SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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