Failed internationalism and social movement decline

Glassman et al. / Failed Internationalism

FAILED INTERNATIONALISMAND SOCIAL MOVEMENT DECLINE

The Cases of South Korea and Thailand

Jim Glassman, Bae-Gyoon Park, and Young-Jin Choi

ABSTRACT: In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, South Korean social movementsconverted a former military dictatorship into a more democratic regime, while rais-ing hopes for yet more improvements in the position of Korean workers and farm-ers. In the 1990s, Thai social movements also cast aside a military dictatorship andopened a period in which popular movements seemed poised to make yet greatergains. Yet as of 2008 it is apparent that social movements in both South Korea andThailand have faced increased difficulties and have seen a number of significant set-backs. The authors of this article analyze what they take to be one of the reasons forthese setbacks: the failure of social movements in both of these countries to moresuccessfully internationalize their efforts. Failed internationalism is far from beingthe only significant factor in this social movement decline, and, moreover, it has notnecessarily occurred in precisely the same way in the South Korean and Thai cases.The authors show, however, that by analyzing similarities and differences in the pat-terns of social movement decline between South Korea and Thailand one can dis-cern some common conundrums faced quite generally by social movements in anera of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

People are used to thinking and waging struggles at the national level. Thequestion is whether the new structures of transnational mobilization willsucceed in bringing the traditional structures, which are national, alongwith them. What is certain is that this new social movement will have torely on the state while changing the state, to rely on the trade unions whilechanging the trade unions, and this entails massive work, much of it intel-lectual. — Pierre Bourdieu1

Critical Asian Studies40:3 (2008), 339–372

ISSN 1467-2715 print/1472-6033 online / 03 / 000339–34 ©2008 BCAS, Inc. DOI: 10.1080/14672710802274110

In the 1980s and 1990s, social movements in South Korea and Thailand con-founded analysts who saw monochrome military dictatorships and demobi-lized labor as the prevailing norm in the capitalist cold war states of Asia.2 InSouth Korea, a strong labor movement emerged by 1987, consolidating a num-ber of important gains for workers and eventually, by the 1990s, helping bringto power a series of governments that were not only far less repressive than pre-vious regimes but seemingly more supportive of labor and popular organiza-tions. At the same time, other Korean groups, such as militant students andradical farmers made their mark as well, not only within Korea but internation-ally, inspiring respect and sometimes emulation around the world.3 While mod-ernization theorists in the Huntingtonian mode preferred to see democraticdevelopments in Korean society as reflecting the rise of “middle-class” forces,concomitant with economic transformation, more astute analysts have notedthat Korean transformations were wrought, with blood and sweat, by the re-markable efforts of these social movements — generally against considerableopposition from the very institutional actors who later wished to celebrate andtake credit for a “democratic transition.”4

In Thailand, though the social changes seemed somewhat less dramatic thanin South Korea, they were nonetheless remarkable. In 1992, a seeminglylong-dormant movement against military dictatorship revived and, at the cost ofconsiderable bloodshed, ousted a military regime from power, opening up op-portunities for more exercise of parliamentary democracy.5 Though organizedlabor in Thailand was weaker than in South Korea, Thai workers helped pro-duce and in turn made use of the more democratic environment to engage inmore labor militancy.6 Meanwhile, an array of popular organizations strugglingover rural livelihoods and various social and environmental issues also began tohave considerable impact.7 Again, as in South Korea, conservative analysts pre-ferred to give credit for all of these changes to middle-class forces, and even to asupposedly enlightened monarch. But here too the record shows that demo-cratic openings had to be fought for by subaltern groups, who typically facedconsiderable, often lethal, resistance from those at the top of the social order.8

Since neither the South Korean nor Thai transitions were complete victories forthese social movements, involving considerable compromise with — and con-cessions to — elite forces, it is not surprising that these movements have faced on-going difficulties and are scarcely able to claim unalloyed success. Yet evenagainst the backdrop of such necessary humility it is notable that the years fromthe end of the 1990s to the present seem to have been particularly cruel to the so-

340 Critical Asian Studies 40:3 (2008)

1. Bourdieu 2003, 43–44.2. See Deyo 1989.3. Kim and Wainwright 2007.4. Cumings 2005, 342–403.5. Connors 2007.6. Ungpakorn 1997.7. Glassman 2002; Glassman 2004b.8. Ockey 2004; Connors 2007; Ungpakorn 2007.

cial movements, and it would be difficult not to conclude that backsliding has infact been considerable. In South Korea, even a strong and mobilized labormovement could not successfully overturn regressive labor legislation intro-duced in 1996 and in the wake of the Asian economic crisis labor’s position hasin many ways become even more tentative. Meanwhile, the remarkable militancyand strategic ingenuity of Korean farmers has not prevented the South Koreangovernment from moving more fully into the orbit of neoliberal globalization, in-cluding via the South Korea-USA Free Trade Agreement (FTA) — though farmermilitancy did at least keep agriculture out of the FTA.9 Nor, in spite of consider-able general public sympathy, have forces in favor of reunification with North Ko-rea been able to move the “sunshine policy” forward very far against ongoingopposition from Korean conservatives and the U.S. government.

In Thailand, the regression has in some ways been yet more striking. Populardemands on the Thai state had made enough of an impression that the post-cri-sis Thai Rak Thai (TRT) government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatrafound it expedient to provide a series of populist and Keynesian measures, suchas national health insurance and debt moratoriums for farmers. But at the sametime the TRT government engaged in conventional forms of repression of politi-cal opposition, limiting the space for left-leaning social movement groups.10 By2006, Thaksin had in fact generated considerable political opposition, butmuch of this now came from elite forces, including the military and the monar-chy, and the former (with backing from the latter) eventually ousted him in theSeptember 2006 coup.11 Remarkably — and serving as rather tragic testimony tothe degeneration of Thai social movements — there was very little opposition tothis coup from social movement organizations, even as the coup regime beganto dismantle numerous TRT programs, including some that are very popularwith workers and throughout the countryside.12

On one level, this devolution of South Korean and Thai social movementsmight be seen through the lens provided by world systems theorists. As Imman-uel Wallerstein has noted, social movements through the twentieth centuryhave been victims of their own success. They aimed to take state power, and tosome extent they did so: revolutionary regimes in the former socialist world, so-cial democratic reformist regimes in the industrial capitalist world, independ-ent nation states in the postcolonial world. But having achieved power at thelevel of national states, they then had to confront the reality that power in theglobal political economy also moves, to a considerable extent, through transna-tional networks such as global commodity chains dominated by transnationalcorporations (TNCs). Successful conquest of state power by no means providesthe ability to completely control these networks.13 Both South Korean and Thaisocial movements could be evaluated through this lens. South Korean activists

Glassman et al. / Failed Internationalism 341

9. Wainwright 2007.10. Glassman 2004a; Pasuk and Baker 2004.11. Ungpakorn 2007.12. Ibid.13. Wallerstein 2000.

succeeded to the extent of getting a former sympathizer with the labor move-ment and advocate of reunification, Kim Dae-Jung, elected as president. Yet Kimwas immediately pressured by transnational capital into numerous forms of ac-commodation, including signing a secret agreement with the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF), prior to the 1998 election, insuring South Korea’s com-pliance with the terms of the IMF’s structural adjustment program (SAP).

Thai activists were not quite as visibly successful, but the populist measuresof the TRT government reflected their increased role in shaping Thai politics.Yet the Thai state under TRT, too, made considerable concessions to transna-tional capital, including moving toward a number of FTAs and reopening thecase for privatization of various state enterprises, ultimately engendering theantagonism of state enterprise union leaders in the process.14

As important as international pressures on reformist states may be, we none-theless find such an account incomplete. In this article we want to analyze whatwe consider to be important origins of social movement failure in the activitiesand interests of domestic actors. In particular, we think that one contributingfactor in the devolution of South Korean and Thai social movements has beenthe failure of these movements to more successfully internationalize their strug-gles. Specifically, South Korean and Thai middle-class groups that would needto play active roles in helping to internationalize social movement struggles inprogressive ways have more often — out of a combination of interest and iden-


IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (R) and World Bank president RobertZoellick (L) during the spring 2008 meetings of the IMF/World Bank at the IMF Headquar-ters in Washington, D.C. Prior to his election in 1998, Korean president Kim Dae-Jungwas pressured into signing a secret agreement “insuring South Korea’s compliance with theterms of the IMF’s structural adjustment program.” (Credit: IMF/Eugene Salazar)

14. Brown and Hewison 2005; Ungpakorn 2007.

tity — chosen to fold their activities into more conservative nationalist frame-works. As Pierre Bourdieu has suggested, in the opening quotation, intellectu-als often play a significant role in facilitating either the maintenance ofnationalist strategies of struggle or progression into more internationalizedforms of struggle. In both South Korea and Thailand, a critical mass of public in-tellectuals, taken in the broadest sense to include student activists, has steeredanti-globalization politics — and particularly the anti-globalization politics ofthe middle classes — in the direction of more nationalist, rather than interna-tionalist, opposition. While we do not attempt to show in any definitive sensethat this nationalism is narrowly responsible for social movement weaknesses— an assertion that would in any event be too narrow for our purposes — we doshow that nationalist projects have been among the most prominent responsesto neoliberal globalization and have weakened the engagement of South Ko-rean and Thai social movements with broader, international forces organizingagainst neoliberalism.

