Each social group has its different lifestyle and everyday activities that determine the types and levels of interaction among and between groups. The data in this section is mostly based on my observations in Nam Jam. Most local villager families have at least one or two members at home all of the time. Some are elders and some work from home such as wood turning, garment sewing, food stores and in grocery shops. The younger generations either go to work or study during the day.
Nam Jam is now a diverse village, and it is difficult to talk of it in simple terms as “a community”. Nevertheless, continuing relations among families of longstanding residents bind people together in a range of ongoing, but nevertheless changing, sets of social relationships. The villagers know each other very well and most are related through marriage. They engage in several everyday activities; for example, a few families grow vegetables and corn for consumption, some produce is given away to relatives and neighbours, and two families sell their produce locally.
One elderly woman makes a traditional northern seasoning paste, fermented peanut wrapped in banana leaves, for sale locally. People still share food and vegetables with their relatives from time to time. Vegetables that grow along people’s fences are for collection by anyone. Some families have dogs, cats and a few have chickens which roam unrestrained.
Some people stay mainly in the village, especially the elders, and one of the regular activities of those who remain in the village, especially the elders, is sweeping the dried leaves and small garbage from their yards and burning it either in the morning or in the late afternoon. In the evening, after they finish their work for the day, the women prepare dinner while some men go for drinks at the local grocery shops before dinner. The old men enjoy rice whisky, the young men drink beer. The local shops become the places for people to meet casually and socialise in the evening. The 1st and the 16th of each month are underground lottery days. A few female villagers become local agents and will walk around the community collecting people’s numbers. Almost every long-term resident family in the village buys
numbers in these lotteries hoping for luck. This is also a time when people chat and update their stories. Usually, people go to the local markets for food every second day. Those who have cars shop for convenience goods at nearby mega stores once a month or every two months.
Buddhist ritual ceremonies are among the events that draw people together in groups. There are four local temples (wat), two in Mu 5, (Wat Nong Khwai and Wat Doi Pao) and two in adjacent villages (Wat Tong Kai and Wat Phan Tao). Villagers usually go to the nearby temple. People in Hua Thung go to Wat Phan Tao as it is closer than the others and their parents used to go there. Wat Doi Pao is located at the edge of the national park near Nam Jam so many people from Nam Jam usually go there. Wat Nong Khwai is located in the Nong Khwai cluster, so most people in Nong Khwai go there. Some Nam Jam villagers go to Wat Nong Khwai and Wat Tong Kai as their parents usually did before them. People have their own small socialised groups. Nowadays, the one event that draws most villagers together is a funeral. Relatives and friends of the bereaved family come together from all areas.
Funerals are still organised by families. They can last from a few days to almost a week, depending upon the status of the deceased and his/her family. The relatives prepare the food themselves with help from other relatives and neighbours. This is a time when people socialise in large groups. However, the younger generations do not participate as much as their parents’ generation because often they do not know their relatives in other villages. They tend to work or study outside the village and maintain fewer social relations with their peers in Nam Jam (Gray 1990). Therefore, in time, this form of communal participation may gradually disappear. Other ceremonies such as house warmings and weddings have also undergone change, so that nowadays instead of cooking in the village for events such as a funeral, people prefer ordering food from restaurants. The annual village spirit worshipping in May has been continued but the young generation does not participate.
As suggested earlier, in the past, before people engaged in farming, everyone had to help maintain the weir and water channels. During this time, people communicated and planned for their livelihoods. Now, people are busy with their
individual activities. When the village head, the TAO or the district authorities want to announce news or communicate with the people, they use communal speakers in each community instead of calling for face to face meetings organised monthly. One communal activity that can be counted on is village development day, which is held once or twice a year to clear the grass and tree branches that obstruct the village roads and communal places. One person from each family is expected to participate but there are cases where people are too busy with their own activities. They prefer to take the option of paying a 100 baht fee or buy drinks for the group, rather than participate.
Figure 4.28: Village communal work on the development day in Nam Jam (November 2011).
The open community area before there was a community building. The small building at the right corner is a community spirit house and the house behind big tree belongs to an urban middle class family.
Figure 4.29: Village communal work on the development day, Nam Jam (May 2012)
Figure 4.30: Villagers were waiting at the community area after offering food at the spirit house (May 2012).
The building at the back is for storing community assets, on the right hand side is the new building built in 2012. The area has been fenced and the ground was paved by gravel. The house behind the big tamarind tree is my house. This tamarind tree was felled in late 2012 to make space for a new sala.
