The Family in Thailand: Today and into the Future

Dr. Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya

Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development Mahidol University at Salaya

 Rantana Tosakul-Boonmathya
Chulalongkorn

Mahidol Khon Kaen Khon Kaen

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Tosakul, R(2005). Cross-border marriages and transnational mobility: Experiences of village women from Northeastern Thailand (forthcoming).

Tosakul, R. et al(2005). Doen Thi La Kaw Kin Kaw Thi La Kham: Community Knowledge Management. Knowledge Learning Promotion for Happy Community Project, Northeast Chapter, financially supported by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation and managed by Thailand Research Fund. Khon Kaen: Khon Kaen Karn Phim. (In Thai).

Ratana Boonmanthya, et al(2004). The State of Knowledge of Social and Cultural Life Among Ethnic Groups in the Mekhong Region: A Case of Myanmar. Khon Kaen, Thailand: The Center for Research on Pluralism in the Mekong Region (CRPM), Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Khon Kaen University. (In Thai).

Ratana Tosakul Boonmathya(2003). A Narrative of Contested Views of Development in Thai Society: Voices of Villagers in Rural Northeastern Thailand, Southeast Asian Studies, Vol.41, No.3. December 2003. Kyoto: Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University.

Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya(2003). Rebuilding Lives, Families, and Communities: The Kachins in Upper Burma, Conference Proceedings of the III MMSEA Conference in Lijiang, Yunnan, The People's Republic of China (PRC).

Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya(2002). The Manau Religious Ritual Dance and the Kachin Identity, pp. 118-171. In Pinkaew Luangaramsri (ed.). Attalak, Chattiphan, and Khwam Pen Chai Khob (Identity, Ethnicity and Marginality). Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center. (In Thai)

Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya(2002). Prachakhom: "Civil Society in Thailand: The Case of the Khon Kaen Civic Assembly (KKCA)," Humanities & Social Sciences Journal 19,3 (April-June, 2002): 24-33.

Ratana Tosakul-Boonmathya, Yada Praparpun and Rakawin Leechanavanichpan(2001). The Situation of Women Subcontracted Workers in the Garment Industry in Bangkok Thailand. In Debbie Budlender (ed.) Women and Subcontracting in the Global Economy. A research project of the Asia Foundations Womens Legal Rights Program Global Women in Politics. pp. 101-120.

(Draft- Please do not quote without the permission of the author)

The Family in Thailand: Today and into the Future

Ratana Tosakul [Boonmathya], Ph.D Anthropology Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development Mahidol University at Salaya Phutthamonthon Nakhonpathom 73170 THAILAND Email: ratanaboon@gmail.com

A paper prepared for a discussion in the international conference on Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Family Education in Southeast Asian Countries, held at The National Chia Yi University, Chia Yi Taiwan, R.O.C. from October 26-27, 2006

Introduction

A survey report conducted by Division of Labor Market Research attached to the Ministry of Labor of Thailand has pointed out that in 2005, a total of 34,197 registered migrant workers have migrated to work abroad, which can be classified as follows: 72.69 % working in Asian countries (notably Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and Brunei), 16.59 % working in the Middle East, 2.63% working in Africa, and 8.09% as unspecified. The majority of those migrant workers come from the Northeast of Thailand, the poorest region of the country where the Lao (Isan-Lao or Thai-Lao) ethnic group is predominant. Mostly, those northeastern village workers have engaged in factory production and arduous jobs, remarkably construction work and farming activities. In addition, International Institute for Asian Studies based in the Netherlands has reported that the past ten years witnesses a rapid proliferation of the intra-Asia flow of the cross-border marriage migration particularly between Southeast Asia and East Asia. In Taiwan, the cross-border marriages only started in mid 1980s, yet by 2002 it has reached 27.4 % of total marriages of the year, and one out of every eight children in Taiwan was born in a cross-border family. Generally, those men have opted to marry women mainly from Mainland China, Vietnam, Korea, and other Asian countries (Lu Chia-wen 2006). As Taiwanese society has been increasingly mixed and mingled with diverse groups across its geographical national boundary following the infiltration of new immigrants into the society, it is necessary for the public to be aware of this wide diversity in cultures, backgrounds and experiences of multi-ethnic groups in the society. Understanding cultural diversity of those new immigrants would help recognizing individuals, developing cross-cultural communications and avoiding stereotypes. My paper thus is an attempt to discuss on the nature of the family at the village level, primarily concentrated in the rural countryside of Thailand and its changing face in contemporary Thai context. Special reference is given to northeastern Thai-Lao communities where I remain in close contact over the past ten years following my anthropological fieldwork and several collaborative community development projects with them. These past few decades have marked a historical time of witnessing a huge mobility and migration of villagers, especially from northeastern provinces in search of job opportunities locally and across their geographical national boundaries. There are some migrant workers from Thailand who have come to work and reside in Taiwan temporarily. Others have become immigrants through intermarriages with Taiwanese; and thereby having settled down with their families in Taiwan. Having sensitivity to cultural diversity of multi-ethnic groups and good understanding of their

