The theme of the Thailand Update 2004 was economics and business but it interpreted that theme very loosely and the papers were varied. We began with careful, scholarly examinations of the last year in economics and politics by Bhanupong Nidhiprabha and Michael Connors and then moved into a rather more free-ranging session on business where the emphasis was on how Australians should go about doing business with Thais. Tamerlaine Beasley looked at the cultural factors, Khun Suchart gave the Thai Government view and Glen Robinson looked at things from the perspective of an Australian businessman with extensive experience in Thailand. A feature of this session was the presentations by one Australian and one Thai of how they saw the Thai-Australian Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) affecting both countries. The third session focused on how rural communities were being affected by economic and political changes. Yos Santasombat and Andrew Walker made stimulating and controversial presentations which questioned some conventional wisdom. Finally John Funston discussed the currently relevant topic of developments in Southern Thailand.

In this introduction, I will try to extract some themes from these diverse presentations as well as provide a summary of the main arguments.

OVERALL VIEW

If there is one common element in all these disparate papers, it is that of change. All see Thailand as a society in political, economic and social transition. Some stress the positive and some stress the negative aspects of change but all agree that it is happening. Some focus on the national picture and others on regional issues and some take a longer-term perspective than others. The political and economic analysts present a mixed picture, the business people are generally upbeat while the anthropologists focus on the village level where results are also mixed. There is also a feeling of uncertainty in most of the analyses especially when attempting to predict the future.

The three chapters which discuss developments at a regional level provide some interesting contrasts. At the village level, Yos showed how what is variously called “modernization” or “globalization” is changing the lives of traditional people in northern Thailand whose traditional swidden cultivation is being attacked by environmentalists on the grounds that it denudes forests and creates flooding.