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Strategic Alliances or What Alternative? The Bia

Kud Chum and Community Culture in Thailand

Alexandra Heis

To cite this article: Alexandra Heis (2018) Strategic Alliances or What Alternative? The Bia Kud
Chum and Community Culture in Thailand, Forum for Development Studies, 45:3, 415-435, DOI:
10.1080/08039410.2018.1437072

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Forum for Development Studies, 2018
Vol. 45, No. 3, 415–435, https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2018.1437072

Strategic Alliances or What Alternative? The Bia Kud Chum and

Community Culture in Thailand
Alexandra Heis

Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Abstract The article gives a basic insight into the different currents that are part
of an alternative development paradigm in Thailand. While a global trend of
alternatives as reflected in the post-development critique gained momentum in
the 1990s, its agents in Thailand have a much longer history. Taking up the critique
of post-development approaches as remaining at a discursive level, rather than actu-
ally effecting progressive material social change, this article traces the strategic alli-
ances, junctures and disjunctures among alternative development proponents in the
north-eastern province of Yasothon. Only a couple of months after the historic
financial crisis hit Thailand, and just after the ‘Sufficiency Economy Philosophy’
– an alternative development paradigm framed by the King – was roughly outlined
in December 1997, a small rural community of five villages in the north-eastern dis-
trict of Kud Chum, with a history of political dissent, started to implement a com-
munity currency network. This article suggests that the reactions and dynamics,
which the implementation triggered, as well as preceding and subsequent processes
of co-optation and collaboration, are very telling in terms of the overall workings of
Sufficiency Economy as a political programme. The events tell a story of top-down
co-optation, bottom-up strategic alliances, as well as a plethora of other interests
and aims on the ground.
Keywords: alternative development paradigm; post-development studies;
community currency systems; Northeast Thailand; rural development;
community culture discourse; alternative agriculture

Introduction
Against neoliberal hegemony of economic exploitation, political marginalisation and
dismantling of social rights, new social movements have fundamentally challenged a
reckless accumulation regime of dispossession, destruction of livelihoods, stripping
humans and nature of their rights. Although movements from the North and the
South, of peasants and of slum-dwellers, of citizens and refugees, of the subaltern
and the academic have joined forces at several occasions in recent past (cf. Cox and
Nilsen, 2007, p. 425), their impact today seems questionable. Hopeful and optimistic
years of alternative development visions and projects, of transnationalisation of
social struggles for empowerment, of crossing habitual boundaries, and formulating
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
416 Alexandra Heis

a joint claims for global justice in Thailand have come to an end not only through the
harsh violence of a number of military coups, but also through more refined strategies
of co-optation, appropriation and finally dilution of rather radical critiques of capitalist
economic relations.
Such critiques are not a new phenomenon, and these claims have been part of
modern historiography (Fraser, 1988; Hobsbawm, 1996; Wolf, 1999) and the so-
called double-movement of society and market (Polanyi, 2001). But while the
former socialist and anarchist counter-movements remained firmly grounded in
notions of modernity (Polanyi, 2001, p. 113), conscious and explicit departures from
modern and/or Western ontologies are on the rise in the new millennium. Alternatives
to development which challenge Western ontologies (cf. Gudynas, 2011) have entered
the mainstream political arena in several regions of the world. At the same time, the
mainstreaming process of grass-roots alternative concepts led to an implicit exclusion
of the most progressive achievement of modernity (Acosta, 2009; Pieterse, 1998).
Amidst fierce claims for preservation of the commons, social equality and global
justice, catchwords such as community, localism and culture are often used by propo-
nents of anti-globalisation to identify reactionary, discriminating right-wing ideologies
(cf. Klapeer, 2016; Ziai, 2015). In Thailand, the Sufficiency Economy (SE) develop-
ment programme combines a rejection of Western modernity by promoting a Buddhist
perspective on economics with perverted claims of rural social movements in the
region. Currently, the SE programme is upheld by the new military government as
means of legitimation of their attempt to obtain and maintain acceptance from the inter-
national community, the UN and the World Bank (The Sunday Nation, 2016). This
dynamic relation between bottom-up and top-down development aspirations, along
the lines of a critique of the western modernity, can be studied in the concrete experi-
ence of a community currency system in Kud Chum, in Northeast Thailand.
This article contributes to a post-development debate on the potentials of alternative
visions and practices. How are material improvements related to the discursive and
ideological articulation of these alternatives (Ziai, 2015). The basic idea behind the
implementation of the community currency system Bia Kud Chum1 was the improve-
ment of income and of self-sufficiency. Its story tells a narrative of contestations over
meanings, ideals and claims to power. A story of empowerment, of subordination, co-
optation and of strategic alliances. The community currency project has been only one
of many attempts to increase the autonomy of the Kud Chum farmers district since the
1980s – they have a history of rural activism (Heis, 2015; Parnwell, 2005a). It is sim-
ultaneously the least successful and, due to the press coverage, the most well-known

