The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

REVIEWS 399
assets-to play their role in the reciprocal functioning of the kindred
assoctat10n. Piker found that one-third of village families were no
longer members of such associations, and keenly felt their loss. To seek
other forms of security they had three choices: to rent land, but the
proportion paid in rent or kind reflected sharp increases in the price of
land; to become an agricultural wage labourer, supplementing meagre
and casual earnings by handicrafts and petty trade; or to migrate to
other regions seeking land, or to towns and especially to Bangkok.
(The author estimated that about a quarter of the village population
has left the village since 1945). Piker considers that two generations
of landless farmers have so far maintained themselves at a rea1>onable
level of subsistence by providing services for their better-off, landed
neighbours: because the increased earnings of those who do own land
have enabled them to pay for these services. But the social relations
of the landless have drastically altered for the worse: they no longer
revolve around the enduring form of a reciprocally based kindred association,
but are settled according to a precarious and inferior
employer-employee relationship. With these changes in occupation and
·status, Ptker concludes, can be seen the emergence of a rural proletariat
and of social class distinctions, even though these are as yet poorly
recognised.
Now for the other contributions, roughly in order of appearance.
A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara skilfully deptct the differences
between rule in Sukhothai and Ayuthaya: the one based on personal
loyalty to a paternalistic ruler, who protected his people, promoted
welfare and settled disputes in accordance with his sense of justice; the
other depending on a fixed body of civil law and a large and increasing
bureaucracy, which encouraged stability rather than (as they put it) personal
liberty. The editors in their stimulating introduction draw
attention to the continuing dialectic between bureaucratised formal
hierarchy and personalised informal clientsbip. (Unfortunately, the
rather high expectations aroused by their introduction are not altogether
realised in the body of the work.)
Thomas Kirsch and Jasper Ingersoll discuss the understanding of
identity through merit-making (especially in groups) and belief in karma,
which place the individual in a recognised hierarchy of stages on the way