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In the case of Thailand, a recent social phenomenon of cross-cultural marriages of village women from northeastern (or locally known as Isan) Thailand with Western men has been observed. Through their cross-cultural marriages and transnational migration to work and reside abroad, these village women have become displaced persons from their homes of origin. My research thus aims to understand this recent social phenomenon through lived experiences and memories of those village women who have chosen to marry Western men with the use of cultural anthropology approaches. Important research issues are focused on their long-term personal and community histories of displacement, their links between cultures, peoples, and identities transcending national boundaries, as well as their primary concerns, priorities, struggles, and options. My study also intends to investigate how those women have rebuilt their lives, families, and communities in the world of Diaspora. Special reference is given to the Thai-Lao (or Isan-Lao) ethnic group in northeastern Thailand with whom I have long-term relationship through working together in several community development projects and conducting anthropological fieldwork beginning from the late 1980s up to the present time.

Specifically in the case of village women from Isan who have chosen to marry Western men, I argue that after marriages, the majority have generally moved to live with their husbands and worked overseas. However, they come to visit their parents, relatives and close friends at their homes of origin from time to time. Preliminary intensive field work to collect primary data and information in a village of Roi-Et Province and elsewhere in northeastern Thailand was already conducted from 2004 to 2005. Initial findings confirm that global-local cultural relations have allowed these village women to construct their locality in the nation and worldwide development and adopt some aspects of Western cultures to reflect on their traditional ideology and practices of gender, marriage, and sexuality. The recent phenomenon of cross-cultural marriages of Thai women to Western men has also resulted in a strong sense of those women belonging to and connecting with the locality of their original homes, no matter where they have migrated to and reside. Furthermore, interestingly, they have made use of cultural hybridity comprising aspects of morality deriving from popular Buddhist beliefs and the global culture to reconstruct identities of their changing families at their homes of origin and abroad. In addition, it is argued that rapid economic and social changes following the modernizing process of the country, particularly during the past four decades of national development plans and implementation, have exposed traditions of female migration, gender roles and relations. These changes have also opened up marriage and sexuality into inquiry, and perhaps more importantly, revealed changing practices well ahead of changes in the norms that support traditional practices. Through transnational migratory experiences, those women have created a social space where conventional Thai norms and practices of gender roles and relations, marriage and sexuality, are exposed to scrutiny and negotiation. It would be wrong to view those village women either as passive victims or liberated characters independent from the existing social structures of regional, national, and worldwide development. Rather, they are conscious social actors aspire to attain economic success and family happiness by redefining and reinterpreting their cultural values in light of their own local cultural practices and those introduced by Western thinking of the global context that would serve their current interests and positions, despite their constrained and subordinated positions within the existing system.

本発表は、低地稲作地帯と密接な社会的、経済的関係をもちながらも、これまでほとんど研究のおこなわれてこなかったラグナ州「高地」のココヤシ栽培小農社会をとりあげ、そこに展開されてきた土地への関係行為を歴史的観点から考察する。

ラグナ州で一般に「高地」と呼ばれるバナハオ山の山腹地域に住む人々は、しばしば地主的土地所有形態の見られる低地稲作地域と対照させながら、「高地」には地主小作関係も、階層の差もないとのべる。だが、実際には、村には住民が一目おき、社会の序列の上位に位置するメイルパ（土地持ち）と呼ばれる者がいる。一見するところ、メイルパは土地所有に基づくカテゴリーのようにみえる。しかし、土地の生産性に基づく所有地形態だけでは説明できない、住民の価値観に基づいた住民同士の分類がある。

住民は、土地にまつわる出自や居住地、所有地の管理状態ならびに、村祭りや宗教行事における酒や食事のふるまい、貧困層へのほどこしといった日常的な行動様式を土地と関連させて、メイルパに対して名誉や威信を意味づけてきた。このことは土地が多様な価値を内包する複合的な全体であることを示唆している。

本発表では、19世紀後半に村の父祖たちが「高地」の開拓を始めた後、メイルパがいかに創出され、維持されてきたかを軸に話を進めながら、メイルパとそうでない者による社会関係の構築と崩壊、土地相続の規模をめぐるキョウダイ間の確執、メイルパへの強い帰属意識を持つ者の戦略等を取り上げ、常に揺れ動いている社会の状況を描き出す。また、その際、開拓者の出身地である「高地」の中心地、N町のバヤン（市街地）の形成過程と、「高地」を取り巻くグローバルな社会・経済的な変化が人々の土地をめぐる社会関係にどのような影響を与えたかについても触れることにしたい。

It is estimated that agro-based industry contributes about 3 percent of GDP and 43 percent of industrial output value. The level of industrial formation in terms of the ratio of the manufacturing sector to GDP is also　stagnant around 8 to 9 percent. The major problem of most agro-based industries is found to be insufficient raw materials supply which could be ascribed to (i) the government’s policy conflict of self-sufficiency vs. export, (ii) raw materials procurement policy of SEEs at lower than market prices, and (iii) highly distorted exchange rate and macroeconomic instability affecting the costs of imported goods for import-dependent agro-based industries. Since agriculture and agro-industry have direct input-output relationship, problems of demand and supply imposed by government policy in agricultural sector become the constraint to agro-based industry. In the mill areas of SEEs industry, declining raw material supply and poor performances of factories are often generating vicious circle. Stagnant growth of agro-based industry could also be ascribed to the existence of large number of inefficient SEEs factories within its ownership structure.

The seiminar points out how vicious circle could be converted into virtuous circle by adopting market-driven contractual linkage between farms　and factories, and it calls for the management reforms of SEEs, strengthening the capacity of private entrepreneurs, managing macroeconomic stability and domestic capital formation.