Figure 4.31: The new sala in the community area. (July 2013)
Figure 4.32: Village annual spirit worshipping day at the spirit house, Nam Jam (May 2012)
As regards the dormitory residents and the Tai Yai construction workers, they work mostly from eight o’clock in the morning to five o’clock in the afternoon. Once a week they take turns to have a break. They normally leave the village around 7.30 a.m. with a packed lunch and return around 5.30 p.m. At those times, one hears the noise of pickup trucks transporting construction workers to the sites and the motorcycles of many people working at Royal Flora Gardens and Night Safari. When they return, they often buy goods from the local shops. Not everyone knows their neighbours in the dormitory in which they live. Only the few who enjoy talking get to know others. Residents, who are ethnic minorities, a fond of speaking in their mother tongue so they rarely group together with the others. Some still do not know others of the same ethnicity, similar to the Tai Yai workers. Many dormitory residents said that they are so tired after work that they rarely socialise with others.
The commuting garment sewing people, who come to work in the village, mostly spend time at their work. On occasion, they buy their lunches or goods from the local shops. It is the same with the landless Hmong farmers. They interact only with the people around them.
In the case of the urban middle class newcomers, most are still working, even though some have reached retirement age (60 years). Many of them work in town, often teaching at the universities. Every house has at least one car. Some work from home using the internet for communication. Some stay at home to take care of their small children. Most of the newcomers have cleaners to take care of the house at least once a week. These are often villagers in the village. One foreign family has a family stay with them to do the cleaning and the gardening. Two families have pure-bred dogs. The occupants of one house often listens to classical music in the morning and many others play different types of English music. In general, they do not attend the local temple regularly. Only for special Buddhist events, they often visit the well known temples in town or nearby forest temples. Most of the middle class people prefer organic food and enjoy shopping for food in the local markets. They tend to eat out more often than the other social groups and sometimes invite friends along for dinner.
They do not regularly participate at full level in communal activities. They rarely attend meetings or village development days. However, they often briefly join in the community ceremonies such as funerals and weddings as guests if they are invited. As with other villagers, they also give an envelope with money to the host of those ceremonies. The Thai urban middle class newcomers join in these events more than the foreign families. Also, when there is a requirement for financial support for development activities in the village, they readily contribute. There are a few exceptions of Thai members, who are happy to join in local events as members or hosts of events. These few people have local backgrounds that stem from their parents and their work.
Most of the urban middle class newcomers are quite individualistic and private. They do not socialise much among the newcomer families and only associate with the villagers who are their close neighbours. When they first started building their houses until their first year of living in the village, they tended to interact more with the local villagers and other middle class newcomers around them. However, the interaction gradually decreased as each family privately does activity on their own in their houses. When they want to do things outside the village, they just drive cars with closed windows. Their solid, high fences and closed gates, especially of the houses located inside the small lanes, physically prevents social interaction with others. Their residences are in the village but their real communities and friends are outside of the village.
It may be seen from each social group’s working activities and lifestyles that they rarely interact with each other. The temporary residents only know people such as grocery shops owners and some villagers who live nearby. They have little chance to meet with members of the urban middle class group. The workers said they occasionally see their faces, and are vaguely aware that they live in large houses in the village. As regards the urban middle class newcomers, they know few people in the village apart from their close neighbours. Some villagers said that the only visit they had to the urban middle class newcomers’ houses was when the houses were
under construction. After that, they felt reluctant to approach the houses. Even though different social groups live in proximity to one another, each has its own groups and lifestyles. Therefore, they hardly mix and interact.
4.7 Conclusion
The agrarian frontier of Nam Jam has been shifted a great deal in the last 40 years from full agrarian context to mixed physical landscape with diverse social groups living in proximity to one another as a result of recent rapid development in the area. Large areas of agricultural land in the village have been bought mostly for the outsiders’ residences by both businesses and individual people as a result of urbanisation.
Diverse migrations in the village have occurred, from out-migration of the local villagers to improve their standard of living during the 1980s to in-migration of different social groups from the early-2000s onward. Through a series of migrations, social context and class relations in the village have changed significantly. Class mobility has occurred among the long-term villagers and in relations to the other in-migrated social groups through migrations, backgrounds, changes in occupations, levels of education and lifestyles.
Agricultural production and values from the agrarian period are gradually decreasing through the generations but have not completely disappeared. At the same time, urban-oriented ways of living and values are steadily increasing. Rurality and urbanity are interpenetrated in the physical and social landscapes. This process has happened from the outside urbanisation and people striving for development from the inside.
Currently, in-migration, in particular, has brought different social groups that usually are at a distance from one another to live in proximity. In consequence, a new class composition and class encounters have occurred. Interactions of different social classes are now practiced in everyday life, which differs from what each group may
have anticipated. In this rapidly changing village with diverse social groups, such encounters and interactions have the potential to lead to a new pattern of class conflict, shifting from problems around traditional means of production to struggling to deal with different values and lifestyles. The next chapter will discuss how the rural frontier has been negotiated and shaped through everyday interactions within this new class composition.
CHAPTER 5