1 Bia is a vernacular expression for ‘seedling’, but also the pre-monetary means of payment,
which consisted of little shells, resembling the designation of a currency for some. The
meaning of bia as seedling was felt to be the most appropriate metaphor by those actually
involved in the implementation process as it signalled something new coming to life, such
as a newly awakening economy (Interview Somchai, Ubon, October 2011).
 Forum for Development Studies 417

one. By examining the specific processes of a political unfolding of this particular

initiative, this empirical study is of exemplary value for an informed evaluation of
potentials and pitfalls of alternative development endeavours elsewhere. It also
allows us to see the aspirations of rural activists intertwined with governmental and
non-governmental organisations of local, regional and international levels.
The findings of this article are based on an empirical study, carried out with former
and present activists of the Bia Kud Chum currency network, but also other rural activist
who did not participate centrally in the network in 2011. Historicising development tra-
jectories in Northeast Thailand, these events offer an interesting account of the volatile
nature of alternatives to development. Significant political developments such as yet
another coup, and a human rights-violating security order issued in 2015 have certainly
worsened the situation for political struggle in Yasothon, and in Thailand at large.
The first section will set out the theoretical framework to which the article refers and
introduce relevant positions in the discussion of post-development and alternative
development visions. The social and political context of Isan peasant activism and
the historical roots of the notoriously rebellious Northeast in the second section will
help to explain their present positions in the struggle for self-determined relations of
production, the political climate and the royal development perspective of SE. It
closes with a short debate on the linkage between the notion of community and com-
munity culture in Thai development and academia. After introducing the main aspects
of community currency systems, the third section unrolls the story of the Bia Kud
Chum, its embeddedness, and the potential objectives of their alternative visions.
The case of the Bia Kud Chum shows how power dynamics affect emerging strategic
alliances and co-optation processes, and how these in turn structure the scope of agency
and opportunities for acts of resistance. Between the two diametrically opposed and
competing mind-sets of conservative culturalism and village socialism (Phatharathana-
nunth, 2006) space for action is ambiguous, elastic and, to a certain degree, pragmatic.

How to know an alternative in Thailand?

Incorporation and co-optation of emancipative and liberal ideas is a standard political
strategy of dominant power relations (Foucault, 1980, p. 142; Mitchell, 1990). Issues
brought forward by alternative2 grass-roots movements and people organisations in
Isan were simultaneously used to consolidate the established social order, and increas-
ingly gained political momentum towards the turn of the millennium (Rossi, 2012).
Alternatives to development in the post-modern era, which have largely built on a

2 Due to the dynamics of political structures and aims of a given project, activity or a group the
distinction between alternatives to development and an alternative development is not easy to
draw. Here, an alternative in either sense means the opposition of proposed ideas to dominant
or mainstream practice in development. As will become clear in the following sections, this
can mean quite different things in Thailand.
418 Alexandra Heis

deconstruction of the dominant capitalist narrative of development, have been theorised

under the heading of post-development (Escobar, 1992; Latouche, 2001; Sachs, 1992).
Recently, however, the enthusiastic post-development critique of the 1990s has lost
much of its power (Pieterse, 1998; Ziai, 2015). Post-development approaches are
often criticised for being too discourse-oriented and lacking in a critical materialist
analysis and a theory of practice. There is indeed some paradigmatic weakness in
many of the post-development concepts, which ultimately weakens the efforts of
bottom-up politics. Aram Ziai has accurately pointed out how different positions of
some central concepts of post-development range from ‘reactionary populism to
radical democracy’ (Ziai, 2004). In general, the author differentiates between what
he terms ‘sceptical’ and ‘neo-populist’ versions of post-development, the later idealis-
ing and romanticising, for example, the local community (Ziai, 2004, p. 1050). Still, it
is important to point out that there is no a priori positionality of such concepts. They
acquire their meaning through specific struggles and negotiations in concrete time–
space conjunctions. The catchwords ‘local knowledge’ and ‘local community’ figure
prominently in Thai mainstream and dissident alternative development ideas and are
terminologically but also substantially closely linked to the notion of community cur-
rency schemes. The claim of communities to rights over ‘their’ resources, enforceable
against the state, has emerged as a very emancipative project to prevent ecological,
economic and social deprivation (e.g. Johnson and Forsyth, 2002). The successive
adaptations of such claims into political constitutions and national development
plans, as happened in Thailand regularly since 1992, transformed these radical demo-
cratic demands into conservative and indeed neoliberal programmes. For example, the
granting of local autonomy on behalf of communities resulted in a two-tiered recon-
struction process: under decentralisation the locality was reconstructed as a functional
economic space, with subsequent outsourcing of administrative tasks, financial respon-
sibilities and the provision of social rights onto that local unit, without substantial
change in practice of government (Mohan and Stokke, 2000). At the same time,
rights-claiming citizens were rendered a community defined no longer by a locality,
but as morally responsible subjects, forming a social system with a shared concern
over the management of local resources (Rose, 2000; Shigetomi, 2013; see below).
Hence, one could conclude that the fundamental critique of modernisation and
capitalism in post-development has failed mainly because its critiques have been so
neatly integrated into this very paradigm. The emancipatory potential of a given alterna-
tive evolves in relation to the political opportunity structures opening up at a given time
(cf. Tarrow and Tilly, 2009) and thus can only be gauged through analysis of its pol-
itical embedding and the processes and practices of its implementation (Li, 2007; Vil-
lalba, 2013). The history and the present situation of alternative development projects in
Thailand must be seen in conjunction with political processes of negotiation between
the different actors involved and against the background of the overall political situ-
ation. While SE philosophy (explored in more detail in the next section) combines rhet-
orically all major attempts of rural activists to challenge the dominant social order, it
 Forum for Development Studies 419

remains a reactionary ruling ideology. The implementation process of the Bia Kud
Chum by a group of international NGOs, and its later incorporation into the royal
alternative development programme of the Thai state (see below), shows how volatile
the content and substance of an embodiment of an alternative to development endea-
vour can get (cf. Connors, 2005; Hewison, 2000; Phongpaichit, 2004).