diverse cultural backgrounds and experiences will definitely ensure a successful integration of those new immigrants into the society. In other words, such understanding would provide a good ground for integrating those new immigrants into the society to be one of us rather than excluding them to be the others within the society permanently. Discourses on the Family in Thailand Similar to many other Southeast Asia societies, the organization of the family in Thailand has made use of the existing cultural symbols to shape their familial relations and structures. As to understand general cultural characteristics of the family in Thailand, I will begin with a discussion of significant socio-cultural aspects including the overall picture of family life, emphasizing family & kinship relations, norms of reciprocity, parenting in contemporary context, religious beliefs and the morality as a base for constructing family values, ideologies, and structures. I will then proceed to discuss on issues relating to contesting gender roles and power relations. Finally, I will end the discussion with some theoretical considerations. Family and Kinship Network In Thailand, the family and the bilateral kinship network is the most important group to which most people belong. In some Thai literatures, I find a reminiscence of Webers thesis. The notion of extended families as our traditional form prior to the predominance of nuclear families following the modernity of Thailand over the past decades has been emphasized regularly. As Mathana Phananiramai (1991:1) wrote it is a widely accepted fact [in Thailand] that the extended families of traditional society are being gradually replaced by the nuclear families of modern society. The modernizing process of the country has resulted in a huge migration of many rural dwellers to urban industrial centers locally and internationally, and an expansion of industrialization and urbanization. Rapid social and economic changes to modernization of the country are deemed to be causes for the emergence of nuclear families in contemporary society. Mathana (1991) argues that this changing family structure has many implications on the welfare and lifestyle of populace in Thailand. For example, with the existence of grandparents or other older relatives in the extended family, child care services can be effectively provided within the family. But in modern society, such services must be replaced by institutions, such as day care centers which operate through the price mechanism. Similar replacements also occur in the care of the elderly, the sick and the disabled. Likewise, structural family changes from extended families to nuclear ones in

contemporary society have been confirmed by the official statistical data from the Ministry of Labour and Welfare, in the following: Type of family Number 441 82 523 Percentage 84.3 15.7 100.0

