Publication

Review of the Research on the Belt and Road Initiative in Myanmar

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is among the largest transnational development initiatives globally. In this article, we review the research on the BRI in Myanmar, a developing country that is of considerable geopolitical importance. To date, the BRI literature has made three central contributions: it has captured much of the complexity of BRI projects, filled a notable research gap in BRI studies, and raised awareness of local voices. In addition, two analytically meaningful topics are worth exploring, namely the contested relations (1) between China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and prospective Chinese BRI investors and (2) between the Myanmar government and local anti-BRI groups. Responding to the current focus of the literature and to advance future research, we recommend that scholars consider the analytical framework of state transformation to disaggregate statehood, account for diverse actors, and explain their contested relations. Because it challenges state-centric frameworks (e.g., realism and Westphalian national sovereignty), the state-transformation model can yield theoretically and empirically stimulating findings.

Online publication: https://brill.com/view/journals/ejea/22/3/article-p229_2.xml

date: 14 Dec 2023

The Role of Civil Society Networks in Promoting Organic Food as A Path to Food Security in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Food security is an important topic involving people’s everyday lives. In recent decades, organic food consumption has been touted as a path to food security. As such, civil society networks in Chiang Mai have been working to support the movement toward organic food. Organic food networks linking producers and consumers are critical to building food security. This research article aims to understand civil society networks' roles and working styles on organic food issues in Chiang Mai province, Thailand. The working styles and outcomes of the civil society network (CSN) are analyzed as the intermediary between food producers to urban consumers in the food system. Four CSNs in Chiang Mai were selected as the case studies and compared with Chiang Mai’s Young Farmer Group. This study, based on observation techniques and in-depth interviews with key informants, investigates the working styles of CSNs and networks of food producers. The questionnaires were distributed to consumers to study consumer knowledge and perceptions of food security issues. The focus group meetings were organized to obtain feedback from food producers, consumers, and CSN’s staff. The authors found that each CSN linked with food producer networks according to the working styles of the CSN’s staff and that the key actors in each CSN knew each other personally. CSNs can introduce organic farming to local communities. However, many CSNs are struggling to connect with urban consumers.

Community-level incidence and treatment seeking during febrile illness: Insights from health behaviour surveys in rural Thailand and Laos

Objective:

Critical gaps remain in understanding community perceptions and treatment-seeking behaviours in case of fever. This is especially relevant considering global antimicrobial resistance, where fever is assumed to provoke non-judicious antibiotic use. Our study objective was therefore to document the community-level incidence of fever, the resulting treatment-seeking processes, and their underlying behavioural drivers.

Methods:

In a cross-sectional observational design, we used descriptive and inferential statistics and multivariable regression analysis to estimate the population-level incidence of fever and individual and socio-economic factors associated with treatmentseeking process characteristics. We utilised a detailed publicly available survey of community-level treatment-seeking behaviour (collected in 2017/2018), comprising a representative sample of 2130 rural adults in Thailand (Chiang Rai Province) and Lao PDR (Salavan Province).

Results:

Fever was reported by 7.1% of the rural adult population in Chiang Rai (95% CI: 5.1%–9.0%) and 7.5% in Salavan (95% CI: 4.5%–10.5%) during a 2-month recall period. Treatment-seeking patterns varied by socio-economic characteristics like precarious employment. 69.3% (95% CI: 60.8%–77.7%) of fever episodes involved access to formal (public/private) healthcare providers, 11.0% (95% CI: 4.5%–17.5%) involved informal providers, and 24.3% (95% CI: 16.6%–32.1%) took place without either formal or informal healthcare access. Febrile patients had on average 0.39 antibiotic use episodes when accessing formal healthcare settings, compared to 0.05 otherwise (p < 0.01).

Conclusion:

Treatment-seeking behaviour during fever varies according to population characteristics. Clinical studies would benefit from contextualising quantitative outcomes. Treatment algorithms for non-malarial febrile illnesses should involve outreach to informal healthcare and community settings to support patients in precarious circumstances, and antibiotic resistance interventions should prioritise formal healthcare facilities.