Nationalism, however, has several distinctive forms in South Korea and Thai-land. Thus, we present this analysis in two parts. First, we point to some com-mon threads that we believe run through both cases of failed internationalism.Then we look in slightly more detail at each individual case, highlighting the na-tionalist anti-globalization positions of some leading middle-class public intel-lectuals and social movements with which they have been connected. Regard-less of the differences between them, we believe there are some generalimplications of both the South Korean and Thai cases for social movementselsewhere.

Forms of Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization:National vs. Transnational

The social movements in which we are most interested here — pro-democratic,pro-labor, left-popular — have to a considerable extent defined themselvesagainst various features of the cold war capitalist status quo in Asia, includingagainst military dictatorship, against repressive labor regimes (including anti-union policies), and against state policies that repress peasants and farmerswhile commandeering and heavily exploiting rural resources. These move-ments have not all been systematically anticapitalist, but they have certainlybeen critical of the predominant forms that capitalism took in South Korea andThailand during the cold war. Moreover, with the arrival of the Asian economiccrisis in 1997–98, some of these movements came to even more aggressivelyidentify themselves as antagonistic to neoliberal forms of capitalism, given thatIMF neoliberal measures, such as SAPs, could be seen as reinforcing some disad-vantageous conditions that workers and farmers inherited from the cold warera.

As such, it is useful to think of social movement tendencies in South Koreaand Thailand in relation to neoliberalism, or more specifically neoliberal glob-alization. It is important, therefore, to first characterize neoliberalism. While itis beyond the scope of our analysis to do so in any detail here, we concur withGerard Duménil, Dominique Lévy, and David Harvey in seeing neoliberalism as


a particular class project of specific capitalist elites, especially highly mobile andglobalized capitalists in sectors such as finance.15 Seeing neoliberalism in thesespecific class terms is more useful than accepting neoliberals’ self-definition asmarket fundamentalists, since the asocial neoliberal conception of the market isat best problematic and “actually existing neoliberalism” thus takes a number ofdiscrete forms in which the hand of the state is highly visible.16 We hasten to em-phasize, however, that neoliberalism is not solely the project of metropolitancapitalists or financial interests, and it has often gained active collaborationfrom capitalists and middle classes in the Global South,17 not to mention fromsome social movement groups that (rightly or wrongly) see neoliberalism as anantidote to heavy-handed statist interventions by military dictatorships.

Neoliberal globalization, as we see it, is thus a complex project involving a va-riety of actors internationally, taking specific forms in specific local contexts,within the general global context shaped by the class struggle of financializedmetropolitan capital against Keynesian welfare states and other forms of regula-tion that inhibit the favored forms of capital mobility. But even as neoliberals en-gage this form of class struggle, they have successfully built support by offering— perhaps more in rhetoric than in reality — two prospects that seem attractiveto many nonelite groups. First, neoliberalism has been unapologetically trans-nationalist and universalizing.18 While it has been popular in academic circles toradically critique the universalizing pretensions of any political discourse,neoliberalism has in fact proven to have considerable popular appeal insofar asit appears to speak for universal values such as human rights and individual free-doms, all presumed to be produced or abetted by global extension of capitalistmarket processes and property regimes. Second, and directly related to the firstpoint, neoliberalism has claimed to speak for democracy — against dictator-ships of both the left (actually existing socialism) and the right (developmentalstates). Legitimate questions have been raised about both the seriousness ofneoliberals’ democratic commitments — witness neoliberal support for thePinochet dictatorship in Chile19 — and the meaning of the kind of democracythat is consistent with neoliberal elevation of markets to ruling forces in humanrelations.20 Yet, these concerns notwithstanding, neoliberalism clearly has infact come to be associated in much popular discourse with at least a certainform of democratization,21 one that has considerable clout in countries likethose of capitalist Asia, still struggling to overcome the legacies of cold war dic-tatorships and authoritarian developmental states.


15. Duménil and Lévy 2004a; Duménil and Lévy 2004b; Harvey 2005; see Glassman2005.

16. Brenner and Theodore 2002; Peck and Tickell 2002.17. Cox 1987; Biersteker 1995.18. See, for example, Friedman 2007.19. Harvey 2005.20. Parenti 1983.21. See Robinson 1996.

Neoliberal globalization, then, can be defined, within the limits noted here,as transnational and pro-democratic. This has left opponents of neoliberal glob-alization with a choice of strategies that can be defined against this conceptionof neoliberalism. Some groups have adopted strategies that can be defined asnationalist and as seemingly less strongly committed to democratization thanneoliberalism. Others have adopted strategies that, though opposed to neo-liberal globalization, can be called internationalist in that they attempt to op-pose neoliberalism through transnational networking. These strategies havealso placed considerable emphasis on democratization, though typically seeingdemocracy through a somewhat different lens than neoliberals.

Social movements that rely on nationalist opposition to neoliberalism havetypically emphasized goals such as protecting the “national” economy againstencroachments by TNCs and foreign capital. The position of such groups re-garding capitalism more generally can be ambiguous. While many speak criti-cally of TNCs, domestic capital is usually seen in a more favorable light, even ifthe reality of exploitation by domestic capitalists isn’t entirely denied. Manysuch groups have been strongly opposed to privatization of state enterprises, allthe more so if there is a threat that national industries will be bought by foreigninvestors. Few social movements supportive of such nationalist strategies havebeen opposed to democratization, but many regard the demands of Western la-bor organizations or human rights groups with some suspicion and prefer tosubordinate the development of democracy to the pursuit of policies that pro-tect a general, national interest. This, for example, can take the form of rejectinghuman or labor rights complaints lodged by international labor or human rights


Street demonstration at the opening of the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January2005. “[G]roups that are supportive of WSF-type agendas have been able to exercise con-siderable power within national states…thus creating a somewhat different basis for ‘na-tionalist’ opposition to neoliberalism (e.g., factory occupations in Argentina, Bolivariancircles in Venezuela).” (Photograph by Ken Gould)

organizations — as in the “Asian values” argument pioneered by Singaporeanprime minister Lee Kwan Yew and Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Moham-mad in the 1990s.

Social movements that rely on internationalist strategies to oppose neoliber-alism have not necessarily opposed specific nationalist measures, such as agri-cultural tariffs, but they have typically asserted that popular transnational orga-nizing and pressure is necessary to push states in progressive directions as theyresist neoliberal globalization. While these groups are also often critical of TNCsthey thus reserve considerable criticism for states that repress popular move-ments in the name of the national interest. In this, they are also more sympa-thetic with an international human rights agenda that has come to define part ofthe process of democratization in certain anti-neoliberal political circles — ascan be seen, for example, by stances taken among social movement groupswithin the World Social Forum (WSF).

These two social movement strategies are obviously, to some extent, idealtypes. Actual contexts of social struggle frequently present mixtures of thesetypes, and specific social movement organizations can, and do sometimes, mi-grate from one category to another, while many may consistently occupy a shift-ing middle ground. Moreover, as we will illustrate below, distinctions betweensocial movement opposition to globalization and neoliberalism are not alwaysas clean as the ideal types outlined here imply. Nonetheless, the types are ofsome utility and can be identified with specific interests in specific contexts. Na-tionalist opposition to neoliberalism, as indicated above, might be identifiedwith the projects of certain state elites like Lee and Mahathir, and with the vari-ous social actors that support them, ranging from domestic capitalists and cer-tain middle-class groups to state-supported popular organizations and stateenterprise unions. In contexts where privatization has been on the agenda, forexample, state enterprise workers have often joined with specific state elitesto form a potent axis of opposition. Some nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) have also offered support for this kind of protectionist agenda — e.g.,the Malaysia-based Third World Network in the context of the Asian economiccrisis.22

Internationalist opposition to neoliberalism, in contrast, might be identifiedwith organizations like those that form the core of the WSF, such as the BrazilianWorkers Party (Partido Trabajadores, PT) and the Landless Workers Movement(Movimiento Sin Terra, MST). These actors have often had less concrete powerglobally than the groups that participate in nationalist resistance to neoliberalglobalization, but they have had considerable visibility. Moreover, in cases likemany seen recently in South America, groups that are supportive of WSF-typeagendas have been able to exercise considerable power within national states(Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela), thus creating a somewhat different basisfor “nationalist” opposition to neoliberalism (e.g., factory occupations in Ar-gentina, Bolivarian circles in Venezuela). In most of Asia, however, these kinds


22. Hewison 2000.

of WSF-type social movement groups have been comparatively weak. Thus, wecan claim that in Asia nationalist opposition to neoliberal globalization, on theparadigm suggested here, has been the more significant of the two ideal typeforms of opposition.

