1 Akin: Culture changes over time. In reality, it changes all the time. The big change was after 2500 (1957). We became very close to the Americans, after which projects came pouring in. At the time, it resulted in many changes for Thailand. In this case, we are talking about culture. In my opinion, the most important change that occurred was the development of different status hierarchies. Since the pattern of respect is dominant, the relation between people from different social levels is at the centre of relationships and interconnections.

2Traditionally, this is what we believe: people of higher status have higher moral values, their virtues are higher, and therefore they are in a higher position. We thought – and people still do today – that the king is at the highest level because he represents dharma, the teaching of the Buddha. In previous times, he was the one responsible for appointing positions to people. These people were designated according to their relatives or dharma, behavior, and also according to their moral values. This, however, changed thereafter. I was aware of such change as one took place in my office, when I worked in an attorney’s practice in 1962.

3One day, a very wealthy ethnic Chinese wanted to please our boss. He went through the office, which was comprised of two groups. Should we wai him (greet him in the respectful way with our palms together)? He certainly was rich but also very unpleasant. This was a clear sign of the pattern. We knew he would be a reliable source of income. And I began to think: is it all a question of money? It is more about the ability of getting money than it is about good moral standards. This changed the way you treated people and the way you judged them. That was the beginning of social change. It led to a crisis in the sphere of moral values. The values of money overthrew the moral ones.

4Whether you are a bad man or not, you are corrupt. It does not matter as long as you can get what you want, as long as you have money. This was a huge change, because Thai people give a lot of importance to differences. If you were rich, in the old days, you respected them. And now, this does not depend on what the person’s age or position might be. That is the real change.

5There has been a change of pattern everywhere. For instance, in the Isan region from the Second World War onwards, we used to have very good kamnan (Chief of District) and phu yay ban (Headmen). However, after 1962, we started to have roads, developed with the help of the Americans. From then onwards, connections started becoming an important phenomenon in the North East, even in rural villages. All the kamnan and phu yay ban became very rich men. Nowadays, they even have to buy their positions. The situation in Vietnam gave them wealth. It was before and after Sarit Thanarat that everything changed. After the Second World War, there was a handful of Members of Parliament from the North East who were very good men who displayed model behavior.

6Previously, in Thailand, the headmen were people who had been in the monkhood, which explains their high moral values. Now, a good headman is of no use. The people do not want him. Moral values do not provide money and status. Corruption seems to provide easier and better solutions. But there are still people who value things other than money. There are villages where people are united – nearly everywhere as a matter of fact. However, officials in Thailand have to buy their positions. There are still people who think according to traditional ways, people who still value some things other than money. This is what created a social divide amongst the people.

7I conducted a study in the slum area of Bangkok. I found that it was a united community under one person.

8In that slum area, we found three entrepreneurs.

1. One was the traditional head of the village. He was the contractor: he built houses, recruited people from the community, trained them and got young people to undergo training and to take on work. As people came under his wing, this developed a relationship that is similar to that of father and son. After they went to the temple, they got some money. Still now, the people call him father.
2. The other man produced toys and hired workers from outside. He did not hire anybody from the community. But there still was a father and son relationship between him and his workers. However, no one from the neighborhood or the community worked for him. He wanted to, but it was the people from the neighborhood who did not want to join him in his workshop. This was interesting because this man was very rich in the community, probably the richest. He lent money to people and rented houses to them, but some people did not pay him back. He could have bought the whole community.
3. The third entrepreneur in the community was a man who did not employ anybody in the community. When I asked him why, he merely replied “expensive”. All of his workers were from rural areas and who had come to find work in construction. Employing people from the community would be too expensive.

9The first one thinks that community is the most important factor, that binding people together is important. He talked to people and wanted to help them. He is the kind of person who helps.

10The second man is very nice and very rich, but he is only after financial gain and getting his investment back.

11The third one is definitely a capitalist.