Aligning global health policy and research with sustainable development: A strategic market approach

Attaining Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3: Health and Well-Being) faces a dual challenge of diminishing returns of established intervention designs, and a threat to future gains from complex inter-connected global health challenges like antimicrobial resistance and global biodiversity loss. The growing movement of contextsensitive approaches could help realise yet untapped potential for intervention designs, but contemporary global health policy and research still remain dominated

by a model of individual market style choices. This paper therefore aims to support the development of global health planning processes that are more grounded and integrative across the SDGs. Reiterating calls for disruptive policy change is unlikely

to impact the modus operandi of global health policy and research. This paper therefore builds on a logic that already finds widespread and intuitive application in their underlying planning processes: ‘the market’. However, it challenges the dominant

supply-and-demand approach to healthcare markets and redefines them from a strategic marketing perspective. Translated to the interface of populations and health systems, the strategic market is a site for solving problems that are defined by people

with multidimensional health needs. This framework offers four guiding questions to define the strategic market and six premises as a simple intellectual starting point and checklist for more grounded and inter-sectorial action across the SDGs. The analysis of data from one of the largest behavioural survey data sets, covering 6683 villagers across China, India, Lao PDR and Thailand, demonstrates the relevance of the premises empirically.

When the ‘Buddha’s Tree Itself Becomes a Rhizome’: The Religious Itinerant, Nomad Science and the Buddhist State

This paper considers the political, geo-philosophical musings of Deleuze and Guattari on spatialisation, place and movement in relation to the religious nomad (wandering ascetics and reclusive forest monks) inhabiting the borderlands of Thailand. A nomadic science involves improvised ascetic practices between the molar lines striated by modern state apparatuses. The wandering ascetics, inhabiting a frontier political ecology, stand in contrast to the appropriating, sedentary metaphysics and sanctifying arborescence of statism and its corollary place-making, embedded in rootedness and territorialisation. It is argued that the religious nomads, residing on the endoexteriorities of the state, came to represent a rhizomatic and politico-ontological threat to centre-nation and its apparatus of capture. The paper also theorises transitions and movement at the borderlands in the context of the state’s monastic reforms. These reforms, and its pervasive royal science, problematised the interstitial zones of the early ascetic wanderers in their radical cross-cutting networks and lines, moving within and across demarcated frontiers. Indeed, the ascetic wanderers and their allegorical war machine were seen as a source of wild, free-floating charisma and mystical power, eventually appropriated by the centre-nation in it’s becoming unitary and fixed.

Explaining Challenges That Beset Transdisciplinary Projects in the Global South: The Shift from Methodological Perspectives to a Political- Economic Dynamic Analysis

In this paper, I argue that rigorous attempts to grasp the challenges unique to transdisciplinary projects in the Global South (TPGSs) require an understanding of the target state’s politicaleconomic dynamics, which can undermine TPGSs. In this regard, I harness social-conflict theory to examine how and why Cambodia’s political-economic dynamics affected my own transdisciplinary project, which addressed dam-induced problems in the northeast of the country from 2018 to 2021. The present paper’s findings clarify the relationships among various nonacademic TPGS stakeholders—a topic that has attracted little attention from transdisciplinarians but that can significantly shape TPGS

outcomes.

Regional Seminar of Water Politics and Water Governance in the Mekong Countries

SUMMARY

The Regional Seminar on Water Politics and Water Governance in the Mekong Countries was hosted by the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), in collaboration with the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD), Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University from November 22nd to November 24th, 2023 at the Bisirimaya Hotel in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

During the first two days of the seminar, participants engaged panel discussions and paper presentations covering a wide range of topics. Key themes revolved around water management politics and governance of countries situated along the Mekong and Salween Rivers, along with in-depth exploration of hydro-sociology concepts. The discussions also covered the role of the MRC, considerations of environmental justice in the context of large-scale development projects, the interplay of local knowledge with food security, the participation of women and

ethnic groups in water governance, business and human rights in cross-border water management, and the impact of sedimentation and its accumulation on lifestyle. On the final day of the seminar, insightful presentations and exchanges on cross-border social networks were held, along with discussions on scientific research methods aimed at strengthening local initiatives in water management. The inclusion of a photo exhibition and film screenings added to the overall value of the event.

The seminar featured 71 participants, including 35 presenters comprising senior and junior scholars, and practitioners with experience in studying and researching the transformation of the Mekong and Salween Rivers, as well as the role of international organizations in water management. Presenters, participants and observers from Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the Philippines, Myanmar, Australia, the USA, France, Singapore, and Thailand actively joined and contributed their findings and perspectives to the seminar. The event was supported by International Rivers, and the Mekong Culture Well, Henry Luce Foundation.

This report covers the summary of the presentations, debates, and analyses shared during the two and a half-day meeting. The concept note and seminar agenda can be found in the ANNEX.

