Mapping households' coping mechanisms in the era of recession : peri-urban village case studies in northern Thailand

This thesis examines the survival strategies and coping mechanisms employed by Thai households in the face of the Thailand's 1997 economic recession and the structural adjustment policies employed by the Thai governments. The thesis deploys recent developments in the conceptualisation of Gender Analysis and uses the 'Livelihood System Approach' developed by Grown and Sebstad (1989) to study poor women's livelihood strategies as an umbrella concept which is complemented by Moser's 'Asset Vulnerability Framework' (1998). These concepts are applied to a study of households in two poor peri-urban villages in northern Thailand. Thus the study contributes to existing knowledge about the survival strategies of households, particularly peri-urban poor households and their members. The critical and original contributions of this thesis mainly derive from the intensive fieldwork on sample households which have been able to present a direct account of their differentiated experiences. In exploring various modes of coping mechanisms, the research centres on labour assets as the essential resources of survival and subsistence and indicates the constraints placed up on these assets, especially male labour. In this context, female labour is found to play a central role in the sample households' coping strategies. In addition, this research highlights the importance, in the period of recession and transition, of the social capital of local women's groups which has long been invisible in Thai civic discourses and movements. This contribution consolidates the existing literature on the essential roles of local women's groups which encompass both providing needed resources and bringing women's needs into the centre of the analysis. Further, the shortcomings and limitations of social capital are specified in terms of De la Rocha's' Poverty of Resources' Thesis. In addition the research suggests that not only the household's stock of assets but also its composition and human resource base influence its coping strategy. Moreover, the survival of marginal households is also affected by the pattern of the local political economy of the area in which their home villages are located.