Nuclear family Extended family Total

Source: Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare of Thailand, 2001 The statistics confirms the larger number of contemporary overseas Thai migrant workers (the total number of respondents is 523) who change to become parts of nuclear families comprising 84.3% than the 15.7% of those who still living in extended ones. As Thailand is divided into four main geographical regions where each has its own distinctive history, cultural traditions and linguistics, it is also necessary to understand different characteristics of changing families of diverse ethnic groups of each region of the country. In the North, there are people who share historically cultural traditions and contacts with ethnic groups in Burma and several ethnic groups of hill people. In the Northeast, the majority people speak Lao dialects and share their early histories and common cultural traditions with Lao people in Lao PDR while in the South where Buddhist southern Thai and a significant population of Malay-speaking Muslims share cultural and histories with those in Malaysia. Jackson & Cook (1999) report that in addition to a sizeable Muslim minority in the South, Thailand is also shelter to several small numbers of Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and currently migrant workers from its neighboring countries, such as Burmese, Mon, Shan, Lao, and Khmer. There is also a substantial Chinese minority residing largely in urban industrial areas. Generally, Chinese in Thailand have inter-married with local people for centuries. These Sino-Thai families form about 10% of the total population. It is interesting to investigate how different groups of people in different parts of Thailand cope with changing families in contemporary context. Based upon my anthropological fieldwork in northeastern Thailand with the Thai-Lao ethnic group over the past ten years, I observed the concurrence of extended and nuclear family through a family life cycle. Customarily, villagers in Thai-Lao communities practice a custom of uxorilocal residence after they marry (a husband moves to live with the parental family of his wife after marriage). Land is inherited through the female line. However, with a scarcity of land at present, there is a tendency for many new couples to inherit land from both matrilineal and patrilineal lines. Traditionally, the youngest daughter marries and lives with the parents and will

inherit the parental house land. Similarly, many authors argued that extended family through a custom of matrilocal residence after marriage is an ideal among households in the Central Plains (Piker 1964), in the North (Potter, Sulamith Heins 1975) and in the Northeast (Tambiah 1970, Mizuno 1971, Keyes 1975). In addition, Tambiah (1970) explains that the basic relationship between kinsmen of villagers in northeastern Thai-Lao communities is organized around economic, political, and ritual matters. Typically, all children live with their parents until they establish their own families. During the first few years of their marriage, a couple lives with their parents, helps work on farm and shares the same economic resources with the parental households. When the next female sibling marries, the first couple moves to build a new house within the same compound of their parental home, if land is available. Although they have established their own families, they still work on their parental land (or work on their inherited farmland separately) and usually share the same economic resources with their parents and other siblings who still live with the parents. I agree with Tambiah (1970) that in northeastern Thai-Lao villages and elsewhere in Thailand, when a man and a woman marry each other, their marriage does not unite only the bride and groom, but combines the descent groups of the two families together. All of them automatically turn to be kinsmen of one another. When problems in life occur, an individual will turn to his/her family and household, then go to the circle of close kinsmen, then distant kinsmen, friends, and neighbors. As a result, family and kin relations can be understood as a primary institution of a village system and a basic social unit of Thai society as a whole. This institution functions to guarantee the survival of its members through a provision of material welfare and psychological encouragement. Family and kinship relations have laid a significant ground for trust, cooperation, and network among villagers who belong to the same circle of family and kin relations. Since the state institutions for child & elderly care, and general family welfare are currently under limitation and the majority of villagers in Thailand still remain in poverty, it is not possible for them to remove traditional functions performed by the family relating to parenting role, elderly care, and family welfare into the economy, often now available as services for a fee. Extended family and bilateral kin groups are thus truly significant cultural attributes to guarantee their family welfare. These social relations among family members and kinship groups provide a primary safety net for villagers, especially those from poor farming family backgrounds. As argued elsewhere (Ratana 1997), the modernization of the country has caused both positive and negative impacts on farm households in the rural countryside of Thailand. Many poor rural farm households find it difficult to survive economically from the rural agricultural