Shan Female Sex Workers’ Vulnerabilities and Coping Strategies in Response to COVID-19 in Chiang Mai, Thailand

The Thailand government has marginalized, criminalized, and discriminated against migrant sex workers for decades and the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the vulnerability of sex workers to hardship. Using a mixed research methodology including interviews, this article outlines the risks Shan sex workers in northern Thailand faced during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, their vulnerability contexts, and their coping strategies, including how institutional aid and existing assets impacted their livelihoods. Our findings reveal that Shan sex workers in Thailand have suffered primarily from oppressive laws and social stigma. They were excluded from government COVID-19 mitigation measures such as health services, compensation, and economic support. Identifying vulnerability factors highlights the difficulties of both systemic and individual-level responses, leading to suggestions for policymaking to improve the quality of sex workers’ lives. This study reveals that Shan sex workers are still being left behind and discriminated against in Thailand, but they have persevered to speak their minds and struggle to live through the COVID-19 crisis. There is an urgent need for Thailand authorities to decriminalize sex work and restructure the social security system so that it is inclusive for migrants.

Turbaned Northern Thai-ness: selective transnationalism, situational ethnicity and local cultural intimacy among Chiang Mai Punjabis

Chiang Mai is home to approximately 400 diasporic Punjabis, some of whom are sixth-generation residents of Thailand. While their transnational orientation, distinct sartorial choices and cultural practices might present them as outsiders to essential Thainess, Northern Thai Punjabis transgress the national image of Thainess and subjectively consider themselves to be Northern (Lanna) Thais. At the same time, these Thai citizens avail themselves of Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) status for privileged access to economic, cultural and educational resources in India. Based on 51 in-depth interviews and 17 focus group studies among resident Hindu, Sikh and Namdhari Sikh communities in Northern Thailand, this research explores family histories, selective transnationalism, and regional Lanna identities among these overseas Punjabis. As this article will argue, while Punjabi Thais maintain their networks and cultural connections with an historic ancestral homeland, they also cultivate forms of local cultural intimacy in ways which leapfrog the linguistic and cultural hegemony of Thai national identity.

Heterosexual Reading vs. Queering Thai Boys' Love Dramas among Chinese and Filipino Audiences

Over the past decade, Thai boys' love (BL) series,[1] which typically portray two young men as the focus of a love interest, have been a phenomenon throughout Asia. Originating from Japanese yaoi manga translated into Thai in the 1990s, the Thai BL genre has expanded from manga to novels, fan fictions, films and live action TV series. This paper focuses on Thai BL series whose stories depict homoromantic or homoerotic relationships between young male couples, which have become popular throughout Asia.Since its inception in 2014, enthusiastic fans in many different linguistic communities have worked to provide subtitles to BL content and helped to popularise Thai BL series. Thai BL actors have gained a large following among mostly heterosexual women, not only in Thailand but also in China, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and even Latin America.

Carnivalesque communities: Thai TV dramas and the Chinese censorship

This paper explores how Thai television dramas, which have been a staple of the nation’s TV landscape for many decades, have made new inroads in mainland China. Despite intense censorship by the Chinese state, China’s extremely large market enticed the Thai media industry. Control over what citizens can see on websites has also created an obstacle for which fan communities must find ways to bypass. The paper outlines both the historical process of Thai TV dramas’ inroads into the Chinese market and the different tactics Thai media companies and Chinese fan communities employ to circumvent Chinese state censorship. Based on interviews with various actors, including Thai TV media personnel, Chinese fansub groups, and fan communities, the paper argues that Chinese fan culture surrounding Thai TV series is a mixture of a subversive community that rebels against state control, as well as a constantly negotiating subculture that adopts various practices to break out from state censorship. Chinese youth today show that consumption is a site of contestation, rather than a site of control and manipulation.

Chinese Investor Networks and the Politics of Infrastructure Projects in the Eastern Economic Corridor in Thailand

This research examines Chinese investment and the impact of infrastructure projects on the Eastern Economic Corridor project (EEC), a special economic zone linking Thailand with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and China, which aligns with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Drawing on Actor Network Theory (ANT), this study analyzes emerging Chinese investor networks and the resulting negotiations between various actors such as the Thai state, Chinese and Thai investors, and local farmers. Many Chinese investors have moved their production bases to avoid the tax barriers raised by the United States or Europe, as well as to expand their markets in Southeast Asia. The Thai state offers tax benefits to foreign investors, allowing them to import raw materials and machinery from China, making their production costs lower than those of Thai investors. The findings reveal that the neoliberal state facilitates foreign investors through deregulation: enacting city planning laws that permit the establishment of industrial estates in agricultural zones, thus dispossessing farmers of their land. These factories can release toxic waste, thus impacting the local environment and livelihoods of nearby farmers. Thai business-people are often unable to compete with Chinese investors to match their bids. In order to maintain their positions in these economic networks, they build affective relations with Chinese investors. In addition, these affective relations attract resistance and indignation from locals dispossessed of land and resources.



