Publication

‘I have already died in this PLACE:’ Livelihood Impact Pathways of Conservation and Land Use Change Among Highland Indigenous Groups in Northern Thailand

International conservation frameworks and targets have increasingly recognised the central role of Indigenous peoples in managing and preserving natural resources. However, a clearer understanding of the land use and conservation policy experiences, and the resulting livelihood impacts, of Indigenous peoples is essential to devise conservation policies that are not only more inclusive but also potentially more effective. This article argues that livelihood impact pathways analysis, operationalised through the activity space framework, can help unravel overlapping, counter-acting, and often invisible pathways of multi-dimensional livelihood that tend to remain fragmented or disconnected in prevailing livelihood research. We employed this approach in four Indigenous communities in northern Thailand, drawing on participatory qualitative research conducted from 07/2019 to 06/2021. The analysis identified five distinct yet interconnected pathways through which land use change and conservation policies interact with the relational systems linking communities, state actors, and local ecosystems. Spanning multi-dimensional livelihood impacts on inter- and intra-community relationships, meaning making, forest degradation, and state-community conflicts, these pathways were also shaped by contextual forces such as rural development processes and international legal developments. We recommend that consultative processes with stakeholders from affected communities and the sectors of policy, development, civil society, and academia employ the activity space framework as a systems mapping tool to identify and prioritise behavioural intervention options along direct and indirect impact pathways on livelihoods and related outcomes of forest health.

Psychological and Social Impacts of Top-down Conservation Initiatives on Indigenous Communities: Lessons from the Announcement of two Royal Decrees in Thailand

In November 2024, the Thai government approved two Royal Decrees for ecosystem conservation that would severely threaten the livelihoods, living prospects, and continued residence of Indigenous communities in protected areas. Protests with 10,000 participants prompted a review of the decrees in May 2025. This research report investigates the psychological and social implications of the announcement of the Royal Decrees and argues that it undermined community social capital and intrinsic engagement with everyday environmental heritage. We drew on qualitative and survey data collected from 09/2024 to 05/2025 in two Pga K’Nyau and two Hmong communities in the northern Thai highlands, comprising community consultations with 73 participants, 101 semi-structured interviews, and two survey rounds, for a total of 384 observations. We used qualitative thematic analysis and descriptive statistics to explore how community members experienced, interpreted, and responded to the announcement of the decrees. We found that Indigenous villagers experienced anxiety and unease, and that the decrees undermined community efforts to conserve and engage with local ecosystems. The continued uncertainty surrounding communities’ future sparked a strong activist sentiment to resist the decrees. Disruptions to community social capital and everyday environmental heritage also had plausible, potentially significant ecological downstream effects. We therefore call for an urgent correction to the conservation initiative to embrace inclusive, bottom-up natural resource governance.

The Forest Guardians: A Comparative Analysis of Indigenous Knowledge and Community Forest Governance in Northern Thailand and Nagaland, India

This comparative study critically examines community forest management practices in northern Thailand and Nagaland, Northeast India. It investigates the processes through which forest-dwelling populations establish social networks with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, and the private sector. The research further explores the resilience of indigenous knowledge systems and their integration with contemporary practices to enhance the effectiveness of forest management. The research was conducted in !ve Karen communities in Northern Thailand, recognized as exemplary models of community forest management, as well as in four villages located in the Kohima and Peren Districts of Nagaland, where ecotourism and development projects are actively being implemented. Data collection methods included in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation from January 2022 to November 2023. The !ndings reveal that both Karen communities in Thailand and communities in Nagaland have developed community-based Payment for Environmental Services (PES) schemes, albeit with distinct approaches. The Karen communities use PES to !nance not only conservation activities but also social welfare initiatives, leveraging these schemes to position themselves as forest protectors and strengthen their claims to land rights. In contrast, the communities in Nagaland mostly utilize communitybased PES to support conservation efforts and !nance development projects because they gain from the increased revenue from ecotourism. Their land ownership reduces their dependence on external support; however, the sustainability of these initiatives is constrained by limited resource-sharing across villages. Both indigenous communities in Thailand and Nagaland effectively leverage their social networks to secure support for livelihood diversi!cation, emphasizing the signi!- cance of collaboration with external institutions to sustain their forest management initiatives. Additionally, Indigenous Peoples in both regions utilize traditional practices and actively construct new indigenous identities to negotiate state policies, foster community cohesion, and promote sustainable forest conservation.

