อีสานเปลี่ยนผ่าน: การปรับเปลี่ยนโครงสร้างเศรษฐกิจสังคมและโครงสร้างความรู้สึกในชนบทอีสาน

The ESAN in Transition: Socio-economic Re-structuring and Structure of Feeling in Rural Northeastern Thailand

Abstract

Abstract

Socio-economic changes in recent decades have contributed restructuring of livings among people in rural areas of Isan region. To cope with secured livings, rural people have had to create social practices, and social practices have been used to bargain relation powers with groups of people in society. This paper aims to explore socio-economic restructuring of people in rural northeastern community and its structure of feeling of rural people which contributes formation of local groups and social practices of rural people. Qualitative methodological approach, specifically the historical Approach, was applied to field study. Research area was a sub-district in Khon Kaen Province, where located in rural area and far away from urban center of Khon Kaen province. Key informants included villagers, village headmen, community seniors, civil group representatives, and local politicians. Group interviews, participatory observation, and focus group discussions were used as  instruments. Findings of research found that a variety of social practices that rural people used to sustain their life related to the restructuring of socio-economic. At first period of community settlement, natural resources were used by villagers for household consumption, and later on cash crops were introduced to rural community. This resulted in relationships between rural villagers and capitalists were getting closer. Recently, villagers have shifted their livings to relay on human capital that appears in form of manufacturing activity in factory. Those changes caused directly to the assembly of rural people to bargain informal political powers with social structures such as governmental practices, legal regulations, or even local traditions. The assembly of people encouraged rural villagers to express their own wills in public space through the communicative action (Habermas, 1991), and any rural villager’s wills  responsed by local politicians because they were aware of people’s actions which probably affect their political activities in rural areas.

Keywords: socio-economic, restructuring, structure of feeling, rural people, northeaster Thailand, ESAN.