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Thailand is a developing economy underpinned by high levels of wealth inequality and an ingrained patronage culture. This research aims to examine how social enterprises (SEs) have been encouraged in Thailand in recent years as “micro-level challenges” to capitalism and their potential impact in addressing inequality.

Through analysing policy documents and consultations, this paper traces the development of Thai policies intended to encourage SEs’ development. Additionally, the paper uses case study interviews and documents to demonstrate how SEs tackle inequality. From these, a framework is developed, outlining SEs’ roles and interventions to reduce inequality.

Thailand’s new policy is in contrast to those countries where SEs face policy neglect. Nevertheless, government has been slow to embed processes to encourage new SEs. Despite SEs’ “challenge” to capitalism, listed companies are increasingly providing in-kind and financial support. The case study data shows SEs reduce inequality as they work with rural citizens to increase their employment and incomes. This work may also contribute to diminishing rural citizens’ dependency on political patronage.

While SEs can address inequality gaps, the research includes only existing SEs on specific lists. Nevertheless, the Thai experience will be useful to other developing countries, especially those beset by political patronage.

The research shows legislation is insufficient to support SE growth and inequality reduction. The framework highlights the need for both government policy attention and interventions from donors and companies to support SEs’ efforts.

This chapter analyzes the impact of intercultural academic experiences on students in the areas of intercultural sensitivity and multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

Cottey College’s mission statement includes a clause about educating students to be useful members of a global society (Mission, n.d., para. 1). Toward achieving the mission, each of Cottey College’s second year students is offered an international experience over spring break that is largely paid for by endowed funds. For spring break 2015, the author of this chapter and a colleague offered a trip to Thailand. To participate, students were required to take part in a Step into the World!: Thailand course that was intended to prepare them to successfully navigate, and later reflect upon, their experience abroad. The trip portion of the course spanned 10 days. To measure what impacts the course may have had, students were asked to complete a pre-course and post-course survey, the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (Fritz, Möllenberg, & Chen, 2002), and to complete journal entries and a personal impact statement by which their multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills were assessed.

Analysis of the results suggests the Step into the World!: Thailand course had a positive impact on the majority of students’ intercultural sensitivity and multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

The findings support the importance of intentionally combining inside and outside of the classroom experiences to enhance student outcomes.

Throughout the course of its history, Thailand has thrived on international commerce and interacting with global forces. During the past two centuries, Thailand has faced a progression of events threatening its self-definition requiring very conscious educational and cultural reform policies to offset the advances of globalized movements. The first series of reforms began to take place in the late 19th century and served as a defensive measure to fend off the onslaught of European colonial activity and to unify a disjointed society. This reform was used to primarily centralize the cultural and religious authority and power of the kingdom, while assimilating the local/regional/rural areas through education. The most recent reform in late 20th century was devised to fend off global market forces and to unify a disjointed society through a strategy of decentralization and educational reform. Both these reforms were countered with strong resistance movements that reflect a resistance heritage that aspires to civil society.

This chapter has two major objectives. It discusses the political leadership in Thailand in terms of historical development and examines the role adaptation of Thai elites in order to respond to different demands from various sectors in the society. The chapter concludes that political leaders have to adjust their roles to cope and to survive. Apart from the old bureaucratic elites, both military and civil, there are also some other stakeholders who have become stronger over time, making more demands on political leaders (and, consequently, on the state apparatus). In reaction to these stakeholders, political leaders have used public administration reforms and initiated public policies to gain more capacity to lead.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a study, conducted in Thailand, which examined the working class and middle class consumers’ evaluation and purchase intentions of high equity versus low equity Thai fashion labels of sophisticated and standard apparel, outsourced for production to three Asian countries of varying manufacturing competence. Design/methodology/approach – Data from a field survey was analysed through a 2×2×3 factorial design and the influence of a particular factor over the others in specific scenarios was observed. Findings – Consumers from both social classes are inclined to be partial to a specific quality dimension of their national brands made abroad. When considering purchase of reputed brands of standard products, working class consumers are particularly concerned about the item's country‐of‐origin (COO). On the other hand, middle class consumers’ apprehensions of multi‐featured products’ COO run across both high and low equity brands. Research limitations/implications – Common methods bias may have occurred in this study as a result of respondents in the self‐report survey wanting to avoid cognitive dissonance, trying to correlate their responses with their answers to previous questions. Practical implications – Consumers belonging to a particular social segment in the brands’ home country can be encouraged to buy their national brands produced abroad on the promise that these products will deliver their favoured quality features. Originality/value – The research results are presented in the form of a consumer typology based on the dimensions of perceived quality, and explain the effect of the interaction of country's competence, brand equity and product purchase involvement on middle class and working class consumers’ evaluation and purchase intention of brands outsourced for production abroad.

This article presents the findings of research conducted in Thailand that examines the equity practices of local and foreign organisations. The managers of these organisations make equity policy decisions that are influenced by a combination of the cultural and social environments in which they operate and their own organisational policies and managerial positions. Against a background of social closure and inequality theories, this article discusses some of these cultural and social factors and their influence on current equity responses in the workplaces of selected organisations in Thailand. Importantly, it draws attention to the underlying dynamic between class and gender in Thailand and highlights the need for theorists and management to more closely consider the implications this has on equity policy and programmes in organisations in this nation.

