The territorialisation of rural Thailand: between localism, nationalism and globalism

This paper shows how the control over land and resources in rural Thailand in the present phase of globalisation is a struggle between economic, social and political powers at the global, national and local level. Ever since Thailand was integrated into the world market by signing the Bowring Treaty in 1855 and especially after it embarked on rapid development in the late 1950s economic growth has changed the rural (and urban) landscapes. Since the mid 1980s, export‐oriented manufacturing industry has led Thailand into the present phase of globalisation by further liberalising its economy and increasingly leaving natural resources open to be exploited. Two socio‐political tendencies have been competing in influencing territorialisation of rural Thailand. However, decentralisation and devolution of power promote local institutions that emphasise various degrees of self‐reliance and sustainable utilisation of natural resources opposed to further liberalisation on the world market as promoted by national and transnational businesses and global institutions like the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. Territorialisation of rural Thailand and management of local natural resources is therefore contested space where institutions at the local level operate in a contextual framework of policies formulated at the global level and implemented through national government agencies. The conflicts inherent in the multi‐layered process of local territorialisation are blurred by the different institutions at different geographical levels having different perceptions of the environment. Political ecology or political environmental geography – promoted by a ‘counter‐coalition’ of potentially like‐minded actors operates on various levels in developing alternative territorialisation premised on socially just and sustainable livelihoods. Such approaches, it is proposed, are crucial to the study of local development in the context of globalisation.