.; and Piker, Dissertation, op. cit. Here it must suffice to note that not only do the adults of Banoi exhibit the traits in question, but also that prevailing socialization patterns are such as to produce generally the same types of personalities in the upcoming generation of adults.