12The third one left this community when he got rich. He told me about two mechanics working outside the slum who came and hired rooms within the community. They would not associate with anybody. In the morning they went to work and never mixed with anyone in the neighborhood. They would come to work, make money and go back. The beginning of change lies in this attitude

13One day he called me, “Professor, I am rich now, do you remember how I wanted a piece of land in Thonburi for young people?” He wanted to create more work and a pond to fish in. Recently, I found out that people rent his place for millions of baht. He got money through it. The value to help people is what helped him to make money. When he spoke of the two others, he said they would never be rich because they did not care for the community. You have to acknowledge the community and maintain a relationship with it. You have to keep the people together.

14I think the traditional Thai person wants to bind the community, to help the people and to grow within it. This attitude is important. I think the so-called “good attitude” is still there somewhere, even with the capitalist inputs. The problem does not lie with the higher class of people: it lies with the people from the lower classes and the people in the villages in the rural areas. This attitude consisting of helping other people for the sake of the community still exists at a local level.

15 Paritta: I think it is hard to assess what the present situation is. We are in the middle of all kinds of transition. I agree that, among the lower income group in urban societies, and maybe in some rural communities, this attitude to rely on people rather than money is still very important. What we see now is that all kinds of things, like structural conditions, and how this attitude is formulated, are now irrelative. In some communities in northern Thailand, people have to help each other because they have to manage all their own resources, such as water. They have small dam systems and rely on communal effort for building and repairs and to allocate the water. Now, unfortunately, a lot of people have left the agricultural sector. Only the elderly, grandmothers and grandfathers, are still working in the fields. Those from the younger generation have left the community and are now working as office workers or as employees in the urban service sector. In this instance, tradition has no continuity. It is very possible that it may be perpetuated, that the new generation has established connections amongst its members, but is quite hard to see how this attitude can be carried on.

16 Akin: I know that in some local areas, people are organizing movements against the government, in Songkhla for instance, against the capitalism because it is harmful to the people.

17 Paritta: Just like in the North, where they are trying to negotiate with the National Forestry Department to manage their own forest and resources. In order to get community access to these, they must collaborate. Another thing is that ethnic communities are starting to form supra-community associations, like the Karen. The so-called Karen, and many other groups, have to stand together and form associations in Thailand, associations free from external pressures where they can try to work together to fight for food, identity cards, location.

18 Akin: The richer people form organizations. Even the poor do. They have started to organize themselves in associations. The same thing is happening in the two categories. They are gathering within associations.

19 Paritta: But I think that kind of movement is a trend, which seems to have been working against the communities. When I was young, Thailand had very few urban centers. Since then, there have been a lot of changes, very big changes, not only in Thailand, but in Asia and in the rest of the world, such as the growing populations in Asia while decreasing ones in Europe. With urban types of organization, you have a new kind of life. People who work from 9 to 5 are often employees. You have this new IT culture, this new technology, which is the way people communicate, that in some way bypasses the community where talking is no longer necessary. You communicate through technology, through your mobile, through the internet, and so on. I do not know what kind of impact or effect it will have on future generations. With regard to the people who are forming new cultural patterns, this is something new and it is down to the community and to elderly people to adapt, to negotiate and live with one another. Now you tend to have people of the same age group. Children come to urban centers for education. They leave home and live in apartments, in host homes: these are the college people. They develop their own culture, their own life expectations, their own attitude towards life, different from their parents.

20 Akin: This is how it starts: people of the same age, of the same level of income and communication start connecting at a local level, then connect with other local networks. I think it helps the poor. It helps and then you begin what I think is the formation of class, the beginning of the lower class. At the beginning you have the lower class, then the workers’ class, the middle class, the business people, and the upper class politically inclined people. What you get is a formation of classes. You cannot avoid it. But you have local communities that need to be strengthened. There are people complaining about NGOs, about other people, and they are getting very angry. But I think it is very good because it is the beginning of organization at the lower level, starting from the local. Locality must strengthen these people. I do not see democracy unless the lower levels of community are strengthened. You have to have a balance between them and the government. Only then do you have democracy, otherwise you will not. This strength makes the elite complain like mad, but this would benefit the country a lot.

