SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
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228<br />
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy <br />
International Conference<br />
shown their willingness to take risks by borrowing significantly for entrepreneurial<br />
investments. Finally, they have significantly increased their demand for more and<br />
better education. By these measures villagers would clearly appear to have embraced<br />
capitalist development.<br />
What is striking, however, is how many people from the village return to live<br />
after they have worked for extended periods away. They are drawn back by the<br />
social and religious practices that continue to be highly meaningful for them. These<br />
practices are strongly rooted in the Buddhist culture of those born and raised in the<br />
village. They are most manifest in the support provided by those living in the village<br />
or those paying return visits for the wat, the Buddhist temple-monastery as well as<br />
for the new forest monastery and in their cooperative participation in rituals held at<br />
these two places. Villagers also cooperate on managing government-provided loan<br />
funds, on a forest reclamation project established near the new forest monastery, and<br />
on maintaining basic services in the community. Cooperation is particularly evident<br />
in the relations between resident and non-resident members of the same families.<br />
Earnings from non-farm work are often remitted to the village family members not<br />
only to provide for basic needs but also to make possible development of local<br />
enterprises. In turn, food produced in the village and housing is often provided for<br />
those returning to the village for temporary or longer periods. <br />
My research supports my conclusion of two decades ago that the model of the<br />
economy provided by rural communities in northeastern Thailand is still one that<br />
combines both capitalist (rational choice) and sufficiency-based (moral choice)<br />
stances. In a previous paper I had shown that: “Although [Northeastern Thai]<br />
peasants seek through rational calculation to maximize the well being of themselves<br />
and their families, they are constrained in so doing by the particular politicaleconomic<br />
conditions within which they live and also by the particular world of<br />
meaning in which their actions make sense. This world is a moral universe in which<br />
individual desires, to employ Buddhist language, are to be brought under control by<br />
moral reflection on whether one’s actions cause suffering to others.” The economic<br />
life of villagers in northeastern Thailand is a product of this dialectic between their<br />
embracing of capitalism and their continued commitment to Buddhist morality.<br />
Perhaps others in Thailand could take a lesson from such villagers.