sector alone due to expensive farm inputs and low farm produces prices. Thus, migration has been an ideal alternative for them to ensure the survival of their families. Many young couples, especially from northeastern provinces, tend to leave their children in the care of their old aged parents at their villages and have migrated to work locally and abroad. Remittances to support those family members at their village home of origin are thus very significant economically and culturally. Parenting and the Family Taking the overall characteristics of the family and kinship network in Thai society into consideration, one truly becomes aware of the underlying assumption on familism ideology. Until now, parenting remains under the responsibility of the family and close kinship group even if the family institution in Thailand today has endured various transformations. Traditionally, parents, occasionally with the help of grandparents or other older relatives, are responsible for giving the daily necessary care for young children and socializing them about how to live with other people and to make sense of the world around them with the use of various interpretive symbolic meanings and practices through social interactions. In reciprocity, when parents and other older relatives get old, it is the duty of children or younger generations to take care of them. Social capital existing in the family and kinship network through support and cooperation proves to be a significant cultural mechanism to help a needy family cope with difficulties and hardship in life, as I have argued elsewhere (Ratana 2004, forthcoming). The traditional concept of family relations in Thai society generally emphasizes deference and allegiance to senior family members and collective support of siblings throughout life, as already explained. This clarifies remittance practices of most migrant workers and immigrants to support their families back home in Thailand. This is obviously in contrast to many other cultures that stress autonomy and self-reliance of individuals. During my fieldwork in northeastern provinces, I met several migrant workers and immigrants who came to visit their home villages of origin. I observed that they still maintain obligations and loyalty with their home cultures through remittances, visits, spiritual encouragement, and various kinds of support to their parents and siblings. Similar to many societies, in Thailand practically most children are raised by the mothers who give birth to them and also live during the first part of their early childhoods with their fathers. Nonetheless, children born out-of wedlock and divorce are in many cases left behind with and taken care of by the mothers. In general, child rearing and caretaking occur within family units. The family is where children form their primary attachment. Parents are usually responsible for child rearing, welfare, health care, education, employment, discipline and punishment. The state intervention relating to family welfare is still minimal. Yet, all Thai

citizens have access to the state medical care through the 30-bath health care program for all and other services with reasonable expenses. In most rural farm families, children are engaged in both farming production and educational activities outside their families. In case their families are not able to afford their higher education, it is likely that those children tend to complete only the sixth-grade of the compulsory national education (currently it has been extended to the twelfth grade), and then leave schools to participate in the labor workforce in both formal and informal sectors of Thailand and elsewhere. Once they are grown-ups and able to earn their living, traditional norms of reciprocity continue in which adult children, in turn, provide care for aging parents. For rural families that can afford higher education of their children but parents completed only the primary education, they are not competent to oversee their childrens homework or give general advice to childrens education which takes place outside the family. Apart from the family and schools, friends and neighbors also play important parts in socializing children. Moreover, based upon my observations in several northeastern villages of Thailand, the significant player in almost all contemporary rural farm families is television (TV) whereas those living in town are heavily influenced by both the TV media and the IT technology, such as computer games and chat rooms via internet e-mail correspondences. Television, on about 5-6 hours a day in most rural farm families I visited. I do not have any concrete findings on the influence of television on children, but other scholars conducted their studies in other parts of the world do. For example, Dorr & Rabin (1995:333) show that the more hours of regular TV programs children in the U.S.A watch, the more they hold traditional sex-role perceptions, behave aggressively, and want advertised products. Also, children spend a greater amount of time on TV have poorer quality in social relationships, fewer social interactions, and perform less well in school. Although the influence of television on children is still controversial, it is possible to take all these comments into consideration and find more concrete evidences in the Thai context and elsewhere.

Religious Beliefs and Rituals Theravada Buddhism is predominant among the majority of the Thai population and has provided a significant source of cultural references for constructing ideologies and practices of most people (Tambiah 1970, Kirsch 1982, Keyes 1984, Hayashi 2003). Kirsch (1975) argued that the majority of family in Thailand (except in the South where Muslims are predominant) share common religious beliefs, which are characterized as the

