SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy
International Conference
215
The Village Economy: Capitalist AND
Sufficiency-based – A Northeastern Thai Case 1
INTRODUCTION
The 1997 crash of the Thai baht and the subsequent economic crisis was,
without question, a major watershed event in the economic history of modern
Thailand. In his book, Thailand at the Margins: Internationalization of the State and
the Transformation of Labour, Jim Glassman concluded that the economic crisis of
1997 demonstrated that the Thai economy “having been ‘opened’ and integrated into
the rhythms of global capital accumulation over the course of more than a century”
had come to experience “volatility in virtually full force” (Glassman 2004: 203).
This volatility has led to a heightened sense of insecurity especially for those who
have limited resources to weather the radical shifts in prices, wages, or access to
capital. In Thailand those with the greatest sense of insecurity are those from rural
areas who depend on selling their agricultural products or finding wage labor in
factories or other forms of work in urban areas.
The consequences of the volatility of the economy were profoundly felt in
Thailand in 1997. The economic crisis which took place left many urban people as
well as villagers in quite dire straits. In his birthday speech in December 1997 King
Bhumipol Adulyadej expressed his deep concern for the people of the country who
were in trouble because of the crisis. 2 He proposed that if his subjects would
practice a “sufficiency economy” (sêthakit phôphiang), “even fifty percent,
but perhaps only twenty-five percent” the crisis could be made bearable. The King
proposed that the people of the country should embrace practices which accentuated
practices of cooperation and self-reliance to provide for their basic needs rather than
depending on markets that were subject to the insecurities of the global capitalist
economy.
The King’s philosophy has antecedents in what had previously been known as
“Buddhist economics.” This term was the title of a chapter in a book, Small Is
Beautiful by the economist E.F. Schumacher. Schumacher (1973: 58) argued that
1
This paper was presented as a keynote address for the 10 th International Thai Studies
Conference, Thammasat University, Bangkok, January 2008. The public presentation of the paper
included many photos, but only a few are included here. The paper is still a work in progress and
comments are very welcome.
2
An English translation of the King’s speech can be found on line at http://kanchanapisek.or.th/
speeches/1997/1204.en.html.