In Thailand, the number of higher education institutions (HEIs) offering international programmes has surged dramatically. Internationalisation is seen as key to competing in the higher education market, modernising educational programming, and generating new streams of revenue. Yet, such rapid change is disorientating for the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) in the Thai context. That said, there is little disagreement on what it is not; it is not Thai. This chapter investigates apparent efforts to ‘de-place’ Thailand from IHE and considers how these attempts may connect to (post-)colonial tensions between sovereignty and civilisation. Through a synthesis of scholarship in the areas of higher education, cultural geography and Thai studies, the authors construct a framework for exploring how IHE is both imagined and experienced in Thailand. In particular, they re-examine datasets from studies they conducted with stakeholders over recent years, including executive leadership, international faculty members, and university students. Through a series of narrative portraits, a dialogue of voices is constructed that reflect distinct orientations to ‘Thainess’ in the IHE. The authors argue that a wider and more inclusive orientation to internationalisation is not only respectful of local identity but is enhanced by it. Ultimately, the hope of this study is to offer a vision of what an ‘emplaced’ idea of IHE in Thailand might look like, one grounded in an orientation unique to a particular place with its own cultural and social coordinates.

Thailand has seen waves of youth-led protests over the past three years. Pro-democracy youth activists have vociferously criticised authority figures: teachers, parents and political leaders, especially the king. Drawing on vignettes assembled over a 14-year ethnographic work with young people in Thailand, as well as on current research on youth (online and offline) activism in Bangkok, I examine the multi-layered meaning of kinship in Thai society. The chapter reveals the political nature of childhood and parenthood as entangled modes of governance that come into being with other, both local and international cultural entities. I argue that Thai youth activists are attempting to rework dominant tropes that sustain “age-patriarchy” in the Buddhist kingdom. Their “engaged siblinghood” aims to reframe Thailand's generational order, refuting the moral principles that establish citizens' political subordination to monarchical paternalism and, relatedly, children's unquestionable respect to parents. As I show, Thai youth activists are doing so by engaging creatively with transnational discourses such as “democracy” and “children's rights,” while simultaneously drawing on K-pop icons, Japanese manga and Buddhist astrology. In articulating their dissent, these youths are thus bearers of a “bottom-up cosmopolitanism” that channels culturally hybrid, and politically subversive notions of childhood and citizenship in Southeast Asia's cyberspace and beyond. Whatever the outcome of their commitment, Thai youth activism signals the cultural disarticulation of the mytheme of the Father in Thailand, as well as the growing political influence of younger generations in the region.

This paper aims to examine consumer perceptions of conspicuousness of purchasing of luxury goods in Thailand.

This study applies a quantitative approach, based on a survey data collected on the internet. The data set was analyzed with structural equation modeling focusing on three latent factors: “Social”, “Personal” and “Conspicuous” value perceptions.

The result indicates that “Conspicuous” value does not have a significant impact on their purchasing intentions, which is a contradiction to the previous understanding that Asian consumers are inclined to behave conspicuously from the collectivist cultural context. This finding casts an implication for marketers in the relevant industry and the field of study for inconspicuous consumer behavior.

This research outcome should be expanded to develop more robust implications for the relevant marketers and researchers. In doing so, another investigation based on a bigger data set with more samples would be required.

This study indicates that Thai consumers do not behave from the conspicuous perceptions, which has been believed in the Asian context of consumer behavior. This finding suggests a new paradigm for discussion is required to understand Asian consumer attitudes in more depth especially their perceptions of conspicuous and inconspicuous views.

The article aims to present a new aspect of “the emergent identities” in Thailand with a correlation between morality and religiosity. The research deals with the perception of 65 Thai male-to-female transgender sex workers who are currently working in sex tourism in Pattaya and Bangkok. This article explores the role religion plays, the linkages between sexualities, and the potential for Thai Theravada Buddhist individuals to understand the way that they cope with life and interpret its meaning among these sexual minorities. Finally, the article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada Buddhists are negotiating their gendered religious spaces in Thailand.

The study investigates perceptions of religion and its role in the lives of Thai Buddhist male-to-female transgender sex workers. Almost all the qualitative data was collected sequentially through (1) focus group discussions, (2) small group discussions, and (3) in-depth interviews. All interview sessions took place over six months in 2019. The researcher is a native Thai speaker and conducted the interviews in Thai with selected sex workers over 20 years old who have at least one year of experience engaging in sex work.

The research found three principal characteristics of “lived religion” in which emergent identities negotiate sexuality and morality: (1) Buddhist dequeering (the way Buddhism operates conservatively to reinforce heteronormativity), (2) queering Buddhism amidst multiple oppressions (how Buddhism operates to complement queer identity and empowerment), and (3) queering Buddhism as enlightenment (Buddhism with an emphasis on “practice” and “spiritual development”). The paper discusses how institutional Buddhism creates and recreates gendered identities in complex ways.

The article shows how Thai marginalized Theravada-Buddhism are negotiating their gendered religious spaces and “buy” the right to sexual and anatomy within their families and society by providing financial support, engaging in religion practices, donating in social charity projects base on their faith and capacity.

The paper is supporting human right movements and dignity for sexual minorities gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender questioning, intersex (LGBTQI+) in Thailand. The paper also promotes equality to all human beings and shows a struggle for the basic human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The paper is raising awareness to religion's rights for all to look beyond distinctions of gender and class which may help to shape future history.

This article examines how Thai transgender sex workers utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Theravada Buddhism. The paper finds that respondents are negotiating their religious spaces through the linkages among their gender, body, embodiment, identities, and sexualities. Despite most respondents believe that being born “a kathoey” as a result of bad karma, they use the Buddhist teachings of karma to explain their identities and even to lead a meaningful life to gain more merits for a better rebirth.

Thailand still lacks research on queer spiritualities and Buddhism. The article has seen challenges to the human rights of sexual minorities in religion. The solution is to increase awareness of the concepts of sex, gender, and sexualities and broaden the understanding of “endless performativity” and “gender diversification” (Butler, 1990) for gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness in creating “social equality” for all member societies in public campaigns, and media launched by the state and NGOs.