syncretism of Theravada Buddhism and animism. Buddhist beliefs and rituals have traditionally played a significant role in linking family, community, and a wider Thai society together. Villagers have a strong reverence for Buddhist monks and support of their Buddhist monasteries. At this point, it is worth discussing some theoretical thinking of popular Buddhism to provide a broader social context for understanding the family life in Thailand. Numerous studies on Thailand have agreed upon the central role of Theravada Buddhism in shaping Thai peoples lives (Tambiah 1970, Kirsch 1982, Van Esterik 1982, Keyes 1983, Muecke 1992, Hayashi 2003). Those authors together with my own observations during my anthropological fieldwork in several northeastern Thai-Lao communities have confirmed that villagers local primary religious beliefs are centered around the concept of bun (merit) and baap (demerit) as well as karma (or villagers say kam) to explain past, present, and expected future lives. These basic religious beliefs form a major moral perception by which villagers conceptualize, evaluate, and explain behavior. Theravada Buddhism forms an essential and prevalent part of the Thai-Lao value system (Kirsch 1982, Keyes 1983). Many older villagers still believe in multiple life cycle rebirths. Human life does not end with death, but one continues to be reborn in multiple life cycles until one reaches the final extinction. which is called nivarana or nipphan. Obviously, most villagers do not yearn for the final extinction as their ultimate goal. They are concerned more with rebirths with prosperity, wealth, good health, good family, happiness, and power. Rebirth after death is determined by ones own karma which is a consequence of ones past meritorious and sinful deeds. After death, if a person has a large store of bun over his/her baap, his/her soul will go to heaven. When his/her merit is exhausted, he/she will be reborn on this earth or in other live forms depending on his/her own kam. By contrast, of his/her balance of baap is larger than bun, he/she will go to hell and suffer there until his/her baap is depleted and be born. In village everyday life, all these significant religious beliefs are translated into daily practices of villagers, such as their performance relating to the norms reciprocity, the most predominant cultural characteristics in the structures of social relations among Thai people. An expression of gratitude to parents and anybody whom one owes is considered as making a great meritorious deed. Family and kin supports are also expressed accordingly, which I have argued elsewhere (Ratana 1997). Customarily, most Thai people, particularly among rural villagers, have internalized norms of reciprocity and put them into practice. Bun khun is referred to the goodness (including money, advice, favor, assistance, and the like) one owes to somebody, a moral obligation. Bun khun must be returned regardless of time, space, and frequency. An act of returning Bun khun to the person one owes is referred to as Katanyuu. For example, children owe huge Bun khun to their parents for giving birth and raising them. In

return, the parents expect their children to take care of them when they get old and make merit for them when they pass away. Ordination of a son is considered to be the greatest way to reciprocate parents Bun khun, particularly for the mother, since women are not allowed to ordain as Buddhist monks in Thai society. His temporary or permanent stay in the Buddhist temple is believed to help augment the merit of his parents, especially the mother. As women are deprived of their rights to pursue their spiritual development on their own, most turn to play a dominant role as nurturers in the maintenance of Buddhism (Keyes 1984). I believe a lack of an opportunity to pursue religious path on their own and the culturally prescribed gender role of Thai women in the domestic arena have led women to play a more significant role than men in taking care of their aged parents, children, and welfare of everyone in the family. This is more obvious among rural villagers who practice the matrilocal residence patterns after marriage. As already discussed, usually, the youngest daughter (and her family) would inherit land and house of the parental household and take care of the aged parents (Tambiah 1970). Norms of reciprocity are also expressed in senior (phu yai) and junior (phu noi) relationships in Thai society. In general, juniors must defer to seniors and that seniors must take responsibility for the welfare of juniors (Potter, Sulamith Heins (1977). In Thai family, a father who is a senior man and taking the leadership role as the head of the family is generally deemed to have the highest formal authority over other family members. All these reciprocal norms have been influenced by Buddhist philosophy disseminated to people in various forms, such as religious sermons delivered by Buddhist monks at the temples, Jataka tales, mural paintings, a series of TV movies, radio programs, and the like. Morality as a Base for Constructing Family Values: Either Abandoning or Living with the Family? Thanet (2003) has pointed out that the Thai public discourses generally regard the family cohesiveness as a solid base of the strong Thai society. Frequently, one finds such discourses in the government pronouncements, such as those appeared in the National Development Plans, the culture series produced by the National Cultural Commission of Thailand, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Health, and the like. Also, one finds frequent key words and concepts emphasizing happy and strong families and communities as a foundation of the strong Thai nation, as shown in a textbook entitled Baan Kue Sawan (Home is Paradise) endorsed by Department of Curriculum and Instruction (1999), Ministry of Education. Although the Thai public discourses tend to portray the family as a cohesive unit