Resistance as tradition: nation-building, the Buddhist King and SE in

Northeast Thailand
Following a World Bank development report of 1959, in which Isan was classified
as underdeveloped, the region was made primary target for national and international
development interventions (Baker and Phongpaichit, 2005, p. 149; Goss and Burch,
2001, p. 974; Parnwell, 2005a, p. 8). An unprecedented influx of urban capital was
used to bring progress, information and education to the countryside. Electricity and
roads changed local social relations intrinsically by fostering the exchange of people,
goods and information. Farmers were compelled to engage in cash crop production
and capital-intensive agriculture, which, contrary to what they were told, did not
make them wealthy, but became the main driver of the rural debt problem. Although
all of these changes were meant to support ideological warfare against the backdrop
of the Cold War, the developmental interventions effected a stark rise in social
inequality, increased labour migration out of Isan, as well as destruction of subsis-
tence farming and autonomous economic structures (Boonmathya, 2003; Goss and
Burch, 2001; Phongpaichit and Baker, 2002, pp. 452, 453). Apart from increased
socio-economic marginalisation through development schemes, Isan has also experi-
enced cultural and linguistic differentiation. Improvement endeavours through edu-
cation, health and hygienic as well as through centralisation in the political realm
followed swiftly. The Border Patrol Police, the police and the Thai Army3 were
also employed in such educational and welfare tasks, but at the same time they
actively recruited villagers into para-military groups which effectively demanded vil-
lagers to denounce activists and communist sympathisers (Boonmathya, 2003;
Hirsch, 1989; Keyes, 2014; Ungpakorn, 2002, p. 193). At the same time, the
national social order has been defined in terms of the Buddhist Theravada School,
with a god-king as the head of state. The religious legitimation of the ruler has
been well orchestrated by way of an ideological machine and draconian lèse
majesté laws, establishing the monarchy as the only thinkable political form. Criti-
cism of the dominant Theravada school was heavily suppressed while local beliefs,
especially those in Northeast, and their animistic elements were subordinated, deva-
lued and labelled as primitive. The hegemonic status of Buddhism in Thailand is not

3 The Internal Security Operation Command of the Thai Army, which was a leading agency in
the counter-insurgency activities, is still an active unit. It was the same division, which has
turned the Bia Kud Chum down in 1997 on suspicion of separatist activities.
420 Alexandra Heis

naturally given but the result of strategic actions by the state (e.g. Handley, 2006;
Hirsch, 1989; McCargo and Hongladarom, 2004, p. 221). By defining morals and
ethics it thus set the arena for acts of resistance and opposition, which often draw
on the language and symbols of Buddhism (Heis, 2015; Parnwell, 2006). But,
rural resistance has also been outlined in critical political economy terms, which
have a historical legacy in Thailand, and especially in Northern and Northeast pro-
vinces. The main conflict lines along which social rural movements in Isan counter
state development interventions and market forces thus revolve around access to and
use of natural resources – land, water and forests. These movements often combine
the perspectives of environmentalism and social inequality with a Buddhist subtext
(Baker, 2003, p. 230; cf. Hirsch, 1989; Pye, 2003).
The King’s controversial role in rural development has lately become clear in his
SE philosophy and the New Theory (Chanyapate and Bamford, 2007; Parnwell,
2007). SE became widely known in December 1997 when the King officially pre-
sented it as his redeeming alternative development vision for Thailand. The
speech was presented as an overview of the causes and effects of the severe
fiscal crisis of that year. The crisis caused enormous social stress, with a currency
slide of 20 per cent, rapid increase in unemployment, without access to any kind
of social security net for most. While the urban economy absorbed some of the
crisis’ effects, agricultural incomes dropped by 15 per cent per annum in the next
two years. Rural areas, especially the Northeast, were also faced with high
numbers of returning unemployed labour migrants (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2002,
pp. 434, 435). The King stressed individual greed, overconsumption and living
beyond one’s means as the main reasons for the crisis, thus largely omitting the
structural reasons for the crash. The King thus concluded that ‘each village must
attain relative sufficiency’ in order to be able to resist economic crises (The Chaipat-
tana Foundationation, n.d.). His exhortation to the poor was based on the Buddhist
principles of the middle path, being hardworking, modest and choosing one’s deeds
with wisdom (Puntasen, 2006; Sivaraksa, 2011). It ignored the fact that the crisis
was triggered by currency speculation, cheap foreign loans and ongoing investments
in an imminent financial and property bubble (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2002,
pp. 174, 175). Although the King’s analysis of the crisis echoes neoliberal analyses
and their austerity programmes: namely to privatise the social cost of the crisis by
inverting systemic causes and individual responsibilities, his own wealth increased
considerably after 1997 (Ouyyanont, 2008, pp. 177, 182). Nevertheless, SE made
headway into the ever-rewritten constitution and a number of national development
plans, in particular after the military coup of 2006 as a gesture of reconciliation by
the interim military government (Chanyapate and Bamford, 2007). After the ousting
of the highly divisive and polarising Thaksin4 government, many of its popular

4 Thaksin Shinawatra, a communication tycoon, won a landslide victory in the 2001 election,
promising a mix of social welfare and a programme of national liberalism. He introduced a
 Forum for Development Studies 421

social and economic policies were renamed and re-framed into the SE paradigm (cf.
Rossi, 2012). Between 2006 and 2008, Thailand spent 8 billion baht for SE projects
alone (Farrelly, 2007). The distribution of this money certainly helped the integration
of grass-roots projects into the SE scheme, although non-monetary, conceptual and
ideological constraints in joining SE cannot be denied. Some long-established organ-
isations were then presented as best-practice examples of the theory, supposedly
further highlighting the concept’s validity (Hewison, 2008).