The impact of conservation and land use transitions on the livelihoods of indigenous peoples: A narrative review of the northern Thai highlands

Ecosystem conservation has moved to the centre of global development agendas in light of an unprecedented acceleration of environmental degradation, species extinction, and catastrophic weather events. Global and national conservation policies with seemingly laudable aspirations, however, have been widely instrumentalised and distorted – leading researchers to argue that the very tools to safeguard natural spaces feed consistently into a market-oriented agricultural production and modernisation agenda. Indigenous peoples who continue to inhabit protected spaces as their ancestral lands have systematically suffered in this process. We conducted a place-based narrative literature review to formulate a consistent agenda for the next generation of conservation research and policy to help overcome this persistent challenge, drawing on the extensive and interdisciplinary research literature of the northern Thai highlands published until 2021.

The place-based narrative review traced gradual contextual change, inconsistent policy directions, and perverse incentives that have created a systemic challenge to ecosystem conservation. Key research gaps are the under-appreciated symbolic and affective dimensions of evolving tropical landscapes at the interface of Indigeneity, conservation, and development. Our proposed research agenda involves the synergistic combination of tools of human security, everyday environmental heritage, activity spaces, and behavioural design to understand these experiential dimensions of conservation from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, their active role as security contributors, pathways to impact, and new models of policy making. Suggested policy responses revolve around comprehensive domains of action (instead of isolated interventions) to overcome the systemic and contextual challenges affecting Indigenous livelihoods.

ทบทวนอคติทางชาติพันธุ์ในปริมณฑลรัฐไทย

มุกดาวรรณ ศักดิ์บุญ. 2565. "ทบทวนอคติทางชาติพันธุ์ในปริมณฑลรัฐไทย" ในหนังสือ "ส่องอคติทางชาติพันธุ์." กรุงเทพฯ: ศูนย์มานุษยวิทยาสิรินธร. หน้า 104-125. 

หนังสือ ส่องอคติทางชาติพันธ์ุ 1 นี้ ได้รวบรวมบทความของนักวิชาการหลายท่านที่เสนอวิธีคิด การตรวจสอบ และแนวทางการวิเคราะห์ปัญหาอคติทางวัฒนธรรมในมิติต่าง ๆ อย่างกว้างขวาง ทั้งอคติที่สัมพันธ์กับความเป็นชาติ ศาสนา เชื้อชาติ ชาติพันธุ์ แรงงานข้ามชาติ อคติต่อคนไร้ที่อยู่อาศัย คนต่างรุ่นต่างวัย คนหลากหลายทางเพศ การกลั่นแกล้งกันในโรงเรียน อคติในยุทธศาสตร์และนโยบายของรัฐ การลำเอียงของสื่อมวลชน และการนำเสนอชีวิตของคนอีสานและเพศทางเลือกในภาพยนตร์ไทย คนเหล่านี้ล้วนเผชิญกับการดูหมิ่นเหยียดหยามด้วยคำพูด การล้อเลียนเสียดสีด้วยกิริยาท่าทาง การตีตราว่าร้าย และการประณามทางสังคม ที่เป็นการลดคุณค่าและศักดิ์ศรีของควมเป็นมนุษย์..."

Masculinity for Sale: Shan Migrant Men Sex Workers in Thailand and Questions of Identity

Jirattikorn, A., Tangmunkongvorakul, A., Ayuttacorn. (2022) Masculinity for Sale: Shan Migrant Men Sex Workers in Thailand and Questions of Identity. Men and Masculitnities. (Scopus), Volume 25, Issue 5, page 782- 801. 