What might explain the comparative weaknesses of internationalist strate-gies? A few quite general considerations are worth noting. First, all social move-ments, if they are to represent more than the careerism of specific movementleaders, must be based on popular forces that are struggling for concrete mate-rial improvements in their social, economic, and political fortunes. To some ex-tent, this means that all such movements necessarily start out — even if they donot end — as place based. Second, in the process of defending themselvesagainst repression and attempting to institutionalize gains of struggle socialmovements must perforce deal with the power of the nation state. Moreover, inthis context, many have understandably set as their most practical goals specificobjectives that can be seen as nation-state centric — e.g., gaining new forms offavorable legislation. The amount of effort required to successfully negotiatethese complex and fraught relationships with states insures that all movementswill necessarily have a somewhat “nationalist” character.

What makes certain movements, like those we have alluded to in SouthAmerica, less “nationalist” is therefore not that they are based less on place-spe-cific struggles or are less engaged in struggles with and for the state, but ratherthat they both extensively use internationalist strategies in their struggles anduse national states to try to forward broader regional or international goals — aswith the WSF’s implicit endorsement of the Bolivarian experiment in Venezuelaand the “Bolivarian revolution’s” overt appeal to other Latin American coun-tries. This, however, raises the question as to why certain social movements endup adopting more internationalist strategies — even against the backdrop ofplace-based– and nation-state–centric struggle — while others do not. While wecannot attempt to adequately answer that question here, what we do want tosuggest is that in the cases of South Korea and Thailand both geographically andhistorically specific factors and certain more generic features of the middleclasses have been crucial in giving social movements against neoliberal global-ization a predominantly nationalist orientation.

One particularly significant geographical and historical feature of South Ko-rea and Thailand is actually shared and thus deserves mention in this generaldiscussion. In neither South Korea nor Thailand has English or any Europeanlanguage been well developed as a means of communication. This, of course,reflects the specific colonial and neocolonial histories of the two countries. Thelinguistic heritage has a nontrivial impact on internationalization of socialmovements since English has become the de facto language of internationalNGOs and, to some extent, labor groups. It is also worth noting that, unlikeLatin America, neither South Korea nor Thailand is part of a broader regionallanguage block. Thus, unlike Latin American social movements, which canmore easily engage in regional activities even without the benefit of English,South Korean and Thai activists cannot easily forge regional alliances in their na-tive tongues.


There are, of courses, a variety of other general factors that inhibit interna-tionalism of social movements, many of which are not so geographically and his-torically specific. For example, movements based among poorer social groupscannot as easily afford overseas travel, and sometimes even obtaining passportsand permission to go abroad can be challenging for such groups. Thus, the par-ticipation of middle-class groups, even within social struggles of labor or agrar-ian organizations, is often a necessity if such social movements are to effectivelyinternationalize their struggles. The fact that middle-class groups are morelikely than poorer groups to have English-language competence further high-lights this necessity.

The crucial role of middle-class groups in supporting internationalization ofsocial movement struggles is thus something we wish to feature. Indeed, as wesee it, the more conservative nationalist orientation of many South Korean andThai middle-class groups contributes considerably to an explanation of the fail-ures in these countries of social movement internationalism. What we now at-tempt to do in the analyses of South Korea and Thailand below is to examinewhy this has been the case — that is, why middle-class groups have supportedneoliberal globalization or expressed their opposition to neoliberal globaliza-tion in a nationalist form. While we recognize the reasons for middle-class na-tionalism to be varied, we highlight the roles of public intellectuals and socialmovement leaders in producing nationalist anti-globalization discourses thatallow other middle-class actors antagonistic to neoliberal globalization to effec-tively rationalize their actions and interests as potentially productive of a largersocial good.

South Korea: Nationalist Orientations in Social Movementsand Their Impacts on Current Responses to Globalization

Early Success of Korean Social Movements and Their Current Limitations

South Korea has a reputation not only for its rapid economic growth, but alsofor its strong tradition of social movements and activism and the resultant suc-cess in political democratization. By the 1980s, popular quests for political de-mocratization were increasing. Students and intellectuals — such as professors,ministers, and journalists — who were aroused by the great injustice done tothe workers and other subordinated groups have since that time organized so-cial movements against military authoritarianism, demanding more democracyand a more equal distribution of wealth and social inclusion.23 Furthermore,democratic transition since 1987 has facilitated the expansion of civil society. Inthis open political space, various forms of social movements have emerged inrelation to labor unions, women, peasants, environmental issues, humanrights, and so on. As a result, the 1990s saw a great increase in the influence ofcivil groups or social movements on such matters as the formation of publicopinion, policy-making, elections, and social reform.24


23. Park 2001.24. Kim 2006, 101.

Despite this success, the strength of South Korean social movements has de-clined significantly since the mid 1990s. Especially since the Asian economic cri-sis in the late 1990s, South Korean social movements have been ineffective inchallenging neoliberal globalization. This ineffectiveness does not reflect lackof effort, since increasing numbers of the Korean social activist groups have rec-ognized the need for transnational resistance to capitalist-oriented, neoliberalglobalization. Korean NGOs and activist groups have tried to develop interna-tional networks with NGOs in other countries and have actively participated insome of the internationalized protests and rallies against neoliberal globaliza-tion since the mid 1990s. For example, from the streets of Cancun (Mexico), in2003, to Hong Kong in 2005, Korean farmers led the popular resistance to theWTO negotiations. However, South Korean social movements have been un-able to contribute to the construction of successful transnational resistancepractices. Despite these recent efforts to transnationalize Korean social move-ments, the majority of Korean social activists have been more focused on na-tional issues. Furthermore, some of the efforts to develop international net-works of social movements have been initiated out of nationalist motivations,attempting to place more pressure on the Korean state by generating externalsupport for local or national campaigns.

Rise of the Ethnic and Collectivist Nationalism in Korea

The current limitations of Korean social movements in the formation of transna-tional alliances are related to the strongly nationalist orientation of the Koreansocial movements. Since the mid 1990s, there have been various forms of activ-ism resisting globalization and liberalization in South Korea — e.g., nationwidestrikes against neoliberal labor reform in 1997, demonstrations and protestsagainst economic restructuring policies after the 1997 economic crisis, and pro-


“From the streets of Cancun (Mexico), in 2003, to Hong Kong in 2005, Korean farmers ledthe popular resistance to the WTO negotiations.” In the WTO demonstration picturedabove, 80 Korean farmers attempted to swim to the site of the WTO convention in HongKong in 2005 to protest WTO policies. (Courtesy: Scoop.co.nz)

tests against the Korea-Chile and Korea-USA Free Trade Agreements. These ac-tivities, however, have been influenced primarily by a desire to secure Koreannational identities and interests against what has been perceived as “harmfulchanges led by foreign and external forces,” rather than by transnational visionsfor social movements.

The strong nationalist orientation of Korean social movements can be ex-plained in terms of the ethnic-based and collectivist nature of Korean national-ism. With regard to classifications of nationalism, Anthony Smith highlights adistinction between a civic-territorial nationalism and an ethnic-genealogicalone.25 In the former model, which is involved with the notion of the individualas the basic unit of society and the nation as an aggregate of individuals, the ide-ology of nationalism is seen as strongly related to the modern nation-buildingprocess in which the sense of citizenship and nationhood is constructedthrough ideological and political projects aiming at integrating individual mem-bers of society into a common and egalitarian polity.26 Hence, modern ideassuch as liberalism, individualism and democracy are essential components ofthe former. In contrast, the ethnic-genealogical model puts more emphasis onethnic identity, blood-based relations, and ancestry. Thus, it is more collectivistthan individualistic. Finding a pure form of either of these two contrasting typesin reality would, of course, be impossible, but it has been widely accepted thatthe Korean nationalism is much closer to the latter type.