Community and community culture: top-down and bottom-up development

aspirations in Isan
The concept of community has gained momentum during the 1990s, and became the
key concept in Thailand’s politics it played a major role in three socially and politically
meaningful events of the year 1997: first, the King’s introduction of SE (mentioned
above) featured community as the main unit of development. Second, earlier that
year, the 99-day protest in front of the government house from February to May
1997 by a nation-wide coalition of rural and urban activist ‘Assembly of the Poor’
for local and community autonomy over access to natural resources (Missingham,
2003). Third: a new constitution which was redrawn by an elected assembly of civilians
in October 1997 with Prawet Wasi as its prominent leader. Being a former director of
the Local Development Institute (LDI) and a later official at the Ministry of Health, he is
one of the most centrally involved figures in Thai rural and community development
field.
While in the 1980s, community indicated a reference to a shared place, such as
rural, urban or slum communities, during the 1990s, and specifically after 1997, it
itself became target of development, with policy-makers seeking to establish
strong and resilient communities. The meaning thus shifted from a spatial unit to
a specific social system, potentially a morally superior one (Shigetomi, 2013,
p. 5,6). While rural social movements have demanded democratic participation
and rights to access of natural resources on grounds of spatial proximity and
lived experience (Shigetomi, 2013), their understanding of community probably dif-
fered to the one envisaged by the 1997 constitution. Their claims regarding access to
resources or intellectual property have been taken up, and could, at least in theory,
be enforced against state agencies. Initial demands for civic rights were twisted into

universal coverage scheme in health insurance and a number of programmes fostering local
economies. The ‘one village one product’ scheme was later adopted into the SE policies
(Curry and Sura, 2007). At the same time, strict neoliberal economic policies and free trade
associations served mainly his own interests, or those of his allies’ and family businesses
(McCargo and Pathmanand, 2005; Pye and Schaffar, 2008). His political and economic
success massively threatened the old elite’s positions, causing a number of successive military
coups d’état and the heavy curtailment of democratic constitutions.
422 Alexandra Heis

policies and strategic papers reconstructing notions of community along the lines of
a ‘community culture thought’5 (Shigetomi, 2013).
The notion of community was first linked to culture in the early 1980s, when NGO
workers and the villagers they worked with tried to conceptualise and make sense of the
differences in meanings and rationalities encountered during fieldwork in the early
1980s (Rigg, 1994, p. 124; Shigetomi, 2013, p. 10). The dominant academic reading
of community culture goes back to Chattip Natsupha, formerly an influential Marxist
historian (Winichakul, 2008). Countering critical political economy, community
culture shifted the focus from political issues onto the relationship between culture
and development (Bowie, 2003, p. 332; Dayley and Sattayanurak, 2016, pp. 57, 58;
Rigg, 1994). Again, Prawet Wasi, the founder of the rural doctor’s club and actively
involved in promotion of primary health centres, used the community culture debate
for his agenda on local autonomy and decentralisation in Thailand. As a politically
and socially well-connected individual, he had a significant impact on how ‘commu-
nity’ was understood in Thai politics and society (Connors, 2005; Harris, 2015;
McCargo, 1998). The ambiguity of community can be seen also in the frequency in
which chumchon was used in public speeches. The references were strongest in the
2001 and the 2005 General Policy Speech of PM Thaksin (Shigetomi, 2013, pp. 5–
7) a politician not particularly renowned for his commitment to alternative development
matters. The term can be found most often in the 1997 constitution, where democratic
opening of society was biggest, and far less in development plans after 2006 when SE
became constitutionalised.
Although proponents of community culture often criticise capitalist relations of
exploitation, but their solutions remain apolitical. Although this position takes up
many aspects of rural resistance and is rooted in rural experiences, it also excludes
very integral parts of the rural critique: opposed to it are views which explicitly
stress that the realities of rural population are deeply embedded in macro-structural
relations, such as the national economy and the world market, the marginalisation of
the rural as a political strategy – including trade, migration and flows of information.
Due to their marginal position in Thai politics, and despite rejecting the utopia of a
self-sufficient peasant economy, the supporters of a political economic critique of
development depend on cooperation and political alliance with NGOs and community
culture school projects for access to resources and participation in decision-making pro-
cesses on the local scale (Dechalert, 1999, p. 9; Pye, 2003, p. 94; Phatharathananunt,
2002, p. 24).

