STATES 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. iii for my mother, who taught me to love knowledge for my father, who believes in doing the right thing iv “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 v vi 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. vi 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. vii I presented portions of my dissertation-in-progress at the meetings of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Oaxaca, the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, the Risk and Breakdown conference at Duke University, a workshop hosted by the Challenges of Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia project in Toronto, the American Anthropological Association meetings, the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, SUNY-Purchase, and the History Seminar Series at Chulalongkorn University. Audiences in each of these places gave me invaluable feedback and criticism. Throughout the last seven years, Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program has given me an unparalleled intellectual community. I wrote the bulk of this dissertation in my office at the Kahin Center, surrounded by Nina Hien, Jane Ferguson, Doreen Lee, and Rick Ruth as fellow dissertation writers. Jon Perry made life in the Kahin Center seamless, even when I tried to take down the Northeast power grid one late December evening. Nancy Loncto and Wendy Treat in SEAP in Uris Hall, Barb Donnell, Margaret Rolfe, and Donna Duncan in the Department of Anthropology in McGraw Hall made all bureaucratic difficulties disappear. Sarah Hale in the Graduate School at Cornell resolved all Fulbright-Hays difficulties. Sarah Demo made all interactions with the Cornell Institutional Review Board smooth and educational. In Chiang Mai, P’Po, Jane Real, Pranom Somwong, Jackie Pollock, Judy Pasimio, and Jere Locke kept me anchored in fighting against injustices occurring in the present. Jane Ferguson shared research stories and Oot with me. Jim Glassman and Thitiya Phaobtong told me about the most delicious sai oua in Chiang Mai and have urged me to keep struggling throughout this process. Patrick Pierce’s excitement about each phase of my research kept me going and his own work for justice inspired me to take comfort in each part of the fight of being an academic/activist. Ginger viii Norwood let me help her build her earth house in Mae Rim, met me for reflexology and ice cream and asked hard questions.