While the historical roots of activist-intellectuals in Thailand is a fascinating topic and certainly worthy of further study, I am here more interested in discussing what Thai activist-intellectuals are doing and their contributions to NGO activities. Given my own education in the United States, and my training in the historically colonialist discipline of anthropology, when I arrived in Thailand I had few if any contemporary activist-intellectual role models⁵. Those I knew engaged in political work did so quietly, suggesting it was somehow inappropriate. So to see my Thai colleagues so openly and practically engaged despite their heavy teaching and administrative loads (not to mention personal and social obligations) gave me pause and encouraged me to reflect on the symbiotic and mutually generative relationship between scholars, community organizations and their members. Hence, with the aim of offering an alternative perspective on NGO activities in northern Thailand, I will discuss one example of scholars involved with NGOs and other community groups working towards participatory democracy and social change. Then I will highlight the specific benefits of such a relationship for both NGO members and scholars, thereby providing a possible model for NGO activists and scholars in other locales.

The Center for the Advancement of Lanna Women (CALW)
"… the concept is to empower people instead of [NGOs] working on those issues themselves."
- Ajaan Bupa Wattanapun⁶

The Center for the Advancement of Lanna Women (CALW)⁷ is geographically located within the Faculty of Education at Chiang Mai University and is currently directed by Ajaan Nongyao Nawarat, a CMU instructor and activist with strong roots in the 1970s student movement. CALW was established in 1990 by a group of scholars with the goals of increasing women's political participation at all levels, working towards women's equal rights, and developing a gender sensitive university curriculum. As the quote above by CALW member Ajaan Bupa Wattanapun suggests, Center members are interested in empowering women, especially those in villages and communities outside of provincial centers. The goal is to provide these women with information and resources so that they might more effectively participate in democratic processes. Hence, these scholars see themselves as educators and facilitators, assisting and working with the general public rather than working for or instead of them. This distinction is important because it moves away from the dependency models of the past and emphasizes networking and coalition building between different sectors of society.

Although the Center is given free space by the university and faculty volunteers are university employees, its work is almost entirely supported by grants from outside agencies, both national and foreign, and by some personal contributions including those from women's groups. Hence, CALW operates much like an NGO, with volunteers and one full-time staff member. It is non-profit, and despite it's physical location, it is independent of the state. In fact, it might be thought of as a scholar-established NGO responding to needs identified in the communities individual scholars had previously worked with and/or researched. As part of my own research agenda, I attended a number of meetings and workshops organized by CALW for women and women's organizations in the north. Especially notable were workshops on "Developing the Potential of the Lanna Women's Network" (March 11-13, 1998), and "Building Northern Thai Women's Bargaining Power in Politics in the Next Elections" (February 14, 1999).

The "Women's Grassroots Network Meeting" held August 17-19, 1998, provides a particularly useful example of how NGOs and scholars are seeking to work together in Thailand. A three-day cross-regional meeting of women's networks from the North, East, and South of Thailand, the event was co-organized by the Center for the Advancement of Lanna Women (CALW), the Network of Lanna Women, and the Institute for Women in Politics (Bangkok), all of whom could be defined as NGOs and all of whom had scholars actively involved in their work. The meeting was financed by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a non-profit German research and educational institution committed to fostering democracy and supporting women's political participation in Thailand⁸. The more than fifty meeting participants represented a wide array of individual women and women's groups from all over the country and varied in terms of class, formal educational attainment, ethnicity and age. Some participants were politicians in their own right (i.e. village headmen [sic]), while others were active in the Sub-district Administrative Organization (also known as TAO), in Women's Development Associations (at the village, sub-district, district and provincial levels), savings groups, youth groups, and other community associations. While some were by now seasoned pros at such meetings and looked forward to catching up with dear friends, others were relatively new to women's organizing. Hence, such meetings helped to ensure that women's groups were supported, that networks were extended, and that new women were being recruited into a growing movement for democracy and women's rights.