Shin Gi-Wook’s recent book, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea, is very insightfulin understanding the development of Korean nationalism.27 According to Shin,the ethnic and collectivist form of nationalism did not predominantly lead theformation of Korean nationalism from the beginning. When Korean nationalismwas formed in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, civic,political, and individualistic elements competed with ethnic and collectivistideas in determining the ideological basis of the new modern Korean nation.28

Faced with a national crisis stemming from the decline of the old political sys-tem of Chosun in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, Koreanleaders tried to rebuild the nation by introducing “modern” values and institu-tions along with political and civic ideas of nation. According to Shin, however,the civic notion of the nation was not able to gain predominance because theKorean nation soon became ethnicized due to the specific historical situation ofJapanese imperialist encroachment and colonization in the early twentieth cen-tury. As Shin notes:

With the onset of this “nationalist peril,” even those who had advocated in-dividual civic and political rights came to recognize the importance of es-tablishing the notion of a distinct Korean nation/race and of promoting acollective consciousness among Koreans to fight encroaching imperial-ism. In this context Koreans increasingly stressed particularistic (Korean,


25. Smith 1991.26. Storey 2001, 66.27. Shin G-W 2006.28. Ibid., 116.

indigenous, traditional) over universalistic (Western, foreign, modern) el-ements in building a new nation.29

The collectivization of the nation continued after the liberation of Koreafrom Japanese imperialism. The national territory was divided under cold wargeopolitics in East Asia. Under the influence of cold war hostility and pressuresfor national economic growth, authoritarian regimes in South Korea continuedto stress the importance of collectivism and a survival mentality while promot-ing a nationalist ethic to demand and legitimize the sacrifice of individualrights.30 In particular, the Park Chung-hee regime aggressively deployed the col-lective notion of the nation for its political and economic goals. President Parkactively utilized the power of nationalism to justify his authoritarian rule by ad-vocating political dictatorship as a means of achieving the unity of the nationbased on the national will for glory. In addition, the state-led developmentalismof the Park regime heavily relied on collectivist nationalism. The intensive mobi-lization of capital and labor, which was essential for the state-led economicgrowth in South Korea from the 1960s to the 1980s, was justified under theideology of economic nationalism, in which individual values, needs, and in-terests were seen as appropriately sacrificed for the sake of national economicgrowth.31

Shin argues that the dominance of the collectivist notion of nationalism hashad significant impacts on Korean society and politics.32 In particular, liberalismhad a difficult time taking root in Korea. Under the influence of collectivism, in-dividualism has been equated with egoism and selfishness, and liberalism hasbeen positioned as the opposite of nationalism. Given the general poverty ofliberalism, political leaders — regardless of whether they are conservative orradical — have turned to nationalism for popular support.33 In other words,they have been able to exercise an ideological power only when their projectsare combined with ethnic and collectivist nationalism. Korean social move-ments have also been significantly influenced by this ethnic and collectivist na-ture of Korean nationalism.

Nationalism and the Growth of Korean Social Movements from the 1960sto the 1980s

Right after liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Korea witnessed theblossoming of social activism, such as labor and communist movements, whichrapidly shrank in the context of the postcolonial nation-building politics. Ko-rea’s liberation came with the division of the Korean peninsula into two differ-ent states. In the southern part of the peninsula, the U.S. military governmentsystematically destroyed political dissidents and the labor movement. The es-tablishment of the pro-U.S. Syngman Rhee regime (1948–1960) and the subse-


29. Ibid., 119.30. Shin G-W 2006.31. Park 2001.32. Shin G-W 2006.33. Ibid., 133.

quent Korean War (1950–1953) further reinforced unfavorable politicalconditions for social movements in South Korea. Military confrontation withNorth Korea was used as an excuse to justify violations of human rights and thesuppression of political dissidents. Also, imagined or perceived communistthreats from within and outside were used to legitimize the imposition of draco-nian laws that denied civil liberties.34 In this context, social movement activitieswere greatly weakened in the 1950s.

Social activism reemerged in April 1960, however, when student-led nation-wide demonstrations toppled the highly corrupt and incompetent Rhee regime(called the “April Student Revolution”). Since then, even though Park’s militaryregime harshly repressed critical social activism, various forms of social move-ments have made their presence felt in South Korea. The dominant form of so-cial activism in the 1960s and 1970s was the student movement, which was sig-nificantly influenced by the ethnic and collective notion of the nation. Due tothe historical experiences of the Japanese colonialism, Koreans have had stronganti-Japanese sentiments, which have been frequently utilized by politiciansand social movement leaders as a source of mobilization. For example, the Rheeregime deliberately inflamed anti-Japanese sentiments to mobilize popularsupport. The Park regime, however, taking a more pragmatic approach for na-tional economic development, tried to normalize diplomatic relations with Ja-pan in the early 1960s in order to attract Japanese investment. This provided agood opportunity for the mobilization of social movements. Many students sawthe normalization of diplomatic relations with Japan as something shameful, inwhich Korean national pride would be sold out for Japanese golden rings.Given this, massive student demonstrations erupted in major universitiesacross the country in 1964 to protest the normalization of diplomatic relationswith Japan. After these events, the student movement became increasingly ac-tive in South Korea. In 1967, more than fifteen thousand university and highschool students protested against corruption during the national election thatyear. Another massive student protest occurred in 1969 when the ruling partytried to amend the constitution to allow a president to be reelected more thanthree times, thereby enabling President Park to continue his presidency. But,even though the social movement of the 1960s rose under the influence ofanti-Japanese nationalist sentiments, it had not yet developed into a more sys-temic antiforeign, nationalist movement.

Even though the Park regime was more pragmatic in its approach to relationswith Japan, this does not mean that his regime was any less nationalistic. Asnoted above, the Park regime actively deployed collectivist nationalism to justifyits authoritarian rule and national economic development policies, in whichthe interests and identities of individuals were sacrificed for the “glory of the na-tion.” In the name of the nation, national unity, or “modernization of [the] fa-therland,”35 the Park regime suppressed other collective identities and compet-


34. Park 2005, 263.35. Shin G-W 2006, 167.

ing voices. This authoritarian state notion of nation and national identity faced asignificant challenge in the 1970s and 1980s, however, when the contest be-tween state and society with regard to the nature of nation and national identitybecame severe.36

The nationalism of Korean activists, which was initially mobilized by wide-spread anti-Japanese sentiments, became more sophisticated with the experi-ences of state-led industrialization under the Park regime. After early success ineconomic growth, the export-oriented industrialization (EOI) policy began toface a crisis from the late 1960s due to overinvestment and changes in interna-tional markets. In addition, some problems related to EOI began to appear, in-cluding a decline in the agricultural sector, the underdevelopment of rural ar-eas, and the exploitation of cheap labor. Witnessing these situations, somecritical intellectuals and students began to see EOI as an externally dependenteconomic development model, which would polarize the privileged “compra-dor” sector, connected through the international division of labor to foreigncapital, and the impoverished “national” sector, based on the aboriginal domes-tic market. This would eventually destroy the self-sufficient economic founda-tion of the Korean nation.37 With such a nationalist view, these critical intellectu-als emphasized the need to develop a “self-sufficient national economy” thatwould be independent and autonomous from all external influences.

Interestingly, the idea of the “self-sufficient” economy was nothing new in thehistory of Korean nationalism. Its origins can be traced back to the agrarian na-tionalism that appeared in the 1920s and early 1930s, a narrative and movementthat advocated an antimodern, agrarian notion of national identity.38 Koreanagrarians regarded the industrialization and modernization experienced dur-ing the Japanese colonial period as the main threat to a self-sufficient agrariancommunity and harmonious rural village life. Attributing colonial economiccrises and social conflicts in rural regions to the penetration of capitalist forces(led by foreign capital) into villages, the agrarians argued that “the best way tosave rural society from further pauperization was the removal of commercialand capitalist forces by establishing an agrarian economy based on the spirit ofself-reliance or an independent spirit.”39 With increasing discomfort over theauthoritarian dictatorship and the state-led, externally oriented industrializa-tion of the Park regime, this nationalistic will for a “self-sufficient” society wasrevived.

Despite the increasing significance of nationalist appeals, however, the Ko-rean social movement in the 1970s was still more based on minjung (mass orpeople) ideology, a form of political populism antagonistic to the authoritariandictatorship of the Park regime. Here, minjung was seen as composed of work-ers, peasants, the lower middle class, and the urban poor made peripheral to —or alienated from — political processes and national economic development.40


36. Ibid., 166.37. Park 1978; Chung 1995.38. Shin G-W 2006, 141.39. Ibid., 143.

In other words, the 1970s minjung movement focused on resistance against thepolitical dictatorship, even while some critical intellectuals and activists weredeveloping a nationalist critique of the authoritarian regime and its externallyoriented industrialization policies.

By the early 1980s, however, the minjung ideology had become increasinglynationalistic.41 The turning point was the Gwangju Democratization Movement,which occurred in May 1980 in the city of Gwangju, a major city in southwesternKorea. By the late 1970s, the Park regime was facing a serious political crisis dueto increasing popular discontent and the rise of political struggles challengingthe authoritarian regime. This situation led to the assassination of PresidentPark in 1979 and a subsequent rise in student activism and popular protests inpursuit of political democratization. This short period of political liberalizationwas dashed by a military coup in December 1979, led by General Chun DooHwan.42 In order to consolidate power, the Chun regime harshly repressed allthe social movements by declaring martial law, sending troops to all major cit-ies, and even massacring hundreds of civilians to put down the popular upris-ing in Gwangju during May 1980.