comprising of love, warmth, coziness, mutual cooperation and assistance among family members, in many occasions, one finds contested discourses. Thanet (2003) further argued that the family, even in the past, was not the one with happiness, cooperation and cohesiveness. Insecurity, hatred, distrust, disputes, and even murder within the family were common. Thanet (2003) clarified that family feud is reflected in one Thai mythology, Phya Kong and Phya Pharn. This folk legend is claimed to be the origin of the largest pagoda in Thailand named Phra Pathom Jedi, currently located in the Nakhonpathom Province of Thailand. Phya Pharn was the son of Phya Kong. Phya Pharn killed his father without knowing that he was his father, (as he was ordered to be taken away and killed by his own father at his birth), and took his mother as his wife. To redeem his severe sin, he ordered his men to build the pagoda as high as a bird can fly. Today, one frequently reads or hears of appalling news of family problems in the Thai media, ranging from family feud to homicide. Thanet (2003)s analysis shows the dilemma of two prevailing different concepts relating to the ideology of Thai family. One is to support a detachment of oneself from ones own family to pursue a religious path as appeared in the Vessantara Jataka, one out of the ten Buddhist Jataka tales. The story depicts the penultimate life of Buddha in his last reincarnation before becoming the Lord Buddha. The story appears in various forms, such as story-telling by village elders, Buddhist sermons given at the temples by Buddhist monks, mural paintings in many Buddhist temples, television series, movies, radio programs, and the like. In order to attain his greatest virtue or barami to become the Lord Buddha, Prince Vessantara had to give away everything, even his own children to be servants of Chuchaka (Chuchok in Thai), the tramp old Brahman and his beloved wife, Matsi to Indra God, a disguised Brahman. While Vessantara felt so overwhelming that he could accomplish his transcendental mission, Matsi was in great suffering of losing her two beloved children. The life story of Vessantara has thus provided a significant discourse that one must leave the family, as it is a great obstacle for achieving a transcendental life. Another idea is to support people to live in the mundane world, being with their families and worldly activities to create happy families. To summarize, Thanet (2003:2) wrote, Being in this world, one has to choose happiness through family or religious path. Yet, the secular life of the majority of rural Thai villagers is not a total departure from popular Buddhism. On the contrary, their everyday life has been largely influenced by the Buddhist morality expressed in their ideologies and practices (Hayashi 2003). Should one decide to pursue happiness through having family life in the material world, there are cultural norms, largely deriving from the Buddhist morality, prescribing proper codes of conducts, as expressed in the structures of human social relationships in Thai society. Even amidst the family

in transition of our modern world, I strongly believe that the religious-based morality deriving largely from Theravada Buddhism in Thai society continues to provide a substantial source of cultural references for constructing a basis of family values and social relations in Thai society. Contesting Gender Roles and Power Relations Many influential studies of gender in Southeast Asia have been published over the past decade (Atkinson & Errington 1990, Ong and Peletz 1995, Van Esterik 1996, Jackson & Cook 1999). These scholars have developed theoretical analyses of gender to understand cultures and societies of the region. What is thought to be comparatively egalitarian gender relations in Southeast Asia when compared to South and East Asia is one of the most outstanding common theme. Evidences of more gender equal relations are found in the distinctive roles of women in household financial management, trade, land ownership and inheritance, and farming (Jackson & Cook 1999). Several social anthropologists argued that extended family through a custom of postmarital residence patterns after marriage could be a possible answer contributed to the above query. As already mentioned, this tradition is an ideal practice among households in the Central Plain (Piker 1964), in the North (Turton 1972, Potter 1976, Potter, Sulamith Heins 1977) and in the Northeast of Thailand (Tambiah 1970, Mizuno 1971, Keyes 1975). These scholars reported that the social position of women in traditional family in the north and northeastern Thailand is powerful, as men marry into her parental household and matrilineal spirit cults. Through marriage, women defer her power to men. Yet, Potter, Sulamith Heins (1977) elucidated the formal authority of men over women, as a wife needs to take her husbands family name at marriage, and as a result, she is entitled by law to perform any legal action only with the consent of her husband. Nonetheless, as the mens authority in the household is built upon the womens traditional influence, in this sense, women still retain some significant social position and importance in the household. Men and womens social position and power in the household are thus intertwined and complement each other. Nonetheless, Whittaker (1999) contended that the capitalist transformation of village life occurred within the modern Thai state has had a variety of consequences for gender relations. She looks at the material and social changes to the position and status of women within the northeastern Thai village. She points out that in the past, the production of subsistence rice in the community was intertwined with social relationships, kinship patterns, land ownership, household formation, and community cooperation all reflected in the centrality of rice production. Through matrilocal residence patterns after marriage, land inheritance and