5 Community Culture thought specifies an academic tradition (Winichakul, 2008) but also a dis-
cursive political field (Hewison, 1989) which sees the village as the cradle of the ‘real’ Thai
lifestyle, where negative effects of capitalism and neoliberal globalisation can be solved qua
social and economic isolation. As a hard-core localism discourse, Community Culture School
is often equating a locality with a homogenous community and a static cultural identity, but in
many instances, it has fostered strategies of village solidarity against market economy (cf.
Phatharathananunt, 2002, pp. 25–28).
 Forum for Development Studies 423

Community currency as local development measure

The concept of a community currency is based on a critique of social inequality created
through ownership of money and property (Preparata and Elliott, 2004, p. 928; Proud-
hon et al., 1994). It is directed against the biased value of money, real estate property
and credits, which guarantee periodic capital yield out of unproductive activity vis-à-vis
remuneration of human labour for satisfaction of basic human needs, which hardly
covers the cost of reproduction. Community currencies have been used elsewhere to
cushion the shock of financial crises, as for example in Argentine in the crisis 2001
(Gómez, 2012), or in Thailand in the post-crisis period after 1997 (Puntasen et al.,
2002). But community currency systems have also been deployed by social movements
as strategies to promote alternatives in parallel to the mainstream economy (e.g. Volk-
mann, 2009). Many local currency networks operate in the EU, where crashes did not
hit national economies as strongly. The Bristol Pound and the Brixton Pound are
actively used local currencies in the UK, the Waldviertler has been operating for
several years in a Lower Austria region and many more community currencies are
being used in the Netherlands and other regions. While no severe crisis or devaluation
of the Euro hit these regions, they are all characterised by stagnation in economic
growth, high unemployment, outflows of money and brain-drain, all of which they
have in common with Isan in Thailand. While the Bia Kud Chum had a clear aim of
economic self-help and an objective to strengthen the local economy throughout the
critical years (Meechuen, 2008), in spite of the strong emotional and symbolic value
for those who were involved in the implementation process, it was never actually
really used (Interview Supajarawat, October 2011).

Bia Kud Chum and the Thai community currency system

The community currency network Bia Kud Chum was about to start in March 2000,
with 120 members from 5 villages. The scheme was named after Kud Chum – one
of nine districts of the north-eastern Thai province of Yasothon. Yasothons main
sources of income are rice and crop agriculture, with Jasmin rice, cassava and water-
melon being the main agricultural exports (cf. census of 2004). Increasingly, contrac-
tual chicken farming and cattle breeding also feature as prominent fields of
employment.6
Bia Kud Chum is a useful example to study alternative development initiatives in
Thailand and the actors involved therein. After the crisis year of 1997, and seizing
the opportunity after the King’s call to depart from capitalism and head for self-suffi-
ciency, the LDI implemented the Thai Community Currency System (TCCS)
project. The project was launched in January 1998, managed by Jeff Powell and

6 The precarious economic position of most contract farmers, especially those involved in
animal husbandry, under unequal and subjugating contracts, makes them vulnerable to debt
and self-exploiting working conditions (Pye and Schaffar, 2008, p. 48).
424 Alexandra Heis

Menno Salverda, both experienced in design of alternative development practices else-

where (Powell and Salverda, 1998). This was only two months after the King’s
announcement, but right after an eventful and in some ways promising year (Baker,
2000; Missingham, 2003; Shigetomi, 2013). Apart from the LDI, and the Japan Foun-
dation, the project was supported by Canadian University Students Abroad (CUSO)
and Overseas Volunteers Service, as well as the Royal Rural Reconstruction Move-
ment. The Thai Volunteer Service, Sulak Sivarksa’s Spirit in Education Movement
and the Kemol Keemthong Foundation were at some point and to a certain degree
involved in the process. Focus on the Global South has provided technical and
project management support alongside the Thai Development Research Institute and
the Thai Holistic Health Foundation, established by Rosana Tositrakul, a former presi-
dent of the Komol Keemthong Foundation (Lietaer, 2002; Parnwell, 2005b; Powell and
Salverda, 1998; Puntasen et al., 2002, p. 34).
The TCCS organised a nation-wide workshop on community currency in Septem-
ber 1998, to which the villagers of Kud Chum district were invited due to their repu-
tation for alternative development practices. They in turn invited TCCS to their
villages to introduce the system to their peers in more detail. The core group promoting
the Bia Kud Chum consisted of rural activists and farmers already involved in other pro-
jects that challenged standard development ideas. Once the core group was established,
the implementation process began, which, as the interview partners confirmed, was
very intense, constituting an extra burden, in addition to their other daily tasks. The
additional workload required strong commitment and confidence, but at the same
time it fostered the exchange of ideas on substantial issues which would not be reflected
upon under normal circumstances (Interview Somchai, October 2011). A number of
workshops and seminars were held to introduce the concept of a barter and community
currency system to the villagers, and to convince people – especially producers and
shopkeepers – to participate. The TCCS team stayed in the villages for a couple of
weeks and worked closely with the farmers. They prepared a theatre play introducing
Silvio Gesell’s theory of money, analysed flows of goods, and the flows of money in
relation to local consumption and production. Brainstorming sessions and seminars
about how a community currency could be used in the local context were held. For
the circulation of the Bia to work it was important to make clear that every member
of the Bia group must also produce and sell to other group members. Panel discussions
and other public events were hosted for interested villagers, both for networking and for
promoting the community currency (Powell and Salverda, 1998; 1999b). Pranee and
Somchai vividly remember the activities associated with the preparation, the implemen-
tation, but also the shutdown of the currency system. All interview partners describe the
process as an inspiring and eye-opening experience. Although the impact of the global
markets on individual consumption patterns might have been anticipated in theory,
actually spending time and reflecting on where exactly all the goods bought and con-
sumed in the village came from was described as a reality-check (Interview
Somchai, October 2011). The motivation to actually start to manufacture new products
 Forum for Development Studies 425