The Gwangju crackdown brought to the surface the anti-American minjungideology that had been a political taboo in postcolonial Korean society as stu-dents and intellectuals began to question U.S. support for the dictatorship in


40. Choi 1993.41. Shin G-W 2006, 171.42. In 1981 General Chun Doo Hwan unilaterally assumed the presidency.

Riot police push back protesting students at the entrance of the May 18 National Ceme-tery in Gwangju, South Korea, where President Roh Moo-hyun was marking the 23rd an-niversary of the 1980 Gwangju civilian uprising, 18 May 2003. (AP/Yonhap, Hyung Min-woo)

Korea. Since the end of the Korean War, the South Korean military has been un-der the control of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command. But, whenthe Gwangju Democratization Movement occurred, U.S. commanders allowedthe Chun regime to use South Korean troops against the civilian protesters inGwangju. Activists saw this use of Korean armies against civilians, combinedwith the lack of punitive action against General Chun thereafter, as proof thatthe Chun military dictatorship had U.S. backing.43

In this context, Korean students and intellectuals began to articulate the viewthat South Korea was a U.S. colony, seeing the United States and the pro-U.S.South Korean capitalists and bureaucrats as the main obstacles to the demo-cratic development of Korea. Korean democratization, they argued, could notbe obtained without national liberation from U.S. hegemony. Regarding thischange, Shin declares:

the Korean democratic movement began to transform from “a West-ern-oriented movement based largely on middle-class resentment of ParkChung Hee’s military dictatorship” to “a nationalist struggle for independ-ence from foreign intervention and eventual unification” in the 1980s. Inthe course of this change in movement character and strategy, Korean ac-tivists accepted the Gramscian strategy of “war of position” by engagingin ideological struggles against the authoritarian regime, especiallyagainst the US-supported state nationalism of anti-Communism anddevelopmentalism.44

With this development, the minjung concept had become more nationalist; itbegan to embrace those “sectors in society adversely affected by the division ofthe Korean peninsula and South Korea’s dependent and subordinated relation-ship to the United States.”45 On the basis of the anti-American minjung ideology,some of the student movement groups became increasingly nationalist in orien-tation, and under their leadership, the anti-American student movementemerged in the 1980s. This movement regarded the division of the Korean pen-insula as a product of U.S. postwar strategy in East Asia that aimed to contain thespread of communism. Hence national reunification began to be seen as one ofthe major targets for national liberation from the United States. As these nation-alist groups dominated the student movements in the late 1980s, the Koreanstudent movement became much more oriented toward the nationalist cam-paigns, which were promoted under the slogans of “anti-America” and “na-tional reunification.”

Nationalist Reactions to Globalization

In the 1990s, the nature of the Korean social movements was radically changedunder new external and internal conditions for Korean society. In particular, thecollapse of actually existing socialism in Eastern Europe and the introduction of


43. Park 2005, 272.44. Shin G-W 2006, 170.45. Choi 1993, 17.

a procedural democracy in South Korea after the June Democratization Move-ment of 1987 eroded the meaning of revolutionary and radical movements thatpursued fundamental regime change in South Korea.46 In this context, the term“citizens’ movement” appeared, referring to a new type of social movement thatwas suggested in the late 1980s and the early 1990s as an alternative to the radi-cal and militant social activism of the earlier 1980s. This new type of socialmovement has been called by various names such as the civil society movement,civil organization movement, civil movement, and NGO movement.47 In this en-vironment, new social movement organizations were established, such as theKorean Federation of Environmental Movement (KFEM), established in 1993,People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), established in 1994, theKorean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), established in 1995, and theDemocratic Labor Party (DLP), established in 2000.48 Instead of searching for afundamental regime change, these organizations aimed at expanding democ-racy, which had hitherto been pursued mainly in the political sector, to variousother sectors of society, including parliament, the courts, administration, andbusiness enterprises.49 Despite the rise of the new type of social movements,which pursued different goals and directions from the previous social move-ments, the nationalist orientation has persisted in the mobilization of the Ko-rean social movements and has significantly influenced the ways in which theKorean social movements have responded to globalization.

Nationalist ideological orientations — historically rooted in the anticolonialmovement during the Japanese occupation, growing up with critical recogni-tion of the externally dependent industrialization led by the Park regime in the1970s, and fully activated by the radical student movements that emphasizedanti-Americanism and national reunification in the 1980s — have had signifi-cant impacts on the directions of Korean social movements in the 1990s and the2000s. The radical nationalist movement was greatly weakened by the mid1990s with the decline of radical student activism. However, the nationalist wayof thinking, symbolized by the discourses of “anti-America,” “anti-imperialism,”and “national self-determination,” has become a collective “master frame” thatconnects diverse actors in various social fields in order to build an alliance.50

The core of the nationalist antiforeign tendency is the belief that the politicaland economic institutions of South Korean society have been implanted by for-eign powers in order to promote the realization of their interests in the region.For example, Thomas Kern quotes Lee Jae-Kyoung as saying, “today’s South Ko-rean society is, in its fundamental nature, a neocolonial society. The principalcontradiction that generates all other problems is the contradictory relation-ship between the US/Japan imperialism and the people of South Korea.”51 Influ-


46. Kim 2005, 125.47. Shin K-Y 2006, 6.48. Kim 2005, 126.49. Kim 2006, 103.50. Kern 2005.51. See Kern 2005, 260; Lee 1993, 125.

enced by this kind of interpretive frame, a considerable part of the Korean pub-lic is very sensitive to foreign (especially U.S.) dictates, such as pressures toliberalize trade and investment policies. They often perceive such outside in-volvement to be an offense against South Korean sovereignty.52 Given this publicsentiment, even though the concrete forms and objects of nationalist move-ment have changed, the nationalist tendency as a master frame, by which socialactivism is organized, has persisted.

Nationalist framing has significantly influenced the ways in which the Koreansocial movements have responded to globalization. This is well exemplified inthe ways in which social movement groups responded to the economic crisis inthe late 1990s. The sudden collapse of the South Korean financial system in1997 was traumatic for many Koreans, as many analysts have noted. Korean citi-zens saw that their country was on the brink of economic ruin and urgentlyneeded financial backing from outside, but the price the U.S.-dominated IMFdemanded in return for aid involved painful reforms on the part of the SouthKorean government. Bending to this demand was widely perceived as a selloutof political and economic sovereignty.53 In this context, nationalist campaignsemerged, objecting to foreigners taking possession of Korean properties or in-dustries. Some NGOs even organized campaigns to pay off the national debtand protect economic sovereignty by asking donations of gold materials, col-lecting U.S. dollars, and promoting the purchase of the stocks of the Koreanfirms. Interestingly, these campaigns were designed as a revival of the “NationalDebt Compensation Movement” that emerged as a way of protecting nationalsovereignty in the early 1900s, right before the beginning of Japanese coloniza-tion. Inspired by nationalist sentiments, the Korean public gave great supportto these campaigns.

Despite these popular efforts, the IMF dictates had to be accepted: importrestrictions were cut back, management structures were reorganized, and un-profitable companies closed down. As a consequence, many large foreigncompanies acquired parts of South Korean industry very cheaply, and tens ofthousands of employees and workers lost their jobs. This led to charges of U.S.economic imperialism, and nationalism became even more enflamed.

Since the mid 1990s, strong social movements have resisted the neoliberalreforms and corporate globalization that the Korean government has promotedenthusiastically. For example, when the Korean government tried to enact anew labor law in 1997 that focused on the enhancement of labor-market flexi-bility, labor unions strongly protested the proposed reform by organizing mas-sive strikes. More than 500,000 workers, approximately 82 percent of all orga-nized workers, joined the strikes held in January 1997.54 More recently, Koreanfarmers have denounced the Korea-USA FTA negotiations in order to protectKorean domestic agriculture. At a glance, these protests seem to be a natural re-


52. Kern 2005, 260.53. Ibid., 267.54. Park 2001.

action on the part of social actors whose material interests are threatened byneoliberal globalization. The anti-globalization movement in South Korea,however, cannot be fully explained only in terms of material interests. The na-tionalist orientation of the Korean social activists has also played a significantrole in mobilizing the anti-globalization protests.

In particular, many of the anti-globalization and anti-neoliberalism proteststhat have occurred in Korea since the economic crisis in the late 1990s havebeen deeply influenced by the belief that U.S.-led imperialist globalization andthe resultant weakening of the national economic and political sovereignty ofKorea are to blame for the economic hardships the Korean people have en-dured since the 1997 economic crisis. The following two statements, made bysome of the Korean activist groups with regard to the Korea-USA FTA, illustratethis point:

Withdraw the Korea-USA Free Trade Agreement, which will completethe economic colonization of Korea by the USA. [Public declaration madeby Hanchongryeon, Korean Coalition of University Student Unions, 2April 2007.]

