Contemporary Thailand: Politics, Culture, Rights Book

This book draws on critical theories in development and international studies to offer a fresh and challenging view of what happens when international development agencies and Thai state and non-state actors work together. Based on fieldwork, interviews and primary documents "Contemporary Thailand" explores how ideas related to international governance have become part of a national vocabulary used in the remaking of fractured state-society relations. Written in an accessible style, the book offers a series of closely observed studies that have relevance for understanding the reconstruction of state-society relations in Thailand, and elsewhere. Connors shows how the ideas of participation 'human security', 'cultural diversity', and 'human centered development' are part of sustaining hegemony. What makes this even more fascinating is that these ideas are circulating in a society where the moral discourse of Buddhism sits side by side with a political system that is hierarchical and often violent. In showing how international, national and local development organizations create the conditions for rethinking national politics, this book suggests that development should not be seen as a failed project. Rather, it is part of the process that allows an inequitable system to adapt and reproduce itself. While required reading for those with an interest in Thailand, "Contemporary Thailand" will offer novel analytical tools and comparative insights to those interested in development, international studies, the politics of culture, and security studies.Read More