for sale in the villages was also fruitful, with soymilk for example, as one of the inter-
view partners described. The rice mill agreed to accept the Bia as payment for the husks
and bran needed by the farmers to produce organic fertilisers. The chef in the mill’s
canteen agreed to use the Bia generated through the retail of milling by-products to
buy vegetables at the Bia market (Appropriate Economics, n.d.; Powell and Salverda,
1999a). After participants in sufficient numbers were on board, the group decided to
print the notes and establish a Bia Kud Chum bank.
Schoolchildren designed the banknotes by painting pictures and selecting little
poems praising the farmers’ lives. The Japan Foundation sponsored the printing of
the total amount of 300,000 Bia, in denominations of 5, 10 and 20 Bia. While the
Bia would have an exchange rate of one to one with the Baht, this value was only to
support calculation of prices. It was not possible to exchange Bia for Baht, but pro-
vision free loans of 500 Bia were provided to members of the Bia group, which
anyone could joint at any time. A total of 7000 Bia was distributed prior to the
opening of the Bia market in March 2000. A local monk, PK Supajarawat was
chosen a honorary patron and president of the Bia bank. The bank was a little shack
next to the community hall7 in Sokhumpoon village. Although national and inter-
national NGOs funded the project and provided know-how and training, the villagers
confirmed in interviews that they made an effort to make it a bottom-up initiative.
They took control of the organisation and administration of the Bia project through
the representative committee, which was predominantly female (Walker, 2009, Inter-
view Pranee, October 2011)
The opening ceremony was publicly announced and many prominent guests
appeared. Alongside representatives of the involved NGOs, district officials and
some media, the villagers were surprised by the attendance of representatives of
police and the personnel of the National Security Council and the Internal Security
Operations Command (ISOC), formerly involved in counter-insurgency and currently
executive power of the emergency law (Interview Supajarawat, Pranee, October 2011).
According to the interview partners, the media coverage pictured the event as a daring
step, even anticipated separatist ambitions (Interview Somchai, October 2011). In the
interview, Somchai remembers how fast the mood shifted, with villagers becoming
scared and not wanting to be associated with the Bia anymore. He openly blames the
media for painting an overly alarming picture and looks back disillusioned. Only 20
days after the opening event, which was a market at the rice mill, the Bank of Thailand
started an investigation against violation of the Commercial Banking Act of 1962 and
of the Monetary Act of 1958. According to these two acts, the use of a currency and the
foundation of a bank are prohibited by law. Despite the prominent and international
backing of the project by the Human Rights Committee, protest from the Thai Attorney
Association and a letter of solicitation by the villagers, the use of Bia was officially

7 In 2011, the hall was generously decorated with King’s pictures and advises under the SE
programme.
426 Alexandra Heis

terminated in June 2000, only three months after starting. In concrete legal terms, the
Bank of Thailand asserted that the Bia breached three conditions: the prohibited use of
the name ‘bank’ for the small shack in the village where the administration of the Bia
was located; Bia not only meant currency, it also looked like banknotes of real money
(Puntasen et al., 2002, pp. 8,9). The LDI launched a new workshop to which the Bank
of Thailand and the Ministry of Finance were invited to help to reformulate the con-
ditions under which the community currency could be re-launched. Two years later,
in 2002, the Bia was re-introduced as a research project under the direction of
Apichai Puntasen (Puntasen et al., 2002). It is worth noting that the villagers were
not involved in this round of negotiation, it was carried out by and among the elites,
without local representation. If representatives of the locals were present, they certainly
had not much to say in such a markedly hierarchical context. The formerly, at least to
some extent locally borne, activity had been turned into an inter-elite struggle, a
struggle which ultimately boiled down to conservative versus neoliberal elites. Their
positionality to capitalism, their instrumentalisation of the rural people, and the
diverse ways in which they themselves are embedded in global relations of production
remain in place.
The relaunch was a farce. Several different local and community development
NGOs, and the now converted media, as well as the new project team of Thai academics
and researchers of the SE, now framed the Bia as an SE research project, supported by
regional politicians and members of the national development board. SE was made the
guiding principle in the 10th national development plan 2002–2006, and a community
currency project under this heading had good chances to meet official acceptance.
Apichai Puntasen, who took the lead, was a renowned professor of Buddhist Econ-
omics and then dean of the Management Science School at the University of Ubon
Ratchathani, where he had tried to establish a BA programme in SE (Puntasen et al.,
2002, p. 13). With some necessary submissions to the demands of the Bank of Thai-
land, the relaunch was in fact a compromise intending to please all parties. The Bia
had to be renamed and from now on referred to as boon (voucher). As it was not
required to reprint the banknotes, however, they still carry the name bia. To rename
the bank a ‘centre’ was not a big constraint either, but these requirements took some
of the spirit away.
When I arrived in Sohkumpoon in 2011, at the end of the rainy season, the villagers
were busy with their daily routines, the cooperative rice mill was working well, soymilk
production still going on and many new practices around self-organised production and
distribution of goods were underway. However, the boon did not seem to play a key
role anymore. Although information on the villagers’ use of the Bia ranged from
‘yes’ through ‘maybe’ to ‘no’, the knowledge acquired through the workshops, the
experiences gained with the officials and the international NGO industry were reflected
upon critically.
 Forum for Development Studies 427