Abstract

The Thai sex industry sector catering to sex between men has recently shifted to a predominately migrant workforce, particularly in northern part of the country. The majority of sex worker men in Chiang Mai, a metropolitan center in northern Thailand, are Shan migrants from Myanmar. This research explores the lives of Shan men engaged in sex work in Chiang Mai, examining how engaging with queer sexual commodification shapes their gender and sexual identities. As Shan sex worker men in this research identify as heterosexual men, selling sex to men might impact their sense of (hetero)masculinity. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with Shan migrant sex worker men living and working in Chiang Mai city, this research explores, on the one hand, how Shan sex worker men negotiate, redefine, and reconstruct their masculinities, and on the other, how the identities of being a masculine man, sex worker, and non-citizen migrant intersect and shape their experiences and identities.

Imagining Ethnic Communities: Resource Conflicts and Development in Thailand

Vaddhanaphuti, Chayan, Sitthikriengkrai, Malee, Trenk- Hinterberger, Charlotte. (2022).  “Imagining Ethnic Communities: Resource Conflicts and Development in Thailand”. Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 216 pages.  

หนังสือเล่มนี้เป็นงานศึกษาเชิงชาติพันธุ์วรรณนาในชุมชนชาติพันธุ์ 3 ชุมชน คือ

1. ชุมชนกะเหรี่ยงบ้านห้วยหินลาดใน อ.เวียงป่าเป้า จ.เชียงราย

2. ชุมชนดาราอาง บ้านนอแล ชายแดนไทย-เมียนมา อ.ฝาง จ.เชียงใหม่

3. ชุมชนชาวเล หาดราไวย์ อ.เมือง จ.ภูเก็ต

ทั้งสามชุมชนชาติพันธุ์นี้เผชิญปัญหาการเข้าถึงทรัพยากรธรรมชาติที่แตกต่างกัน กรณีชุมชนบ้านห้วยหินลาดใน ถูกประกาศเป็นพื้นที่เขตวัฒนธรรมพิเศษภายใต้มติครม. 3 สิงหาคม 2553 และเป็นชุมชนที่มีภูมิปัญญาการดูแลทรัพยากรอย่างเข้มแข็ง แต่อุทยานแห่งชาติขุนแจก็ยังมีความพยายามที่จะขยายพื้นที่ครอบคลุมชุมชนแห่งนี้ กรณีดาราอาง บ้านนอแล ชายแดนไทย-เมียนมา เนื่องจากเป็นผู้อพยพมาใหม่ ไม่มีที่ดินทำกินของตนเอง แต่ได้พึ่งพิงโครงการหลวง สถานีเกษตรดอยอ่างขาง ขณะเดียวกัน ชาวดาราอางก็ไม่มีสัญชาติไทย จึงทำให้ชาวดาราอางไม่สามารถดำรงชีพได้เต็มศักยภาพ แม้ว่าลูกหลานพวกเขาจะเกิดในประเทศไทย แต่ขั้นตอนกระบวนการยื่นขอสัญชาติก็เต็มไปด้วยความลำบาก กรณีชาวเล หาดราไวย์ ปัญหาด้านที่อยู่อาศัยและที่ทำกินที่ถูกรุกคืบจากนายทุน ทำให้ชาวเลกลายเป็นคนจนเมือง และกลายเป็นผู้บุกรุก ชาวเลไม่เพียงแต่เผชิญกับการเข้ายึดครองที่ดินเท่านั้น แต่ชาวเลกำลังเผชิญกับความทันสมัยรอบด้าน ราคาที่ดินที่พุ่งสูงอย่างรวดเร็วจึงเป็นแรงจูงใจให้นายทุนต้องการถือครองที่ดิน

ทั้งสามชุมขนนี้ต่างพยายามต่อรองกับอำนาจรัฐ ทุน และอื่น ๆ ที่เข้ามาคุกคามวิถีการดำรงชีพ และสิทธิในที่ดินทำกิน ซึ่งพยายามที่จะผลักไสให้พวกเขาเป็นคนชายขอบ งานวิจัยนี้ไม่ใช่การศึกษาเชิงเปรียบเทียบ แต่หนังสือนี้ต้องการแสดงให้เห็นว่า ทั้งสามชุมชนนี้อยู่ภายใต้บริบทความขัดแย้งด้านทรัพยากรและการพัฒนาที่แตกต่างกัน และทั้งสามชุมชนนี้ได้ร่วมกันสร้างชุมชนจินตนาการผ่านปฏิบัติการในชีวิตประจำวันอย่างไร เพื่อให้พวกเขาเผชิญกับแรงกดดันภายใต้คำว่า “การพัฒนา”และการเปลี่ยนแปลงด้านเศรษฐกิจ สังคมที่ดำเนินไปอย่างรวดเร็ว