| The focus of this study is peasant ideology as exemplified by the ideological practices of peasant organizations. The study compares two Northeastern Thai peasant organizations: the Livestock Rasing Group of the village of Saimoon in Khon Kaen province, and the Buddhist Farming Group of the village of Gaya in Burirum province.;Major conclusions that can be drawn from this study are as follows. First, peasants' ideology has a material base, derived from their individual and collective lived experiences as multiple subjects of class, state, gender, generation, community, and family. Second, peasants' ideological practices include three integral processes--(a) conceptualizing the contemporary social relations and examining their positions within them, (b) criticizing and reconfigurating the contemporary hegemonic elements of democracy, equality, freedom, and development, and (c) developing new sets of ideological elements. And third, at the contemporary stage of hegemonic practices, peasants choose to compromise with the state and work to articulate NGOs' and academic' interests into their own and promote the new sets of ideological elements which all allied groups share. |