21 Paritta: In a way people are talking about democratization, equal opportunities, and so on and so forth. But I feel that in a society like Thailand we do not really have a common vision for the future. What we have interestingly is a kind of return to the past. We are constructing a very nostalgic image of the past. People looking at history as a refuge, as something of tremendous value that we use to have and that we now are losing. I see this a lot in the museum movement, which is now very popular. This is spreading at many levels. There is a tremendous desire to reconstruct the past, but a past that follows a certain way, the Thai way.

22 Akin: It is the new past. It is not the past as it was, because that is what they want it to be and that is why it is so powerful. There is a new reconstructed past that is becoming so powerful because it cannot be blamed. We may have made mistakes in the past but this re-invented history does not have these. This is what they want it to be, because they use the past as a base. There is a very big difference with the absolute past. They can only think of the good things, it is very selective. At the moment they do not quite know what the future will be and one day it will come together, I am sure… I hope.

23 Paritta: It is a kind of foundation, going into the Thai imagination of the future. But at the moment I do not think they have reached that stage yet. Imagining the past is stronger than the present.

24 Akin: They think that the past will help them because of safety. The number of safety plans from the 70s (like in Nakhon Si Thammarat and other areas in its vicinity) was important. They based it on Thai traditional culture, which had thus far been ignored. They like the Thai traditional way and think it is good, so they pick it up.

25 Paritta: I think that the past has become some kind of ideology. In some way it is constructed.

26 Akin: It’s an ideology.

27 Paritta: Yes it is reconstructed in a rather simplistic way, like “we used to be so good, so healthy, blessed with moral values… but because of the West…”, you know the West is always blamed, that it is thought to have brought all kinds of evil in Thai society. And once you get into those kinds of miscauses, you turn to the past, as the golden age. But in fact it is okay.

28 Akin: It is good.

29 Paritta: It is good as an instrument to build a better future. But it can be a little bit risky. It is like you deny your own self because in fact we have adopted a lot of western way of education, thinking, way of life.

30 Akin: But it is very selective.

31 Paritta: It is like not liking what you are and blaming it on the West.

32 Akin: You have to. It is the only opportunity you have.

33 Paritta: Choose your enemy.

34 Akin: Looking back to the past is very good. It has done a lot. In Songkhla, people are looking back to the older days (in the North too), when water was so important to their livelihood, and have gone back to fishing in the khlong. This takes them back in time, and they have gone back to taking care of these canals. This is good.

35 Paritta: It is good but it can also be dangerous.

36 Akin: Of course.

37 Paritta: You have this whole nationalistic attitude.

38 Akin: The important point is that every country does not think of what they say, but if you look at every country, each has become increasingly nationalistic at the moment. Think of the Copenhagen meeting, how nationalistic it was. The Japanese are very nationalistic. Thai people are not nationalistic: the upper class people, the elite, the Thai elite, are all agents of foreign companies. The Japanese never do it.

39 Paritta: Thai bureaucrats are agents of foreign companies.

40 Akin: Yes, and the Thai elite are agents of foreign companies.

41 Akin: I think the people in the North East are very interesting. The problem of the North East is that the people are more attached to the village than those living in Bangkok. The main problem lies in Northeastern people, Thai bureaucrats and the Thai government always thinking that the North East is the poorest area, and that the people are stupid. No, they are not. But after saying that for a long time and saying it again and again, they start to really believe in it and they end up turning to the government for solutions. And then they become incapable. You have to start to make them think that they are capable in order for them to realize their own potential. They will stop this dependent attitude and will organize themselves together.
In the North East it is difficult, it is very strong. The problem in Thailand is religion. We have a problem with religion. The Northeastern people are still so attached to the monks, to the temple. I can see that in the North East one depends on the monk.

42 Paritta: The issue is that ethnic communities, like hunter-gatherers and such, and are creating relationships among people, and that larger kinds of units, like the Thais, have little pockets of communities. Nowadays, with regard to society and communities, it seems that the bureaucratic system has one definition among others, but is very dangerous.

43 Akin: That is the problem. Bureaucracy will never give power to the people or to the workers. It is up to the locals to build the future and fight the bureaucracy. Having a cause and fighting for it gives one a slight push. The whole point is that if the government says it will use bureaucracy to democratize the country and its people, it will be impossible. This is a contradiction, but that is what they always say.