Alternatives on the ground: community currency as also-ran

If the community currency was hard to introduce in its first phase, the second phase
after legal review was a big failure. From the beginning, powerful players in commu-
nity development business were part of the game. Then others came in, whose ideas
also might not had been exactly in line with those of the rural activists themselves.
In addition, the boon was now re-launched as a SE initiative, which it clearly had
not been during the actual initial phase of preparation and implementation. Critique
on SE is implicit, at most, and must be rather sensed than heard. It is in the references
to Marx and to Che Guevara, in the critique of neoliberal globalisation and a suspicious
assertion of capitalism as not being the only cause of the hardship in the rural Isan.
Above all, it is interviewees’ refusal to label the practices as sufficiency or community
economy, which contrasts with the posters and pictures in Sukhompon next to the aban-
doned Bia bank. When asked if their practices are related to SE, one farmer simply
answered ‘that’s not what the village people call it, village people call it por mi por
gin’ (Interview villager, October 2011). While SE in Thai says saehtthagit
(economy) phaaw (enough) phiiang (just, only) the ‘por (enough) mi (have) por
(enough) gin (eat)’ is a vernacular expression of the people, often also expressed as
hed yaak hed gin or tammahagin or plug yu plug gin. Freely translated all these
sayings mean ‘to make a living’. But it may be helpful to look more closely at a
little distinction which might get lost in translation. Saehtthagit phaaw phiiang – the
economy of just/merely enough – slightly differs from the villager’s por mi por gin
which can do without the just (phiiang), thus omitting the somehow condescending
tone, apparent through the context. By stating that villagers, who speak an altogether
different Lao dialect anyway, have their own terminology of the SE practice, the criti-
cism is implicit, almost in a disguise of compliment and subordination. The emphasis
on production with have and eat stresses that the farmers want to sustain themselves by
means of their own manpower, and points towards the idea of farming as subsistence.
As the farmers explain, living from farm work requires extra effort and confidence in
self-reliance, and cannot be taken for granted (Interview Supa, October 2011).
So, while the Bia seems abandoned, some of the ideas have been taken up in a
different context. Women sell their homegrown organic products at the green market
operating in Kud Chum village and Yasothon town. They brand their products expli-
citly as healthy, local, organic products to appeal to urban consumers (Interview
Meaw, Ubon, Somchai, October 2011). The local herb centre established a barter
system and an economy of caring and sharing, during the implementation of the Bia,
which works as well without the community currency. Long before the introduction
SE, the villagers of Kud Chum had been practicing self-organisation, mutual economic
assistance and community welfare. A few activities, starting from herb production, pro-
ducer cooperatives, organic agriculture and alternative marketing strategies are being
self-organised by farmers, who are actively involved in mutual learning and develop-
ment of their techniques (Own observation, October 2011, Interview Somchai,
428 Alexandra Heis

Ubon, Supa, October 2011). Similarly, integrated farming is part of the resilience prac-
tices in the region with initiatives going back to the early 1980s. The farmers’ activities
often focus on material practices and how these can be used to improve their situation,
rather than referring to Buddhist principles of living in moderation. While alternatives
to development have been practiced by determination and conviction in Yasothon, and
Kud Chum, and many parts of Isan, one must bear in mind the actual dimensions of
such initiatives in Thailand. Although organic agriculture is gaining acceptance and
appreciation among farmers, in 2011 only 0.15 per cent of the total farmland was
under certified organic agriculture (Thai Organic Trade Association, 2011). Despite
the attention and commitment of village leaders in promoting and elaborating the com-
munity currency, only 120 villagers out of roughly 68,000 inhabitants could be
recruited as Bia members (Parnwell, 2005b, p. 16; Puntasen et al., 2002, p. 9). Thus,
it requires specific resources, a certain knowledge and mind-set, to practice alternatives,
which are not prevailing among the poorest and not even among the relatively better off
villagers. Retrospectively, one of the interviewees voices his scepticism as to the will-
ingness of the people to give up the monetary system in the first place. The community
currency did not work in Kud Chum district, he concludes, because it became game of
politics dismissive of the lived experiences of the villagers.

Discussion
For the ‘middle peasant’ the choice to opt out of capitalist relations does not arise natu-
rally, and even less so in harsh conditions, without sufficient financial reserves (Li,
2015). In other words, one must be able to afford to opt out, and support often
comes directly or indirectly through state-subventions. Insofar, the radicalism of
opting out has to be questioned as well. In recent decades, international donors regarded
NGOs as more trustworthy and effective in distributing development aid than state
agencies, particularly the state agencies of the Global South. In addition, NGOs were
usually closer to the beneficiaries, and beneficiaries founded NGOs in order to be
able to receive monies directly. Thus NGOs would link statist regulation efforts to
the grass-roots and cushion uncontrollable forms of protest and activism (Phatharatha-
nanunth, 2002, p. 23; 2006, p. 61; Shigetomi, 2013). The NGOs simultaneously met
two needs: first the neoliberal demand for a ‘lean’ state, and, second, social movements’
claims for participation and decision-making. The latter, however, had to follow the
rules of the game to access funding (e.g. Choudry and Kapoor, 2013; for Thailand,
see Phongpaichit and Baker, 2002, p. 385). In Thailand, this opening up of the devel-
opment field to NGOs and grass roots organisations strongly advanced a discourse of
localism.8 Its particular Thai variant, the above-mentioned community culture school,
became mainstream development thinking in recent decades (Connors, 2005, pp. 267,

8 Localism is understood here as a set of strategies and structures addressing the ‘maldevelop-
ment’ resulting from decades of growth-oriented politics in Thailand (Connors, 2005, p. 261).
 Forum for Development Studies 429

