1 พ.ค. 2565

บทความวิจัยที่ตีพิมพ์ในรายงานสืบเนื่องจากการประชุมวิชาการระดับนานาชาติ

14th International Conference on Thai Studies

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Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University

This paper focuses on rethinking the concept of “Land Capitalization” through an analysis of the land transferring situation in Prachinburi, Thailand. Since the late 1980s, Land Capitalization has become the policy of the Thai state to promote economic development. The state has determined the Eastern Seaboard to be a significant focal region for industrial development under the Eastern Seaboard Development Program (ESB). Meanwhile, other areas in the same region, especially Prachinburi, are not included in the industrial development zone, and are given the status of “Hinterland.” This situation of land transfers from local dwellers to capitalists in Prachinburi illustrates two important effects of the Thai state when employing the land capitalization policy in the hinterland. On the one hand, capitalists have been able to acquire large-scale land transfers from the local dwellers, and later put them into land speculation. Afterwards, the lands are generally converted into industrial and residential areas to serve as the “Backyard” or support area of the Eastern Seaboard Zone. On the other hand, it has led to an increase in the number of landless farmers. I argue that Land Capitalization is an extra-economic process of dispossession and coercive expropriation exercised by the Thai state and local actors to facilitate large-scale land acquisitions by capitalists. In fact, the Thai state plays a fundamental role in this process by promoting industry and agro-industry under the Eastern Economic Corridor Program (EEC). While neoclassical theory sees Land Capitalization as an economic process of bringing land into the land market, it fails to adequately explain why dispossession and coercion become necessary in order to facilitate the transfer and conversion of these lands into the Backyard of the Eastern Seaboard Zone.

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