Hua Kok: social oragnization in North-Central Thailand

Kemp, Jeremy

Book

Hua Kok: social oragnization in North-Central Thailand

Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing and the Centre of South-East Asian Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury • (5) • Published In 1992 • Pages: xii, 212

By: Kemp, Jeremy, University Of Kent At Canterbury, Centre For Social Anthropology And Computing, University Of Kent At Canterbury, Centre Of South-East Asian Studi.

Abstract
This is a community study in search of community. Although the village Hua Kok is composed of three hamlets occupying the banks of the Wang Thong river, Kemp finds little in the way of shared political, religious, or economic behavior that would bind all residents together and confer a common identity. This appears to be a classic case of Embree's 'loosely-structured social system,' except that Kemp argues against this model, at least as a concept that describes an enduring feature of Thai culture and society. Kemp claims that the loosely structured community of Hua Kok is the result of the historically recent settlement of the central Thai plain after 1892. While settlers attempted to duplicate traditional communities, frontier conditions, such as plentiful land, and a commercial market in rice and maize undermined the emergence of a corporate peasant community. Kemp provides a detailed ethnographic account of household and family configurations, family histories, inheritance patterns, land owership, labor exchanges, kinship terminology, and religious practices.

HRAF PubDate

2000