Table Of ContentSTATES OF TRANSGRESSION:
POLITICS, VIOLENCE, AND AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATION IN NORTHERN
THAILAND
A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Tyrell Caroline Haberkorn
August 2007
© 2007 Tyrell Caroline Haberkorn
STATES OF TRANSGRESSION: POLITICS, VIOLENCE, AND AGRARIAN
TRANSFORMATION IN NORTHERN THAILAND
Tyrell Caroline Haberkorn, Ph.D.
Cornell University 2007
This dissertation is about progressive alliances across boundaries of class and
space, state and para-state repression, and the meanings of politics in Thailand.
Taking the social and historiographic silences surrounding the period between the 14
October 1973 movement for democracy and the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup as
a point of departure, I locate my analysis of the struggle for hegemony in rural
contention in Chiang Mai and Lamphun provinces in northern Thailand. Employing a
comparative frame with Gramscian and subaltern studies of South Asia and Latin
America, I foreground farmers as central political and historical actors. I draw on oral
histories, fieldnotes, newspaper accounts, and state and activist archival documents to
illustrate conflict, contention, and collaboration among state actors, progressive farmer
and student activists, and landowners.
I argue that the unprecedented collaboration between farmers and students
around land rent struggles between 1973 and 1976 was marked by two kinds of
transgression – those of class position and space. I analyze a string of public, brutal
assassinations of leaders of the Farmers’ Federation of Thailand (FFT). Thirty years
later, the assassins of the FFT leaders have not been identified or prosecuted, although
speculation by surviving activists identifies a combination of state, para-state, and elite
landowning forces as those behind the assassinations. I argue that this continuing
inability to name the assassins has created a persistent climate of fear for those who
challenge both state and private hegemonic forces in Thailand. By considering the
varied Thai state responses of denial, inaction, and occasional solidarity following the
assassinations of the farmers, I argue that states are necessarily heterogeneous. I trace
this heterogeneity to its limit by examining a seemingly bizarre series of police
protests following the assassinations of farmer leaders. I conclude by offering the first
critical analysis of arbitrary detention and re-education of activists following the 6
October 1976 massacre and coup. By taking the illumination of repression that has
been hidden as a methodological imperative, I also contribute to understanding how
silence and denial are constitutive of the historical record across time and space.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Tyrell Caroline Haberkorn received a B.A. in Cultural Studies and Creative Writing
from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999. She received an M.A.
in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University in 2003, and a Ph.D. in 2007.
In August 2007, she will begin teaching in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at
Colgate University.
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for my mother, who taught me to love knowledge
for my father, who believes in doing the right thing
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“To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used
to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life
around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue
beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never
power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To
never look away. And never, never, to forget.”
– Arundhati Roy
“Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas.
The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free.
But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to
save us as women, as human. There are only old and
forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and
recognitions from within ourselves – along with the
renewed courage to try them out. And we must constantly
encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the
heretical ideas that our dreams imply, and so many of our
old ideas disparage.”
– Audre Lorde
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I want to thank my special committee at Cornell University. My chair,
Andrew Willford offered advice, critique, and joy at every moment of imagining,
researching, and writing this dissertation. His generosity, as a scholar, teacher, and
person is unparalleled. Over the last seven years, through email and real-time
conversations about Thai politics, Ajarn Thak Chaloemtiarana has taught me how to
speak truth to power. He also meticulously edited every Thai translation and
proofread every Thai footnote in this dissertation, saving me from errors both grave
and careless. Shelley Feldman introduced me to the work of Philip Abrams, which
animates much of this dissertation. Her rigor and commitment as a scholar is inspiring,
and her advice to hold the writing close to me especially when it was hard carried me
through many long days and nights. Tamara Loos’ enthusiasm about my academic
and activist work has been life-giving. She challenged me to cultivate compassion for
everyone I wrote about, not only those to whose politics I felt closest. Finally,
Viranjini Munasinghe pushed me to ask broad questions, even as I tried very hard to
write an area studies monograph.
While I was conducting dissertation research between 2003 and 2005, I was
affiliated with the Department of History in the Faculty of Humanities at Chiang Mai
University. During that time, Ajarn Attachak Sattayanurak was a very generous
advisor. He wrote me countless letters of introduction, listened to my incoherent
ramblings about the recent Thai past, and gave me indispensable advice.
The National Research Council of Thailand granted me permission to conduct
research and helped me gain access to the National Archives in Bangkok as well as the
Chiang Mai branch. The Thai-U.S. Educational Foundation (Fulbright), especially
P’Siriporn Sornsiri, supported my research and helped me with many administrative
concerns.
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My dissertation research was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation
Research Abroad grant, an International Research Travel Grant from the Cornell
University Graduate School, and an Alice Hanson Cook Award from the Department
of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. In addition, support
for predissertation research in 2001 and 2002 came from the Department of
Anthropology at Cornell University, while the Southeast Asia Program gave me
funding for a follow-up research trip during fall 2006.
In addition to my dissertation committee, I was fortunate to have many
teachers and unofficial advisors throughout this process. My first academic home in
Thailand was the Chiang Mai University Women’s Studies Center, where I was a
Fulbright fellow in 1999-2000. Ajarn Virada Somswasdi welcomed me into the work
of the center then and again when I returned to Chiang Mai to conduct dissertation
research. Ajarn Kasian Tejapira allowed me to join his class on the cultural politics of
the 1970s at Thammasat University during June-August 2002. Ajarn Ngampit
Jagacinski was first my Thai-language professor, and then later became my friend. Her
support and encouragement has been crucial to the completion of my dissertation.
Ajarn Kanoksak Kaewthep, Ajarn Thanet Aphornsuvan, Ajarn Chalong Soontravanich,
Coeli Barry, Michael Montesano, John Dennis, Anna Marie Smith, Peter Vandergeest,
and Peter Bell have all offered comments and criticism at different points.
The librarians at the Chiang Mai University Library, the Thai Information
Center at Chulalongkorn University, the National Archives, and the Thammasat
University Archives were unfailingly helpful as I tried to locate materials which were
and were not present. When I returned to Cornell in August 2005, first Ajarn David
Wyatt and then Gregory Green helped me locate materials in Kroch Library.
Nij Tontisirin at Cornell University made the two beautiful maps of Thailand
included in this dissertation.
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Description:critical analysis of arbitrary detention and re-education of activists following the 6. October 1976 Rather than take the categories as fixed and natural, I am.
