RCSD invites all to join a public lecture “One Northern Thai Village in Chiang Mai: a 40-year Rural Transition and Responses of Rural People to Opportunities” by Tetsuro Fujikura, Ph.D., Visiting Associate Professor of Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University on Thursday, 20 February 2025 at the Subaltern meeting room, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University.

The village surveyed, Muang Kham, Pong Yeang, Mae Rim in Chiang Mai, is a quintessential northern Thai village. The life history of rural households, reconfigured in a case study, indicates that improved market accessibility has benefitted rural people. Paved roads improved accessibility for the first generation in their 50s. As laterite roads were replaced by paved roads, electricity, motorization, and a great wave of commercialization came. Moreover, information technology also provides accessibility for the second generation, the family’s primary income earners. The author discusses how households there have accumulated capital and deployed investment throughout their life history. The study describes villagers’ active response to opportunities.