An Evaluation Case Study of Village-based Relational Community Engagement Activities in Lao PDR

Community engagement activities have rapidly gained recognition in global health policy, but comprehensive evaluations remain scarce. This article exemplifies the use of explicit evaluation criteria within a mixed-method and theory-guided evaluation, applied to village-based community engagement activities of a nationwide health Initiative in Lao PDR. The evaluation case study was one element in a multi-pronged evaluation approach and considered the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, impact, relevance, coherence, sustainability, and equity. We gathered qualitative and quantitative data before and at least three months after the village-based activities, focusing on 14 case study communities across four provinces who participated in the Initiative. 3,161 survey observations, 50 semi-structured interviews, and 50 key informant interviews were collected. The Initiative was highly relevant and integrated seamlessly and synergistically into healthcare operations, creating important synergies through its relational and positive approach. Supported by enthusiastic stakeholder support, the Initiative aligned with its intentions to promote health equity while no major negative unintended side-effects materialized. This case study demonstrates the value of rapid feedback of and adaptation to emerging evaluation insights, the appreciation of unintended side-effects of interventions, and the theoretical grounding of evaluation approaches with a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria.

Karen Livelihoods in the Area of the Bhumibol Reservoir Inflow Augmentation Project from Yuam River to Bhumibol Reservoir

Supported by International Rivers under the enhancing inclusive water governance in the Mekong Region Project

https://docs.nhrc.or.th/view_book/ID/14284/

Gender, affective labor and the family-run business in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic

Conceputalising Food Environments as Social Activity Spaces Insights from Lived Experience Research in Thailand and Laos

The study of food environments helps the understanding of food and nutrition insecurity, but its static, quantitative and physical focus requires complementary research through people's “lived experiences.” Through exploratory qualitative and participatory research, we aimed to capture communities' views of food environments, how they navigate these spaces, and what constitutes inequitable exclusion therein. We conducted participatory mapping and focus group discussions with 90 participants across 16 rural and peri-urban communities in northern Thailand and northern Lao PDR between November 2022 and February 2023. The inductive qualitative analysis resulted in four key themes: i) Diverse and dynamic foodscapes require careful study for dietary diversity assessments; ii) The food environment contains strong relational elements and varied experiences across gender and ethnic groups; iii) Food security had important local expressions of food sovereignty and food solidarity; and iv) Food-related behaviour was deeply embedded in a broader livelihood and human insecurity context. We link these themes to the concept of social and physical “activity spaces,” advancing food environment research towards lived experiences, behavioural dynamics, and invisible forms of exclusion. This approach highlights the limitations of standardised dietary diversity measures; and it can enable research and interventions that are sensitive to local realities and the broader human security context. © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Chinese Fandom of Thai Boy’s Love Dramas: Shipping the Queer Romance and Fan Service Practices

Queer dialogues with the global south: Western fans and the appeal of Thai boys'love

Contra-flows from Asia to the West have occurred for many decades. The recent popularity of Thai boys’ love dramas, which depict homoerotic relationships between male characters, invites further investigation into their impact on Western perceptions of gender diversity and queer identity. This article examines the appeal of Thai boys’ love to Western audiences and its potential to influence or challenge Eurocentric perspectives on queer discourses. Drawing on a survey of 118 participants and in-depth interviews with 10 individuals residing in Europe and North America, the study finds that most Western fans of Thai boys’ love self-identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, which shapes their interpretations and reception of the content. Using the “Asia as method” and “inter-referencing” framework, this article explores how popular culture from the Global South, like Thailand, can serve as “a point of reference” for reshaping or subverting Western queer discourses. In this sense, Thai boys’ love offers a reflective space through which Western audiences engage with alternative imaginaries of gender and sexuality without entirely displacing their own cultural frameworks.

Reclaiming Youth and Desire: Alternative Civility and Japanese Middle- Aged Women’s Fandom of Thai Boys’ Love Dramas

Community Engagement for Stakeholder and Community Trust in Healthcare: Short-term Evaluation Findings from a Nationwide Initiative in Lao PDR

Abstract

Background

Trust remains a critical concept in healthcare provision, but little is known about the ability of health policy and interventions to stimulate more trusting relationships between communities and the health system. The CONNECT (Community Network Engagement for Essential Healthcare and COVID-19 Responses Through Trust) Initiative in Lao PDR provided an opportunity to assess the community-level impact of a trust-building community engagement approach.