The Korea-USA Free Trade Agreement, which has proceeded throughpro-American nation-selling negotiations, will threaten the lives of ourminjung and destroy the foundation of national economy, so the protestsagainst the FTA were a greatly just and patriotic act. The Korea-USA FreeTrade Agreement was a humiliating tribute, paid to the USA with the livesof minjung and the heart of national economy for the Korea-USA militaryalliance. [Public declaration made by the South Korean headquarters ofJoguktongil Beomminjok Yeonhap, Alliance of the Whole Korean Nationfor National Re-unification, 4 July 2007.]

Protests against the FTA were clearly not motivated by a transnational agenda inopposition to neoliberal globalization. They were based instead on a nationalistreaction to U.S.-led imperial globalization, and they were justified as a patrioticact to save the national economy and the lives of Korean people threatened byU.S. imperialism.

Despite the nationalist tendencies of the Korean social movements, some Ko-rean activists began turning their attention to international activism in the late1990s, participating in international protests and rallies related to the WTO ne-gotiations and the World Social Forum.55 This international activism started asearly as the 1970s, but at that time the aim was simply to attract internationalsupport for the Korean democratization movement and to draw internationalattention to human rights abuses in Korea. A turning point for Korean interna-tional activism came with the general strikes against the labor law amendmentin 1997. More than one hundred activists from abroad participated in thesestrikes, and they actively disseminated news of the event to communities out-side Korea. This helped generate considerable international support for the


55. Kim 2006, 117.

strikes and led to the ultimate success of the movement.56 Korean activists thusrecognized the significance of international activism.

Since 2000, Korean international activism has greatly increased. These newefforts to construct truly transnational networks of resistance have, however,been limited in part by the strong legacies of minjung nationalism in Korea’sprogressive social movements.57 The nation/state–centric limitations of Koreaninternational activism is evident in a number of areas. First, many Korean activ-ists still see internationalization efforts only as a means to pressure the Koreanstate more effectively. Second, they still see Korea and the Korean people simplyas victims of globalization, while showing little sensitivity to the problemscaused by the globalization of Korean capital. Third, they tend to put more em-phasis on national solutions, rather than global ones, in responding to theproblems stemming from the neoliberal globalization.58 In short, then, minjungnationalism continues to have an impact even when Korean social movementsattempt to internationalize.

Thailand: From Model Neoliberal State to Nationalist Reaction

Competing Nationalisms in Contemporary Thailand

As the foregoing discussion of Korea has shown, nationalism can take a varietyof different forms, not only between different countries and in different histori-cal periods but even within the same country at a given point in time. In somerespects, at least two competing forms of nationalism have been at work in Thai-land in recent years, especially since the Asian economic crisis that began in1997. One version, associated with the economic project of the Thai Rak Thai(TRT) government (2001–2006), and now partly revived under the People’sPower Party (PPP) government (2008– ), is rhetorically nationalist and willing touse the power of the state to discipline “un-patriotic” dissent, but is in politicaleconomic terms highly consonant with internationalization of the economyand ongoing modernization of the countryside.59 This form of nationalism mostclosely approximates what we have called the nationalist anti-neoliberal posi-tion, though at the top of the TRT alliance the orientation was far from antago-nistic to participation in the global economy. Crucially, it garnered significantsupport from groups such as state enterprise workers until Thaksin’s govern-ment began to endorse privatization of state enterprises.60

What has emerged, however, as a somewhat deeper albeit more complexform of nationalism in Thailand is what can best be called royalist nationalism.Royalist nationalism is of course associated with deference toward the monar-chy and identification of the nation with the king, but it also has some specificfeatures that are crucial to its mobilization of middle-class interests and actors.


56. Won 2007.57. Kim 2005, 127.58. Won 2007; Jeon 2006.59. Glassman 2004a; Glassman 2007.60. Brown and Hewison 2005.

Moreover, as we will show, it has a complex relationship to neoliberalism andglobalization.

The first specific feature of royalist nationalism is the identification of a cru-cial relationship between the monarchy and the majority population of thecountry — still seen in most accounts as villagers, notwithstanding the recentdramatic urban-industrial transformation of the countryside. According to awell-established, if factually questionable, academic tradition that still domi-nates Thai education, the history of the country is the history of ethnically Taipeoples, led within what became Thailand by a series of more or less benevo-lent monarchs, the latest of these being those of the Chakri Dynasty, which es-tablished the Thai capital in Bangkok in 1782. This historical tradition allows forthere being better or worse monarchs, but is largely insistent on the beneficialor at worst benign character of monarchy — and, in more recent times, on themonarchy’s role in bringing democracy to the country.61

Especially crucial to this narrative, for the legitimacy it confers, is the notionof a relationship between the monarchy and the village in which the latter haslargely prospered because of the benevolence of the former. Thus, the royalist-nationalist narrative has it that the earliest “Thai” King, King Ramkamhaeng ofSukothai (thirteenth century C.E.), noted the virtues of Thai rural life by statingthat “This Sukothai is happy; there are fish in the rivers, there is rice in thefield.”62 Ramkamhaeng’s inscription, putatively dating from 1292 C.E., may have


61. Hewison 1997, 59–62.62. Peleggi 2007, 23.

Transplanting rice in Chaiyapun, Thailand. Royalist nationalism stresses “a crucial relation-ship between the monarchy and the majority population of the country — still seen inmost accounts as villagers, notwithstanding the recent dramatic urban-industrial transfor-mation of the countryside.” (Credit: Torikai Yukihiro, 2004)

been produced under the Fifth Chakri Dynasty (1857–1910), in order to legiti-mize the Siamese monarchy’s nationalist state-building project by giving it anaura of continuity with long-standing and benevolent royal lineage.63 The prob-lems of empirical claims surrounding this image notwithstanding, the notionthat the relationship between the monarchy and the village is strong and largelyconstructive has remained a central element of royalist-nationalist discourse,becoming especially strong under the reign of the current king, Rama IX (Bhu-miphol Adulyadej).

A second specific feature of royalist-nationalism is the invocation of Bud-dhism as central to national character. King Vajaravudh (Rama VI), who reignedfrom 1910 to 1926, is famous for sanctifying and linking together the triumvi-rate of “nation, religion, king.” The nationalist element of Vajaravudh’s ideologyhas been noted for its racist dimensions, since, among other things, it is associ-ated with denigration of “non-Thai” Chinese immigrants. But the invocation ofreligion has also had exclusionary dimensions since the reference is to Bud-dhism, not religion in general, and this has been part of the long-termmarginalization of ethnically Malay and religiously Islamic populations insouthern Thailand. Moreover, the development of the Sangha — the Buddhistreligious hierarchy — as a nationalist body sanctifying the prerogatives of thestate, has accompanied this elevation of religion to a nationalist project.64

Again, however, the religious dimension of royalist-nationalist discourse hashad considerable popularity and has imbued this form of nationalism with a pu-tatively moral dimension that is sometimes missing from other varieties of na-tionalism. The moral dimension of royalist nationalism allows its spokespeopleto speak in quasi-religious terms and to characterize projects and individuals infairly Manichean fashion — i.e., as either good for the nation, for development,etc., or as malevolent. Naturally, this does not resolve issues of what is to becounted, by one interpreter or another, as benevolent or malevolent, and thusthe room for social struggle over important social issues is considerable, Mani-chean moral rhetoric notwithstanding. But the association of Buddhist goodbehavior with royalist nationalism nonetheless imbues it with a specific charac-ter — and, moreover, it further sanctifies the role of the monarchy itself, which,as the head of the Buddhist order, is representative not only of political powerbut of ethical righteousness.

We will highlight these two elements of royalist nationalism — the role of themonarchy in sustaining village prosperity and the centrality of Buddhist moral-ism — in discussing middle-class support for nationalism. What we now turn tois some interesting — and sometimes surprising — ways in which these ele-ments of royalist nationalism infuse middle-class discourse, including someforms of discourse that are presented as critical of the Thai state. To position thisdiscussion, however, we briefly note some of the effects of the Asian economiccrisis on different Thai social groups.