During the meeting, various participants made presentations about their regional networks and organizations, including their successes, failures and ongoing problems. Presentations were typically followed by commentary by CMU scholars and open question and answer periods. Scholars and guest speakers from the Union of Civil Liberties and the Group on Local Autonomy also presented a session about Chapter Nine of the new Thai constitution (ratified in 1997), which outlines rules for local government and the new electoral process⁹. During events such as this one, scholars, NGO members and Thai citizens sought to exchange information, ideas and resources and to better prepare Thai women for effective participation in both formal and informal political processes. Since opportunities for this kind of exchange is still relatively rare, particularly for women at the village level who may have neither the financial resources to travel nor the confidence to participate in events which brings them into interaction with those of vastly different educational backgrounds, women were particularly enthusiastic about the program, despite apparent conflicts between different points of view¹⁰. For example, some participants remarked to me that the meeting had boosted their self-confidence, given them important access to resources, and provided them with useful information that they could then take back to their home communities. Similarly, some of the university scholars told me that in meetings such as this one, they could learn first hand about the problems affecting women and their communities. This aided them both in planning for future CALW activities and in crafting research proposals. Forced to confront the realities of women living in a variety of circumstances, Center scholars became more adept at accounting for diversity and crucial social problems in their research. Perhaps most importantly, in addition to empowering the women participants from the different geographic regions, the meeting also inspired scholars themselves to recommit their time and energy to the movement for women's empowerment and to their more broadly defined activist-intellectual work.

Although I have elected to discuss the specific case of CALW here, there are many more organizations throughout the country deserving of note for their NGO-scholar alliances. These include for example, Chiang Mai University's Women's Studies Center (WSC) and its Paralegal Trainee Project which aims to train village women in the law so that they can serve as legal advisors and advocates for their respective communities, the Group on Local Autonomy dedicated to empowering communities for self-governance, and the National Coordinating Committee of Non-Governmental Organizations for Rural Development (NGO-CORD) which assists organizations in networking horizontally for better access to resources and aids in NGO community building. Each of these organizations provides a model for NGO-scholar exchanges and points to a robust, diverse and evolving civil society in Thailand.

NGO-Scholar interfaces
Broadly speaking, the scholarly and public literatures on NGOs have until recently been rather uniform and have stressed NGO successes and their potential for fostering truly democratic practices¹¹. At the risk of duplicating what can be at times a very romantic view of NGOs devoid of critical assessment, I have here stressed what I believe to be one more positive aspect of NGOs I encountered in northern Thailand. I have chosen to take this risk for two reasons: a) to highlight the important and productive role of scholars in NGOs and movements for participatory democracy, and b) to focus attention on one prototype of the activist-intellectual.

As I allude to above, NGO-scholar interfaces result in a series of benefits for the various parties involved¹². NGOs and community members who are able to work with scholars on their topics of concern benefit from an expanded network that may include other scholars, university administrators, governmental officials, foreign researchers and funding agency representatives. Such networks may provide organization members and individual Thai citizens with new and potentially improved resources including facilities, financial support, literature, social connections and so on. Similarly, NGOs and their members are likely exposed to new forms of knowledge and ideas that may push their efforts in new and unforeseen directions. By working together with scholars who in Thailand hold social positions of respect and authority, NGO members may also gain new or renewed legitimacy for their organizations and their causes. And finally, such alliances may contribute towards an increased sense of self-confidence and community as people from different social constituencies find ways to cross socially entrenched boundaries and establish coalitions organized around common commitments to democracy and social justice.

Likewise, scholars engaged in such interfaces also benefit in multiple ways. First, working together with community-based organizations allows scholars both to share their ideas and knowledge with groups and individuals outside of the academy and to test their theories against what they encounter in the "real world." For nothing can more effectively challenge a researcher than the voices of those who are the objects and subjects of research. Encounters such as these therefore result in an important feedback process that helps to produce better research that is more attentive to lived experience. Such research may in turn lead to more effective programs for developing democratic practices and provoking social change. Second, through their work with NGOs, scholars themselves participate in and stimulate democratic movements for social change, thereby becoming the active and engaged citizens of whom they so often speak. And third, as in the case of CALW, scholars are able to see the concrete results of their efforts to empower women, including themselves. This type of engaged work is what sustains many of these scholars both in their community efforts and in their research and teaching.

