SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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182 The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference That’s where SE’s condition of reasonableness comes into play. Reasonableness should not be confused with the narrow neoclassical economic conception of rationality. The enlightenment era “Economic Man” model based on the neoclassical theory of methodological individualism presents an atomistic individual using instrumental or means-to-ends rationality, calculating choices of comparable value to arrive at the optimal outcome: maximization of self-interests, whether for profit or some other form of satisfaction. SE’s reasonableness also has to do with making choices, but it more broadly involves analyzing reasons and potential actions and grasping the immediate and distant consequences of those actions. Reasonable choices are made possible by wisdom, embodying not only accumulated knowledge, but the insight to put it to judicious use, as well as integrity, meaning virtuous or ethical behavior including honesty, diligence, and non-exploitation. Thus, reasonableness informed by wisdom and integrity will help make decisions about how best to use surplus for the larger social good. Clearly SE’s philosophical approach provides individuals with the mental and moral orientations and skills that are needed to create deep and lasting change, and that will make it more successful than SLA in the long run. While both SLA and SE are laudable as alternative development approaches, SE can more easily learn from SLA to improve its analytical capability than can SLA adopt SE’s emphasis on internal development. Still, both can be improved in terms of community empowerment. Community Empowerment via Interdependence Community empowerment can be accomplished by stressing interdependence, which SE is well equipped to do given its Buddhist underpinnings and its promotion of networks. However, at this point, it seems that SE’s main concern is human development at the individual- and firm-level; only when these are stable does it advise branching out into networks or communities of specialized production and distribution units and other relevant cooperative entities such as savings cooperatives and seed banks. I propose that for more profound results at the community level, SE could be refined to emphasize interdependent selves from the outset and to conceive of socio-economic relationships not simply as networks but as community economies. The initial philosophical shift to interdependent selves draws on Buddhist ontology. It starts with the theory of conditionality or dependent origination (paticca samuppada), which describes a 12-link chain of dependently arising conditions (ignorance, volitional impulses, consciousness, body and mind, six sense bases, sense contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and aging and death, which have despair as their by-product). There is no first cause, as each depends on the existence of another to come into being, and at the same time, each conditions the arising and existence of yet another. On a few occasions, the Buddha also
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy International Conference 183 declared that all things in the world arise continuously in this same way: conditioned by another and subject to the natural law of cause and effect. The gloss that Buddhists believe in the “interconnectedness of all life” stems from these more complex ideas. Thus no entity exists independently or permanently, not even the self. This belief stands in contrast with the Western assumption of an atomistic or isolated self, which forms the bedrock of mainstream neoclassical economic theory, which in turn informs our current global economy. An interdependent self has implications for self-interest. Since an individual’s actions are governed by the same law of causality that governs the rest of nature, they have consequences that arise in a non-linear fashion, possibly resulting in a karmic boomerang. Even without the Buddhist theory of being outlined above, we can easily observe such interdependence for ourselves. Take, for example, deforestation in Northern Thailand, which has come about due to a complex mix of both legal and illegal logging, encroachment by marginal farmers due to increased immigration and population growth, and the expansion of large-scale commercial agriculture (Hirsch 1996). Besides the primary economic and environmental effects of deforestation (such as loss of income from timber or NTFP and depletion of carbon sinks), there are further consequences: deforestation triggers erosion of fertile topsoil as well as drought, which in turn causes surface and groundwater to dry up. And since the majority of Thais who depend on an agricultural livelihood bear the brunt of these environmental costs, ecological deterioration causes the social divide to widen further. So clearly, it is in our “self” interests to take care of the environment and each other. As such, development decisions—whether they be for an individual, household, business, community, or nation—must factor in the possible effects on all spheres of human existence: individual, society and nature. This relationship is already suggested by the criterion of reasonableness as described above, but it could perhaps be more explicit. Just as an interdependent self results in an expanded self-interest, it similarly expands how we may conceive of self-reliance. In order to create sustainable livelihoods that foster wellbeing, we can and must rely on the people around us and our shared resources. This is of course already occurring across Thailand: family members contribute wages to their households, neighbors share labor at harvest time, women’s groups cooperate on income generating projects or organize savings clubs, villagers plant community wood lots on temple grounds, and so on. We can certainly see how individuals’, households’, and communities’ chances for survival, their self-immunity, and ultimately their well-being increase through such interdependent socio-economic relations. To better understand their complexities, and thus strengthen SE’s potential to contribute to community empowerment, we can turn to theoretical and practical discussions of community economies.
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SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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