ownership, and their significance of the production of labor, women were central mediators to the means of production. Relations between men and women were characterized as complementarity. This situation is changing when capitalist relations of production have penetrated into everyday life of villagers. These changes are eroding former bases of womens status in the village and exacerbating gender inequalities. The changed patterns of production of waged labor, and migration disrupt female links to land and matrilineal kin, influence inheritance patterns, and encourage bride price inflation as well as a commodification and objectification of womens bodies (1999:44). Preliminary findings of my research on transnational migration and cross-cultural marriages of northeastern village women with Western men have also confirmed a more prominent economic role of these women than men to their village families and thereby being recognized by the village public as the main breadwinners of their families. This has posed a tension to village males relating to gender roles and economic responsibilities. Yet, as the practice of marrying Westerners is very much linked to the ideas of prostitution and of hired wives of American soldiers during the 1960s and early 1970s where American troops were based in some provinces of the northeast to engage in the Vietnam War; these women feel that they are perceived by the Thai public as tainted women (Ratana 2005). They have negotiated their gender status and identity with the use of local traditions deriving from local traditions, such as norms of reciprocity, Bun Khun and Katanyuu to redefine themselves as moral women. Hayami (2003) also shows how Karen village women are conscious social actors in the process of social transformations to modernity of Thailand. She focuses her anthropological study in a Karen village in northern Thailand. She considers through modernity how these Karen women living in peripheries of the Thai nation-state spatially and socially have negotiated the spatial disjunction both at their homes of origin in their locality and across the spatial disjunction between peripheries and the nation. Conceptualizing social phenomena in dichotomous terms (such as hill versus city, a moral versus moral: Karen versus Thai) emerge with social changes that are characterized as modernity and are laid upon the existing social practices. Yet, they are not unchallenged. Women attempt to negotiate these classifications in reconstructing their identities with these disjunctive spaces. Van Esterik (1999) states that in general women in Thai society have less access to power than men, in both the spiritual and the political domains. Thai male status and prestige is partially derived from the control and objectification of women and their bodies. Thai men are traditionally considered to be breadwinners of the family and superior to women, just as the front legs of an elephant are superior to the hind legs, according to the old Thai proverb. Men are usually predominant in the public sphere whereas women in the domestic sphere where the

