Economic Transformation in a Hmong Village of Thailand

The article presents one of the montagnard societies of Thailand, the Hmong, and considers the traditional and the modern patterns of wealth. A set of observations of the visible signs of wealth in one village is further developed by a detailed appraisal of the economic performance for the year 1991. A synthesis of data reveals that within the context of a more and more complete integration with the market economy and the increasing monetarization of exchanges, the maintenance, and even the augmentation, of household wealth seems to be tied to the ownership of the means of production to the detriment of the customary cooperation within the lineage. The possessors of these means grow well-off - or, at least, have the means to do so -while those lacking them are, at best, in a phase of economic stagnation which mutual help cannot suffice to overcome. The result is necessarily a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. his article is an analysis of social change in a Green Hmong village in Northern Thailand. Field work was conducted over two periods: from September 1991 to August 1992, and from February to April 1993. The main goal of the research was to develop a comprehensive understanding of such phenomena as sedentarisation and the decline of swidden agriculture, the disappearance of the opium poppy-based economy, increased dependence on the national market due to the imposed conversion to commercial agriculture, and the monetizing of economic exchanges and a new reliance on exterior markets for the purchase of goods that have become necessary to group reproduction in Hmong society. The addition to the analysis of tourism, a new factor for transformation which has been neglected in past research on social change in the highlands of Southeast Asia, is original. To plant firmly the analysis in its ethnic context, we will first consider the traditional and the modem patterns of wealth common to most Hmong societies of Southeast Asia, especially those of Thailand and Laos where most of the ethnographic research on this group was conducted over the last 40 years. A set of observations of the visible signs of wealth in one Hmong village will follow, further developed by a detailed appraisal of the economic performance for the year 1991. A synthesis of data is made thereafter, and conclusion highlights the specific contribution of this research to the understanding of the pattern of social and economic change in Hmong society.