Coping with crisis: Social capital and the resilience of rural livelihoods in northern Thailand

This study analyzes the effects of the Thai economic crisis that began in 1997 on rural household livelihoods in Mae Chaem District of Northern Thailand. A context-specific definition of social capital is the basis of the theoretical framework used in this study that links social capital to livelihood strategies and combines different levels of social and economic analysis. The results of the analysis illustrate the importance of social capital for livelihood resilience and how different endowments of social capital in the form of networks of social relations provide or constrain access to coping mechanisms related to capital, labor, education, markets, and employment for rural households.By using a network-based definition of social capital at the household level the study shows how specific dimensions of social capital---bonding, bridging and linking---played different but important roles in determining the effects of the crisis on rural households and levels of household vulnerability. Linking social capital in the form of social network ties from households to various village-level groups and bonding social capital in the form of larger informal support networks were both associated with lower vulnerability for most households. The value of bonding social capital was, however, lower for households in poorer, wage-reliant, ethnic minority villages where all households were the most severely impacted by both the economic crisis and a drought.An exploration of household social networks as representations of the social capital endowments of rural households revealed sharp differences in the structure of social networks across villages. This village-level heterogeneity in social network, structure suggests that different forms of socio-economic integration of villages with the broader Thai society influenced both how the crisis affected households in those villages and how they were able to cope with crisis effects. Categorizing both network ties and coping mechanisms by transactional content around consumption, employment and production also revealed which types of social capital were important for accessing specific coping mechanisms. Bonding social capital was important for consumption-related coping, bridging social capital for employment-related coping, and linking social capital for production-related coping for these rural households in Northern Thailand.