Methods

A mixed-method process evaluation was implemented from 10/2022–12/2023 among 14 diverse case study communities in four provinces across Lao PDR. Data collection involved two rounds of census surveys (3161 observations incl. panel data from 618 individuals) including an 8-item trust scale, 50 semi-structured interviews with villagers, and 50 contextualizing key informant interviews. The two data collection rounds were implemented before and three months after village-based CONNECT activities and helped discern impacts among activity participants, indirectly exposed villagers, and unexposed villagers in a difference-in-difference analysis.

Results

Stakeholders attested strong support for the CONNECT Initiative although community-level retention of trust-related themes from the activities was limited. Quantitative data nevertheless showed that, at endline, the 8-item trust index (from [–8 to +8]) increased by 0.95 points from 4.44 to 5.39 and all trust indicators were universally higher. Difference-in-difference analysis showed that villagers exposed to the CONNECT activities had a 1.02-index-point higher trust index compared to unexposed villagers. Trust impacts improved gradually over time and were relatively more pronounced among men and ethnic minority groups.

Conclusions

The CONNECT Initiative had considerable direct and systemic effects on community members’ trust in their local health centers in the short term, which arose from strong stakeholder mobilization and gradual institutional learning. Relational community engagement approaches have the potential to create important synergies in health policy and broader cross-sectorial strategies, but also require contextual grounding to identify locally relevant dimensions of trust.

Multiplicities and Contingency: Rethinking 'Popular Buddhism', Religious Practices and Ontologies in Thailand

This paper reconsiders explanations of ‘popular’ Buddhism in Thailand initiated in midtwentieth century anthropological definitions of vernacular articulations of religiosity in village settings. Buddhist localism, in its various manifestations, is seen to contrast with a doctrinal or literate ‘great’ monastic tradition. In this persisting ethnographic argument, an actor may draw randomly on various syncretic elements of their religiosity according to circumstances (an historical complexity which is sourced in a mix of Sinhalese-sourced Buddhism, animism including magic, and folk Brahmanism). It is therefore not wholly or consistently one, but substantively divided into several strands. This long-standing position is problematic as the paper shows. There are multiple coextensive Buddhism/s (plural) within the Greater Theravada tradition, which emerge from an identification of the actors themselves with the one, not the many, as one-unitary-Buddhists. I theorise using a general framework of Meillassoux’s discussion on contingency and, by way of contrast, taking Deleuzian ideas on multiplicity. It is grounded on an understanding of popular or organic lived religion sourced in the early counter-enlightenment or radical enlightenment thinking of Giambattista Vico. Here, it is argued that in Thailand villagers would identify cosmologically as the one, not as the many (in a sense as in the assemblages or varieties of religious practices detached from the totality of the cosmological unitary one). Understanding

the creative processes behind cosmological multiplicities is a starting point, with the notion that within specific cultural forms we are faced with a multiplicity of definitions and things to observe, as in an understanding of the varieties of lived Buddhism. The essay is based on an ethnographic assessment from over three decades of field research among ethnic Thai Buddhists at various modalities and settings, and in framing these vernacular religious practices and their ontologies. My gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The essay does not deal directly with specific ethnographic case studies; instead, it is intended as retheorising representations of ‘Popular Buddhism’ in Thailand as based on early scholarship since the 1960s (where Buddhism is constituted as three or more distinctive but intertwined religious strands).

Trust in healthcare: methodological and conceptual insights from mixed-method research in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Background

Global health foregrounds trust as a key requirement for the achievement of international health initiatives, but it remains an elusive concept that is often mobilised without consideration of its dimensions, drivers and downstream behavioural consequences. This paper aims to contribute to the conceptual development and measurement of ‘patient trust in primary healthcare’ from the lower middle-income country perspective of rural Lao PDR.

Methods

A two-phase mixed-method research design was implemented between January 2021 and April 2023. Phase 1 involved exploratory qualitative research to understand the local expressions and dimensions of patient trust in primary healthcare, with 25 semistructured interviews and 17 focus group discussions (120 participants) in eight villages in Bokeo Province. Phase 2 involved explanatory research to assess patterns of trust systematically at scale in 14 villages across four provinces, wherein 26 cognitive interviews, 17 expert interviews and non-participant community observations informed a community census survey with 1838 participants. We analysed qualitative data through content-oriented thematic analysis and developed an 8-item trust scale on that basis. Quantitative data analysis used descriptive statistical and regression analysis.

