Revisiting frontiers as transitional spaces in Thailand

• Published in: The Geographical journal Vol. 175; no. 2; pp. 124 - 132
• Main Author: HIRSCH, PHILIP
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2009; Blackwell Publishing
• Subjects: Agricultural land; Agriculture; boundary; Conservation; Crop economics; economic conditions; Economic geography; Economic resources; forest; Forest conservation; Forest reserves; Forestry; Forests; frontier; Land settlement; Land use; migration; Natural resources; peri-urban; Politics; Q1; Q3; regionalism; Resource management; Rice; Social change; Space; Sustainable agriculture; Thailand; Urban agriculture; Urban sociology; Thailand
• ISSN: 0016-7398; 1475-4959
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2009.00321.x

This paper explores the notion of frontiers as 'in-between' spaces that define particular transitions. Three contexts of frontier and their rapidly changing nature form the basis of the analysis. Agricultural frontiers (typically between farmland and forest) are defined by new relations of production and interplays between conservation, shifting modes of agriculture and natural resource use and management. Peri-urban frontiers (between countryside and city) are taken beyond their desakota/chaan-meuang locations to a more generic interplay between urbanity and rurality in defining livelihood and identity. National frontiers (between nation states with sharply different political and economic conditions) are transcended from above in the form of new regionalisms, and, from below, in migrations and other transboundary influences and flows. The paper proposes the frontier as both a spatial and temporal heuristic for understanding development and associated societal transitions in Thailand.