Rural Thai
Cow Poop Powers Thai Stoves
A Rural Thai village that is off the grid is evangelizing about the value of renewable energy: bio-gas from cow manure for cooking, and solar panels for lighting homes. Last week Agence France-Presse featured the story of how community leaders in Pa Deng village have formed a network of alternative energy users—and advocates. Pa Deng […]
Thai Passion for Water
Rural Thai society depends so much on abundant rainfall and numerous rivers to grow rice and fish that water is often featured in their national holidays and family events. Last week, Pattaya Today, a newspaper from the tourist city of Pattaya, published an interesting PR piece generated by the Tourism Authority of Thailand that described […]
Changing Knowledge and Wisdom in Thailand [journal article review]
Can the Theravadan Buddhist approach to wisdom co-exist alongside the modern, imported knowledge of the Kingdom of Thailand? That is the question asked by author Zane Ma Rhea as she takes a closer look at traditional concepts of knowledge and wisdom in the face of an increasingly globalized Thailand. To start, Ma Rhea explains some […]
Social Media Sweep Thailand
Some peaceful societies wrestle with whether or not to adopt the latest technologies, but not the Rural Thai—they see only advantages in using their 4G mobile devices. The Ifaluk prohibit many things, such as motorboats, that might corrupt their traditional culture. The Amish are famed for evaluating all new technological devices because they want to […]
Rural Thai Village Copes with Climate Change
A coastal fishing village in Rural Thailand is being submerged by the rising seas, according to a haunting feature in Al Jazeera last week published as an exclamation point to the climate change negotiations in Paris.
LGBTI Families in Rural Thailand
Although Thailand basically tolerates same-sex couples, the more deeply conservative Rural Thai in the northeastern region of the country consider lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersexed people to be abnormal. According to an article in the Bangkok Post last week, couples within the LGBTI community are having a lot of problems, especially with their desires to raise children.
Improving the Status of Women in Rural Thailand
As far back as 1946, Ruth Benedict argued that the Thai culture of male dominance is based on their religious practices and on their interpretation of Buddhist doctrines (Phillips 1965). Keyes (1984) amplified those ideas by focusing specifically on Rural Thai society and on the salient fact that, in that nation, only men could become […]
Happiness and Peacefulness in Thailand [journal article review]
The opening paragraph in a recent journal article by Piriya Pholphirul about Thailand begins with the amazingly hopeful statement that “‘happiness’ is the ultimate human desire.” Skeptical readers, living in societies that place their highest values on wealth, power, position, or status, might well question such an assertion. A Wikipedia article, the “Culture of Thailand,” […]
The Popularity of Redshirts [journal article review]
The word “redshirt” has very different meanings in the United States and Rural Thailand. In the U.S., student intercollegiate athletes normally are permitted to play on their teams for only four years. If they are in five-year undergraduate programs, during that fifth year (often the first one) they may be part of a team but […]
Human Trafficking in Rural Thailand
Education is the best way to prevent child trafficking in Rural Thailand, argues Mickey Choothesa, the founder of the anti-trafficking group Children of Southeast Asia (COSA). In an article published last week in the online magazine Vice.com, Mickey points out that he devotes himself to saving one kid at a time, day by day, village […]