By highlighting one prototype of what I prefer to call the "activist-intellectual," I seek to raise awareness about what many scholars in Thailand are in fact already doing. I hope that scholar-NGO interfaces in Thailand may provide an impetus to scholars and NGOs in other countries to undertake similar work. Too, I hope that the successes of such alliances might compel funding agencies to think more carefully about how to support and even encourage scholar-NGO exchanges and alliances. Most importantly, I fervently hope that this example from Thailand might stimulate scholars at home to think about how they might partner more effectively with NGOs not only in Asia, but with organizations and groups right here in communities across the United States. Because these days, we could all use a lot more activist-intellectuals.

Works Cited

Amara Pongsapich (1995) Nongovernmental Organizations in Thailand. In Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Community. Tadashi Yamamoto, ed. Singapore: ISEAS and Japan: Japan Center for International Exchange.

Costa, LeeRay (2001a) Working with and for the Public: Lessons from Northern Thailand, Public Anthropology Graduate Journal, 2001b. Electronic document, http://www.publicanthropology.org/Journals/Grad-J/(2)Hawaii/Costa.htm, accessed July 9, 2002.

Costa, LeeRay M. (2001b) Developing Identities: the production of gender, culture and modernity in a northern Thai non-governmental organization. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i, Manoa.

Costa, LeeRay M. (2001c) Scholars, 'Feminism' and Identity in the Networking of Thai Women's NGOS. Paper presented at the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington D.C., November 28 - December 2.

Fisher, William F. (1997) Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:439-464.

Gawin Chutima (1994) Thai NGOs and Civil Society. In Civil Society in the Asia-Pacific Region. Isagani R. Serrano, ed. Pp. 145-152. Washington DC: Civicus.

NGO-CORD (1998) NGOs: Saphan Khong Sangkhom (NGOs: The Bridge of Society). Chiang Mai: NGO-CORD Northern Region.

Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (1995) Thailand: Economy and Politics. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

Thai NGO Support Project (1995) Thai NGOs: The Continuing Struggle for Democracy. Jaturong Boonyarattanasoontorn and Gawin Chutima, eds. Bangkok: Thai NGO Support Project.

Thomson, Sheila Sukonta (1997) Making a Difference: Women in Local Politics in Thailand. Bangkok: Gender and Development Research Institute and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

¹ I use the term NGO (non-governmental organization) in its broadest sense to include those groups that are non-governmental, non-profit and exist relatively independently of the state. NGOs typically, though not universally, espouse sentiments and goals in the name of "the people" that are oftentimes contrary to those of the state. Hence I frequently use the terms NGO, association and group interchangeably. Those interested in knowing more about the Thai NGO community might consult Amara (1995), Thai NGO Support Project (1995) and Pasuk & Baker (1995).

² Thailand is commonly divided into four regions: north, east, south and central. The northern region comprises seventeen provinces, though the NGO members I came into contact with were mostly from the upper nine provinces. My research focused primarily on Chiang Mai province and surrounding areas.

³ I conducted research for my PhD dissertation (Costa 2001b) in Thailand between June 1997 and March 1999, and September-December 2000. CMU's Women's Studies Center graciously sponsored my research while Fulbright Hays made it financially possible.

⁴ Some Thai scholars and activists even contend that the NGO movement in Thailand actually originated during the 1970s student movement. See e.g., Gawin (1995), NGO-CORD (1998).

⁵ Elsewhere (Costa 2001a) I have written about scholarly activism and public anthropology. Also see the Public Anthropology website for some excellent models of contemporary activist-intellectuals working in the United States.

⁶ Ajaan is the formal title of address for a university level instructor.

⁷ Lanna is a Thai word meaning thousand rice fields and refers to the northern region which was in the past a separate kingdom. It now serves as a marker of regional, ethnic and cultural identity.

⁸ FES has a local office in Bangkok and frequently supported activities organized by CALW. See e.g. Thomson (1997).

⁹ The Thai Constitution is available online.

¹⁰ Here I seek to point to symbolic and practical struggles among different meeting participants for control over the meanings of the meeting itself, of Thai women's NGOS and networks, and of women's subjectivities as Thai citizens. I have begun to explore these topics in Costa (2001c).

¹¹ See e.g., Fisher (1997).

¹² Such benefits do not necessarily preclude drawbacks as well. Some of these are explored in Costa (2001b).