Results

We found that trust in primary healthcare is readily understood and intrinsically valuable in rural Lao PDR. Key dimensions included communication, respectful care, relationship, fairness, integrity, reputation, assurance of treatment and competence. The survey highlighted that reputation, competence, integrity and respectful care had the lowest trust scores. Health centre operations predicted the local expressions of trust. The behavioural consequences of trust were limited to a positive statistical association with antenatal care uptake among pregnant women but outweighed by alternative measures that also captured the availability of healthcare facilities. Conclusions Overall, the development of our quantitative trust scale offers a process model for future researchers. We conclude that interpersonal, institutional and service-related trust require more explicit recognition in health system development and integration into health policy.

การสร้างความทรงจำผ่านอาหาร: การศึกษาความทรงจำ, พื้นที่และผัสสะ

บทคัดย่่อ

บทความนี้้นำเสนอแนวทางการศึกษาที่่ใช้อาหารเป็นวัตถุุทางวัฒนธรรมในการสร้้างความทรงจำทั้้งปัจเจกบุุคคลและความทรงจำร่วมในสังคม จุุดประสงค์หลักคือ การทบทวนแนวคิด ทฤษฎี และกรณีศึกษาเพื่่อนำไปใช้ทำความเข้้าใจกระบวนการสร้้างความทรงจำที่่สามารถปรับเปลี่่ยนหรืือถููกกระตุ้นด้วยอาหาร บทความนี้้นำความทรงจำมาเป็นจุุดเริ่มต้นของการประกอบสร้างความหมายของอาหารโดยเฉพาะมุมมองที่่นำอาหารมาเป็นศููนย์กลางในการศึกษาเพื่่ออธิบายโครงสร้างทางสังคมและวัฒนธรรม ซึ่่งเป็นการอธิบายความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างอาหาร และความทรงจำที่่

สัมพันธ์์กับแนวคิดมานุุษยวิทยาอาหารซึ่่งนำเสนอพัฒนาการการศึกษาอาหารจากช่วงเวลาต่าง ๆ จากนั้นทบทวนกระบวนการสร้างความทรงจำผ่านการรับรู้อาหารผ่านผัสสะ ได้แก่ รสชาติและกลิ่นซึ่งเป็นแง่มุมสำคัญในการศึกษาอาหาร หัวข้อสุุดท้ายพยายามเชื่อมโยงกับความสำคัญของ

พื้้นที่่ที่่ก่อให้เกิดความทรงจำที่่เชื่่อมกับอาหาร ความทรงจำและพื้นที่่เฉพาะ ดัังนั้้นบทความนี้้นำเสนอที่่มาที่่ไปของการสร้างความทรงจำผ่านอาหารและนำเสนอวิธีการศึกษาอีกวิธีหนึ่งในการทำความเข้าใจและสำรวจพื้นที่่การศึกษาอาหารใหม่ๆ ที่่ยังไม่ได้รับความสนใจเท่่าที่่ควร

Biopolitics in Rebel- Controlled Myanmar: Exploring Why the United League of Arakan Supports the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone

In this article, we explore why the Myanmar-based insurgency organisation known as the United League of Arakan (ULA) supports the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone (KSEZ): a controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project. We argue that the

ULA’s support for the KSEZ is rooted in a biopolitics that benefits the ULA by attractively showcasing its insurgent aims and by effectively boosting its local authority. The ULA’s pro-KSEZ policy partially explains why the KSEZ, unlike other BRI projects in

junta-led Myanmar, has enjoyed moderate success. Despite its biopolitical benefits, the ULA’s pro-KSEZ policy has marginalised certain anti-KSEZ actors in the rebel organisation’s sphere of control. The resulting fragmentation may both destabilise the ULA’s hard-fought social order and undermine the prospects of the KSEZ. Our examination of the ULA–KSEZ relationship empirically contributes to BRI-in-Myanmar research, which has heretofore paid little attention to rebel-controlled societies’ significant influence on foreign-led domestic development projects.

「タイになる」：タイにおける中華料理の 文化政治学 [“Becoming Thai”: The Cultural Politics of Chinese Food in Thailand.] In Kawaguchi Yukihiro (Ed), 世界の中華料理

Putthida Kijdumnern (2024).「タイになる」：タイにおける中華料理の文化政治学 [“Becoming Thai”: The Cultural Politics of Chinese Food in Thailand.] In Kawaguchi Yukihiro (Ed), 世界の中華料理 [World Chinese Dishes] (pp. 83-96). Kyoto: Showado Press.