63. Reynolds 2006, vii.64. Keyes 1987; Jackson 1989; Peleggi 2007.

The Economic Crisis and Thai Nationalisms

In the immediate aftermath of the 1997 crisis, the Thai state was commandeeredby the strongly pro-royalist Democrat Party, which implemented neoliberal re-covery strategies.65 However, popular antagonism to neoliberalism led to a reac-tion that brought TRT into office in 2001 with a significant electoral mandate forquasi-“Keynesian” reflationary measures.66 TRT’s policies met with a certainamount of success67 and had considerable support in the beginning fromBangkokians and middle-class groups in general, notwithstanding very earlydemonstrations of authoritarian repression by Thaksin’s government. By 2005,however, Thaksin had made enemies of a number of former allies, and moregenerally began to alienate middle-class groups antagonistic both to his corrup-tion and to forms of state spending directed to populist programs in the coun-tryside.68 None of this prevented TRT from maintaining considerable popularityin the countryside, where programs such as national health insurance, a revolv-ing loan fund for villages, and debt moratorium for farmers constituted a moresubstantive and supportive state agenda than under any previous Thai govern-ment.69 In this fashion, the two forms of Thai nationalism discussed above be-came more apparent and more openly competitive. TRT’s policies were for-mally and officially “nationalist” in that they sanctioned a relatively aggressive,non-neoliberal role for the state, even as they continued to engage the Thaieconomy in international trade and investment.70 But TRT itself invoked themonarchy when it suited Thaksin’s interests to do so, and this reinforced theroyalist nationalism described above. In the context of the crisis, King Bhumi-phol had himself helped to further articulate and generate support for thisbrand of nationalism by offering his reflections on “sufficiency economy” as apotential response to the crisis. Sufficiency economy is a loose concept, seem-ingly drawn in part from ideas like those put forward by E.F. Schumacher inSmall Is Beautiful,71 championing small-scale, subsistence-oriented agricultureand high levels of village self-reliance, as well as more general national self-reli-ance. While seemingly at odds with neoliberal globalization, sufficiency econ-omy has strong anti-Keynesian, neoliberal dimensions in that it abjures statespending and preaches moderation in consumption, consistent with the King’slong-held antagonism to any form of social welfare state.72 Moreover, leadingroyalist intellectuals and economists have worked to fashion versions of suffi-ciency economy thought that endorse globalization — at least for the more af-fluent urban members of Thai society — while insisting on anti-Keynesianpolicies for labor and at the village level.73 In this guise, royalist nationalism has


65. Pasuk and Baker 2000; McCargo 2005.66. Glassman 2004a; Pasuk and Baker 2004.67. Glassman 2007.68. Kasian 2006; Pasuk 2007.69. Ungpakorn 2007.70. Glassman 2004a; Glassman 2007.71. See Handley 2006.72. Hewison 1997, 67.

become a complex hybrid of nationalist sentiments combined with neoliberalrestraints on spending for the less privileged and engagement of the global mar-ket for the more privileged.

Royalist nationalists and TRT’s more Keynesian nationalists have jockeyedfor position since the crisis, with the royalists being temporarily outflanked inthe 2001 elections, regaining a position of dominance in the aftermath of the2006 coup, and losing this again with the election of the PPP in 2008. In attempt-ing to understand the strength of royalist nationalism, we now highlight the im-portant role of public intellectuals — particularly several who have been influ-ential among Thai middle-class groups — in framing opposition to neoliberalglobalization in ways compatible with royalist prerogatives and its sufficiencyeconomy ideas.

Public Intellectuals and the Ideological Field of Royalist Nationalism

A particularly straightforward example of such an intellectual is Prawase Wasi, amedical doctor and 1981 Magsaysay Award winner, who is much revered bymany Bangkokians (and others) for his public political pronouncements andhis lead role in drafting the 1997 constitution.74 Prawase has for many years ad-vocated forms of development that are centered on small-scale, subsistence-ori-ented agricultural production within the village.75 His “localist” views grow inpart out of his experience as a medical doctor working to foster development


73. Glassman 2008.74. See www.prawase.com.75. See, for example, Prawase 1988.

Former deputy prime minister Chaturon Chaisaeng speaks at a rally held behind the voca-tional college of Chachoengsao, along the Bang Pakong river. Leaflets posted in the arearead, “Fair elections are the solution for Thailand.” (Credit: Michael H. Nelson, 2007)

and better health in the countryside, which led to his considerable skepticismregarding the structure and performance of the Thai state,76 but it is also a per-spective that has evolved into an open endorsement of the king’s sufficiencyeconomy proposals in the aftermath of the economic crisis. Specifically, Pra-wase has put forward the notion that Thailand should forego the traditional fo-cus on GDP and instead focus on Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), withhappiness being assessed in relation to such features as mutual caring and gen-erosity, family togetherness, strong communities, cultural confidence, healthyenvironment, and self-sufficient economy.77

Prawase’s approach to these issues is socially conservative and containsstrong elements of Buddhist moralism.78 The notion of a pristine rural commu-nity that is the center of appropriate morality — a hardy perennial for middleclasses in many societies around the world — features strongly in Prawase’s pro-nouncements. This gives considerable weight to the desire of conservativeBangkok middle classes to see Thai rural society remain a repository of valuesthat these classes themselves cannot or will not live. It also legitimizes a politicalproject that attempts to keep the village frozen economically in its (imagined)past. Thus, for example, Prawase argues that Thai villagers should reduce theirconsumption of consumer goods and focus on rice farming and basic agricul-tural production (which he sees as most consistent with their happiness), not-withstanding the tremendous changes in Thai villages that have incorporatedmost of its members at least partially into urban-industrial labor processes.79

Crucially, Prawase’s arguments, though seemingly localist and antistatist incertain respects, preserve a central role for specific forms of authoritarian statepower, especially in connection with the monarchy. Prawase has long expressedcriticism of the Thai state bureaucracy, arguing that local communities shouldbypass it where possible.80 But this attitude toward the state is balanced by astrongly elitist view of villagers as not fully capable of managing complicated af-fairs of state — a position inscribed in many ways in the 1997 constitution.81 In-terestingly, in the more recent context of competing postcrisis nationalisms,Prawase has shifted from abjuring the bureaucracy to abjuring elected politi-cians, and in the aftermath of the coup he has spoken openly in favor of curtail-ing the prerogatives of elected officials in favor of more discretion and controlfor the bureaucrats.82 Ultimately, this connects Prawase’s project to an endorse-ment of the Crown as the ultimate bureaucratic protector of village and of na-tional interests. In this sense, what starts in some respects as localism becomesdeeply inscribed in the royalist-nationalist ideology we have outlined.


76. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation 1981.77. Prawase 1998.78. Prawase 1988.79. Ibid.; and Prawase 1998.80. Chatthip 1991, 124.81. Connors 2007.82. Walker 2007b.

Prawase’s role in promulgating this ideology publicly is crucial because, aswe have noted, his high profile allows him to effectively legitimize the senti-ments of more conservative and pro-royalist members of the middle classes, es-pecially in Bangkok. But not all members of these middle classes are so deeplyconservative, and for some a more progressive inflection is necessary if royal-ist-nationalist arguments are to seem persuasive. In this sense, a second impor-tant public intellectual who provides support for royalist nationalism is moreinteresting because his support is more indirect. Chatthip Nartsupha is a well-known political economist who became famous in the 1970s and 1980s forMarxist-influenced studies of Thailand’s development.83 This early work had thepotential to lead in various directions, and for some of its exponents, likeChatthip’s coauthor Suthy Prasartset, it led more in the direction of dependencytheory.

For Chatthip, in contrast, it led in the direction of “localism.” By the 1990s hebecame especially well known in public circles for a series of works charting thelong history of the Thai village economy and championing the “community cul-ture” school of thought.84 In his work on the village economy, Chatthip summa-rized a wealth of useful information about village practices while providing asomewhat romantic, essentialist, and misleading gloss on the overall implica-tions.85 Chatthip suggested that the “traditional” Thai village had been orientedtoward subsistence production rather than trade,86 and in spite of being affectedby imperial interventions had largely retained this orientation into the twenti-eth century, except around Bangkok and in the Central region. This was possi-ble, Chatthip asserted, because the Thai feudal system (sakdina) had limitedimpact on most villages.87 Moreover, these villages had a relatively limited classstructure and little social polarization.88 Thus, though many villages faced prob-lems connected with limited technological development, most of their difficul-ties had been imported by foreign forces, including Chinese merchant groupsin Thailand.89 Chatthip could therefore conclude that the problem for the futureis “how to preserve the good aspects of the village community — how to pre-serve the old-style production relations, but improve the form and increase theproductive power by developing the technology in the village.”90 In his laterwork on the community culture school of thought, Chatthip followed up on thiskind of claim by summarizing, championing, and extending the ideas of various“localist” NGO activists and public intellectuals, including Prawase. Chatthip re-iterated the notion that the Thai feudal system had limited impacts on villages,91

and explored what kinds of use villages and village-oriented NGOs could make


83. Chatthip and Suthy 1981; Chatthip, Suthy, and Montri 1981.84. Chatthip 1991.85. Bowie 1992.86. Chatthip 1984, 34–38.87. Ibid., 74–75.88. Ibid., 31.89. Ibid., 55–57.90. Ibid., 76.91. Chatthip 1991, 132.

