Demographic representation and Thai family values.

Abstract

As a national institution, the “Thai family” is frequently represented in dichotomous and contradictory terms. Often described as “the basic unit of society” and a principal means of assuring cultural continuity, family is also widely held to have undergone a transformation so radical that it is now virtually unable to perform even the most fundamental of tasks – attending to the material needs of its weakest members, the very old and the very young, while producing enough children to meet the economic demands of society as a whole. The consensus view, one articulated and affirmed in a range of media reports, academic studies and policy papers, is that the traditional family unit is in nearterminal decline, giving rise to a number of closely related social problems. These concerns have in recent years not only served as a pretext for increased governmental scrutiny and intervention into the realm of family life; they have also been a catalyst for the growth of broader family values movement, a public campaign to strengthen the family unit by actively promoting ‘traditional’ family values and practices. Of particular interest to me here is the extent to which contemporary understandings of the “traditional Thai family” – and the crisis conditions into which it has fallen - are largely a product of demographic – as opposed to historical, anthropological or ethnographic - representation.