general public recognize as having less economic value. Yet, it is usually the mother who raises children, takes care of everyones well being in the family and controls the budget of the family whereas the father plays a putative head role. There is an urgent need to provoke a research that will help to have a better understanding of the complexity of womens lives and their options in the changing face of families in contemporary Thai context. In addition, Jack and Cook (1999) report that there are very little studies about gay, lesbian and other non-traditional family patterns in Thai society. Trans-genderism and homoeroticism are the most neglected areas of gender study in Thailand. Theorizing the Cultural Dynamism of Changing Families1 My point of departure begins with a challenge to the basic premise proposed by Max Weber (1864-1920). He attributed all family structural changes to social changes produced by the industrial revolution. He stated that technology penetrated into a society by replacing family loyalties with materialism and egotism, and that state bureaucracies began to take over family functions and reduce the number of dependent client populace. Weber believed that a society based on technology was a society that lost its commitment to the priorities of morality (such as family) because the ethics of our charismatic leaders had been tainted. He viewed that social as a new type of society emerge from the industrial revolution, new principles of social structure caused a shift to a prevalence of nuclear family households as opposed to extended ones (Morrison 1995). Yet, I find a departure from Webers thesis of social and cultural changes. This contested notion is from aspects of the idea of geography of mobility and cultural space. Henri Lefebvre (1991) states that no space disappears in the course of growth and worldwide development: the worldwide does not abolish the local. Lefebvre moves his analysis of space from the old discourses on space to the manner in which understandings of geographical space, landscape and property are cultural and thereby have a history of change. He examines struggles over the meanings of space and considers how relations across territories are given cultural meaning. In the process, Lefebvre attempts to establish the importance of lived grassroots experiences and understandings of geographical space as fundamental social and cultural. In addition, I find the idea of Appadurai is convincing. In the modern world, Appadurai (1991, 1996) has argued that groups are no longer tightly territorialized, history self-conscious, spatially bounded, and culturally homogenous, as peoples of the modern age have migrated
This conceptual framework is an abridged version of what appeared earlier in my other paper, entitled Women, Transnational Migration, and Cross-cultural Marriages; Experiences of Pharayaa-farang from Rural Northeastern Thailand, 2005.
1

intensely both locally and internationally. Thus, he has further suggested that it is a task of ethnography to unfold the nature of locality as a lived experience within the spatially unbounded globalizing world. Lived experiences of people pertinent to locality within modernity are commonly associated with the emergence of new cultural sources of references and identities or reshaping from previous ones. Appadurai has elaborated what he calls global cultural processes that imagination has become an organized field of social practices where constant negotiations between individuals and globally defined fields of possibility are taking place. This is evident in the changing face of the family in modern societies where the concepts of gender, marriage and sexuality today share characteristics of global/local assemblage, as people in the contemporary world have migrated and interacted with each other much in different cultural spaces besides their local world. Many scholars have suggested that gender, marriage and sexuality in any societies are culturally and historically constructed (Muecke 1981, Moore 1994, Mills 2003). Although conventional views and practices of those concepts are dominant in any societies, they are subjected to alterations, modifications and negotiations, as Mills (2003) has suggested that the naturalized aspect of most gender systems and of gendered identities they prescribe for social actors may be fertile terrain for conflicts and struggle. (2003:17) Adopting Mills proposition, I find that transnational migration of rural village women from northeastern Thailand has transferred them to a new global cultural space where they are exposed to Western cultural thinking and practices including issues pertinent to gender, marriage and sexuality. Through cross-cultural interaction, those village women have consciously reflected on their conventional views and practices of gender relations, marriage, and sexuality in comparison with emerging new ideas and practices. According to Mills (2003), when new forms of ideology arise to challenge conventional views and practices, this may cause a sense of stresses, tensions and conflicts either of personal identity and social interaction on a day-to-day basis or within the social order itself. Concluding Remarks The family life in Thailand today and into the future is certainly in transition. The nature of its changing face is very much influenced by its traditional religious beliefs and practices, modernization and industrialization of the country, and globalization. Although they may share some commonality of retaining some aspects of local traditions, new forms of families and cultures do arise. Cultural hybridity arising out of the synergy of local traditions and global cultures is observed. Today, Thai people cannot be found only within their geographical national boundaries. We found them here and there, across their bounded local communities and

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 Mathana Phananiramai19911 Mathana1991 441 82 523 84.3 15.7 100

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 Tambiah, 1970Kirsch, 1982Keyes, 1984Hayashi, 2003 Kirsch1975 Tambiah, 1970Kirsch, 1982Van Esterik, 1982 Keyes, 1983Muecke, 1992Hayashi, 2003 Kirsch, 1982 Keyes, 1983 nivarananipphan Bun Khun Bun KhunKatanyuu Bun Khun Bun Khun Keyes, 1984

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