of the space that still remained between the state and the village, casting themost favorable projects in anarchist terms.92 While one might expect this anar-chist orientation to make community culture approaches antagonistic to royal-ist nationalism, Chatthip’s arguments in fact contain elements amenable to roy-alist projects. First, in asserting a primordial Thai village characterized by“kind-heartedness, brother/sisterhood, generosity, mutual help, not taking ad-vantage of others, unambitiousness, non-violence, self-reliance, honesty”93 —all of this made possible in part by relative royal noninterference — Chatthip ar-ticulated a characterization of Thai villages largely at one with royalist-national-ist discourse. Second, Chatthip gave this a very explicitly ethnic twist by reiterat-ing that capitalism was a wholly foreign import (Western and Chinese), ratherthan having royalist dimensions, as has been made clear in various accounts ofThai development.94 Moreover, Chatthip exacerbated the ethnic nationalism ofhis account by asserting that Chinese business leaders are incapable of politicalrule in Thailand.95 This too is congenial to a royalist-nationalist discourse thatsees the Thai monarchy as the most appropriate leader of the Thai peoples,even if it was not Chatthip’s intention to endorse such a notion. Third, Chatthip,like Prawase and many others, endorses Buddhism as a crucial tool of commu-nity development, thus echoing royalist-nationalist predispositions.96 And fi-nally, though Chatthip’s views are rhetorically anarchist, they are also consistentwith the antistatist, antisocial welfare, and neoliberal perspectives that the mon-archy, the Democrat Party, and other leading national political powers have ar-ticulated. The effect of this has been that one major school of “progressive”thought — one in fact consciously endorsed by many Thai NGOs97 — has in cru-cial ways buttressed royalist nationalism.

Many further examples of this kind of public intellectual production could begiven.98 We note the arguments of Prawase and Chatthip neither because theyare entirely unique nor because they stand as independent causal forces but be-cause they serve as useful indicators of the orientations of a number of signifi-cant political actors — especially among various middle-class groups. Nor, de-spite our disagreements with the “localists” and royalist nationalists, is our briefhere to contest their specific claims — something that has in any event beendone effectively elsewhere.99 Our major point is simply that even in the name of“localism” and defense of the village, Thai middle-class groups that gravitate tothese forms of discourse have helped deepen the hegemony of royalist-nation-alism.


92. Ibid., 133–41.93. Ibid., 132; see Chatthip 1984, 74.94. Hewison 1989; Suehiro 1989; see Chatthip 1984, 44–59.95. Chatthip 1991, 134.96. Ibid., 140.97. See, for example, Chatthip 1991; Somchai 2006, 62–64.98. See Hewison 2000; Pasuk and Baker 2000, 193–216.99. See, for example, Bowie 1992; Yukti 1995; Hewison 2000.

Effects of Nationalism(s) on Thai Social Movements

Thailand has thus seen legitimate antagonism toward neoliberal globalizationturned in two competing conservative directions. TRT nationalism has been inmany ways similar to the general nationalist anti-neoliberalism we outlined inthe first part of our argument. But royalist nationalists are now carrying forwardneoliberal anti-Keynesianism in Thailand, embodied in sufficiency economyideology. They are prescribing a two-tier project: globalization for the privi-leged and sufficiency for villagers.100 Meanwhile, support for more conventionalversions of neoliberalism among various mainstream economists and politi-cians remains considerable. What is largely missing from this mix is any well-de-veloped and publicly popular variant of internationalist anti-neoliberalism.This is not to say that no such projects — or public intellectuals — exist. To thecontrary, we could cite in this vein public intellectual/labor activists like Ji Ung-pakorn and Voravidh Charoenloet, labor NGOs like the Arom PongpanganFoundation and the Thai Labor Campaign, critical educational forums like theMidnight University, as well as public intellectuals concerned with rural devel-opment like many of those connected to the Regional Center for SustainableDevelopment at Chiang Mai University. But these are far from being as promi-nent in public debates or as powerful in their connections as intellectuals likePrawase and Chatthip, or as activist groups like those NGOs that gain royal back-ing for championing maintenance of the “traditional” village.

Opposition to neoliberal globalization in Thailand since the crisis has thusbeen associated either with the projects of TRT’s nationalist anti-neoliberalismor with royalist-nationalist projects. Some groups, such as state enterpriseworkers, have swung from one nationalism to the other, supporting Thaksinwhen they thought his government would oppose privatization, switching tosupport for the royalist coup regime later in the hope that it would reverseThaksin’s privatization decisions.101 Similarly, some NGOs working on rural issueslooked with favor on Thaksin’s early policy maneuvers, only to become alienatedlater and, in some cases, to throw their support behind the coup regime.102

The reasons why various Thai social movement actors might gravitate towardone or another of these forms of nationalism are clear, and include many of thefactors we outlined in the beginning of our analysis. Moreover, that it is in the in-terest of certain members of the middle classes to champion one or anothersuch nationalism is clear as well. But it is also important to note that neither ofthese nationalisms has so far delivered all that was promised to working classesand villagers. TRT nationalism did in fact develop certain statist social programsthat are constructive and that by rights ought to be included in any progressiveinternationalist agenda (even if necessarily delivered by national states), such ashealth insurance. It is to the discredit of those supporting royalist-nationalist re-actions against Keynesianism that they are undermining such initiatives in the


100. Glassman 2008.101. Brown and Hewison 2005; Ungpakorn 2007.102. Glassman 2008.

name of helping villagers.103 But TRT nationalism gave little to labor, and what itgave to the village in policy terms it gave on condition of subordination to TRT’sproject, including its authoritarianism and abuse of human rights. Royalist na-tionalism was reasserted through military coup, thus indicating the royalist na-tionalists’ own lack of concern for democracy or human rights, and while inpower until January 2008 these particular nationalists promised even less for la-bor and villages than did TRT, given the royalists’ repudiation of Keynesianism.Thus, while Thai middle classes that champion one or another of these forms ofnationalism may have understandable interests in and reasons for doing so, it isdifficult to claim that the nationalist projects they support are more generallyrepresentative of the best (let alone the only) options for less-privileged Thai so-cial groups.

Middle-class identification of one or another form of nationalism has thusstrengthened the reliance of less-privileged Thai groups on what are under-standable but perhaps unproductive political projects, while limiting Thai par-ticipation in international forums that attempt to build stronger internationalalliances supportive of progressive social changes in the long term. Rather thanattempt to help villagers build international connections and support based ontheir actually existing livelihood strategies of already-internationalized ex-tra-subsistence production,104 TRT nationalists attempted to subordinate Thaivillagers to a repressive pro-entrepreneurial state while royalist nationalists at-tempted to subordinate these same villagers to a repressive anti-Keynesianstate. Rather than attempt to help workers forge international alliances sup-portive of strategies for protecting unions and securing living wages and betterworking conditions, TRT nationalists attempted to buy state enterprise unionsupport on the cheap (throwaway promises of opposition to privatization),while royalist nationalists (briefly) offered more of the same. Finally, rather thanenable broader Thai participation in international projects like those of WSF,both TRT nationalists and royalist nationalists encouraged an inward focus thatemphasizes Thai uniqueness — including “Asian values”–style arguments insupport of the 2006 coup105 — at the expense of either encouraging Thai growththrough international encounters or development through the participation ofless-privileged Thais.

Conclusion

All social movement struggles have to be in some respects place-based and na-tionalism is an unsurprising — perhaps even, in some contexts, productive —form for the expression of any such place-based struggles, particularly againstneoliberal globalization. But nationalist struggle is not the only form that anti-neoliberalism can take, and it is not certain either that it will always constitutethe most effective or progressive form of anti-neoliberalism. South Korea and


103. Ungpakorn 2007.104. See Walker 1999; Walker 2007a.105. Glassman 2008.

Thailand have both experienced in recent years periods of, first, growing socialmovement effectiveness followed by relative social movement decline. Whilethe reasons for this are numerous, we have suggested that one reason is the in-creasing emphasis within South Korea and Thailand — especially after the Asianeconomic crisis — on nationalist forms of resistance to neoliberal globalization.Thus, while in many South American and European countries, social movementgroups were attempting to pioneer new forms of international opposition toneoliberal globalization, the involvement of South Korean and Thai groups insuch projects has been very limited.

This “failed internationalism,” as we have chosen to call it, has been abettedby many factors. Given the centrality of middle-class groups to the formation ofany international project, we have focused especially on the roles of South Ko-rean and Thai public intellectuals in legitimizing nationalism (in various forms).Each of these cases, as we have shown, is somewhat unique, though each case ofpublic intellectual nationalism, we suggest, has contributed in similar fashionto weakening social movements. We have not speculated here on why, in a rela-tive sense, the activities of public intellectuals in places like South America hasbeen somewhat different, but certainly a broader examination of a number ofcases might contribute to our understanding of how and why internationalistopposition to neoliberal globalization is stronger in some places than in others.

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