A Contemporary Survey on Political Economy Approaches to Resilience of Thai Peasants and Developing Research Questions for the Future

Abstract

This article demonstrates a contemporary survey on political economy approaches to resilience of Thai peasants and developing research questions for the future. To understand adaptation of peasants, the new institutionalism was employed to indicate levels of analysis, including structure, culture, and choice. In addition, the approaches to resilience of Thai peasants could be divided into five perspectives: patronage system, Marxism, community culture, post-agrarian society, and policy studies. The Thai peasants thus was both policy and political actors that had closely interrelation with market and state mechanisms. But above all, the article proposes developing research questions which consist of peasants’ adaptation under five conditions as agroecology, global and regional rice market, rice price policy, peasant’s organized cooperation, and agricultural welfare state.