275, 276). In his analysis of the Thai localism approach, Connors has stressed the role
of NGOs under royal patronage in fostering moderate versions of localism in order to
undermine attempts of progressive social change. NGOs mushroomed during the
1990s, especially in Northeast Thailand. In 1987, there were 49 rural development
NGOs in Isan responsible for providing organisational support and channelling govern-
ment or ODA9 funding (Phatharathananunth, 2006, p. 62; Shigetomi, 2006, p. 4). There
were an even higher number of self-organised action groups and networks, which
obviously had no or limited access to finance – thus their critique was much more out-
spoken. While the former have fostered issues of ‘community empowerment’, ‘commu-
nity business and alternative markets’ and later the transformation from ‘community to
civil society’ in a society ingrained with Buddhist morality and ethics, the latter were
addressing issues of social and political inequality, struggle over resources and the
lack of participation (Connors, 2005, pp. 276, 277).
One of the more powerful players in business, and the main NGO which stood
behind the community currency, is the already mentioned LDI. It operated from
1984 on under the patronage of Princess Sirindhorn and is one of the most influential
institutions in fostering community culture with a strong focus on community forests,
occupational training for members of farmers’ associations, traditional weaving, live-
stock development and strengthening of peoples’ organisations (Surintaraseree,
2001, pp. 9, 18). It channelled half a million US dollars into rural development projects
in Isan in 1995 alone (Surintaraseree, 2001, p. 20). At the same time, the World Bank
and USAID were promoting development and dissemination of participatory rural
appraisal and rapid rural appraisal in the region, too. After 1997 the LDI was actively
involved in the distribution of social investment funds of the World Bank and also of
the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, implemented through the Ministry of Health in
2001 (Shigetomi, 2006, p. 18).

Conclusion
The balance between coercion and consent, between technologies of government and
technologies of self are blurred, as choices, interpretations and scopes of action are con-
strained not only by economic but also by political and societal compulsion. The rural
activist groups in Isan, and specifically in the Kud Chum district, are not a homo-
geneous group but their aspirations are open to multiple dynamics and different stra-
tegic alliances to achieve their goals. Reform-oriented, radical and conservative
forces all work alongside, and streams of community culture and SE, of village resist-
ance and political dissent and subversion are partially overlapping. This article has
sought to illustrate how closely all these are interrelated in practice. It is also critical
to note the open-ended character of all such undertakings.

9 ODA stands for Official Development Assistance and the activities and spending of a nation-
state, channelled through its national development agency.
430 Alexandra Heis

While in many countries the ‘struggle for another world’ is still a minority position,
Thailand’s authorities pride themselves on having an alternative development paradigm
enshrined in the constitution. The impact of SE on progressive social change at the grass-
roots level can be disputed however, and it can even foster oppressive social relations
when this ideology is used to keep subjects in place. A progressive concept of local
knowledge and community has experienced some metamorphosis during its translation
through and by different institutions. Among grass roots movements and people’s organ-
isations, community and locality are becoming less associated with opposition to globa-
lisation, democratisation and empowerment. By its very nature, community may be
linked with a reactionary imagination of the village and rural life, reinforcing the hierarch-
ical social order in Thailand and making culture a depoliticised essence of the status-quo.
Some of the more radical movements thus do not so much engage in transnational
global justice activities as in seclusion and practices of Buddhist enlightenment. Many
protests and struggles have processes of democratisation at their heart, but they must
comply with openings and opportunities in the face of the Thai political structure.
While they criticise the military, as well as the civic government, they remain conspicu-
ously silent with regard to the King’s position within them, thus implicitly complying
with ‘network monarchy’ (McCargo, 2005).
Bia Kud Chum is only one exemplary moment in a long account of co-optation, com-
petition and strategic alliances between different development imaginations, where eman-
cipatory themes have been co-opted and occupied by traditional culturalists to promote a
local cultural essentialism, increasing and strengthening extant relations of domination.
As an economic instrument, community currency systems claim a correction to the mech-
anisms of the crisis-prone commodification of money intrinsic to capitalism. The central
objective of Bia was to bring purchasing power back to the community after a horrific
devaluation of the national currency and following austerity measures imposed by
national and international financial institutions. With its inherent critique of the economic
system of capitalism, this community currency fitted well into localism discourse, the
community hype as well as into the resistance ideology of political economy activism.
The scheme was discussed and prepared after the economic crisis and the introduction
of the King’s SE. It was only in 2002 that this community currency was explicitly
defined as a research project of and under the SE banner. However, at that point it has
met with little interest of the former Bia members (Parnwell, 2005a, pp. 16, 17) who
were already busy with developing other methods of economic empowerment and
self-sufficiency. While the elites got self-absorbed over the power issue, the Kud
Chum farmers were getting on with their struggle for another world.

Acknowledgements
The author would also like to thank Professor Wolfram Schaffar and Eija Ranta as well as the
anonymous reviewers for inspiration, valuable insights and comments on early and previous
drafts of this article.
 Forum for Development Studies 431

Notes on contributor
Alexandra Heis has earned a degree in Development Studies at the University of Vienna in 2013.
The article is based on data from her thesis on Solidarity Economy in Northeast Thailand. She is
currently employed as research assistant at the research platform Mobile Cultures and Societies
at the University of Vienna, and working on issues of transdisciplinary development research
and in the field of migration studies. Her general interest is in global studies, post-development,
social change and class formation.

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