การประกอบสร้างสังคมแม่แจ่มระหว่าง พ.ศ. 2530 - 2563

Abstract

The political legacy of the Cold War has turned Mae Chaem a space where the Thai state has asserted control over resource management. This includes Evaluation of Mae Chaem Watershed Development Project, the state promotion of cash crop cultivation, the expansion of public utilities, and the permission for the capitalist regime to play a role in resource management. Consequently, it gave rise to popular political movements to address problems such as the management of agricultural yields, household debt, land tenure rights, etc. The case of the Wat Chan pine forest concession dispute opened the curtain on violent conflicts between the state and local residents, propelling the residents of the Mae Chaem watershed and the Wat Chan Pga k’ nyau (Karen) network to form a people's organization called the Hug Muang Chaem Group. While running the campaign against the Wat Chan pine forest concession, the Hug Mueang Chaem Group collaborated with a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in civil society politics. After the Wat Chan pine forest concession campaign, the Hug Muang Chaem Group was incorporated into the civil society network, continuing the work on resource management and environmental issues. The intensifying popular political movement and civil society politics that emerged in the early 1990s continued to play a role until the mid-2010s. In the late 1990s, amid the commemoration of the 700th anniversary of Chiang Mai, the civil society in Chiang Mai borrowed the idea of local wisdom and combined it with the globalization trend after the 1997 economic crisis. This gave rise to Lannaism movement Chiang Mai, or the Lanna Heritage Network, which eventually led to the establishment of Lanna Wisdom School. Influenced by the intellectual activities of the Lanna Wisdom School, interested NGOs also organized events that brought in not only the knowledge but also local sages from Mae Chaem. Even though the Mae Chaem sages were not the only represented group, these events helped feature Mae Chaem as a cultural space, especially to visualize the Western Lanna aesthetics in Mae Chaem as exemplified by the way of life of only few communities in the Mae Chaem watershed. After the 2014 coup d'état, the Pracharat Policy created by the Thai state has become an important instrument for entirely controlling resources and political power. The Pracharat Policy has defined a structure in which power is preserved for those at the top level, which then controls the people and civil society at the bottom level. This means that the state has full power to command via the implementation of the Pracharat Policy, leading to the creation of the Mae Chaem Model (smoke and fire problems) and Mae Chaem Model Plus (land tenure problems, household debt problems). Ultimately, the two Mae Chaem Model projects have implicitly shown that the people and civil society are only tools that those in power use in social action, which has not been successful according to the objectives of the projects. There have also been cases of power reshuffling and power struggle within the operational network of the Pracharat Policy, in which local people were not the driving force in decision-making. The continuity and change of knowledge and knowledge practice of all social groups have led to the political arrangement in the Mae Chaem watershed communities. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the movement of the four social forces has a relationship as a social network, forming new social activities in each period. The construction of the four social forces has made Mae Chaem a political arena through social action. This research shows the continuity of social action that has occurred with the Mae Chaem watershed communities in relation to social structure, economic base, and politics from the local to the national level.