From Texts to Practices: The Development and Conservation Studies of Isan Silk in Pang Moddaeng Village, Phayao Province, Northern Thailand

บทคัดย่อ

This paper is a part of a larger study of Isan women's negotiating for benefits from both development and conservation regimes in Pang Moddaeng village, Ang Thong sub-district, Phayao province, Northern Thailand. Two primary objectives include: 1) to study and analyse the distinguishable ideas, concepts, and schools of thought in current literature of silk, clothing, and other woven materials, and 2) to understand how these schools of thought’s ideas and concepts have spread into Pang Moddaeng village as a case study. To achieve these two objectives, this qualitative research employs three kinds of methodology. Firstly, it is the textual analysis by studying on 25 articles. Secondly, it employs an ethno-methodological approach for conducting participant observation. Lastly, the research was conducted in-depth interview and focus group interview.

The analysis of relevant literature discovered that there are three schools of thought that have led to the study of silk, garments, and other woven fabrics. Initially, it is the school of modernization, which is the mainstream of ideas for developing silk, clothing, and other woven materials to meet the needs of consumers and compete with the other woven fabrics in clothing market. Secondly, the anti-marketization school which is informed by the fundamental ideas of Marxism and political economics. This school of thought tried to counteract the first school of thought, which was concerned about the market undermining the essential value of silk, clothing, and other woven fabrics. Lastly, it is the conservation school of thought, which is influenced by localism and certain contributions from the second school of thought concerning the presence of essential values, and which could symbolize local wisdom, local knowledge, and local identity. Thus, this conservation school of thought has attempted to do research on the preservation of cultural items, which have those vital characteristics through preserving local silk, clothing, and other woven fabrics. While the latter was found that the numerous social actors in Pang Moddaeng, particularly the elderly and silk groups, were responsible for the structural production of these conceptions in the setting of the case study. It is vital to highlight that the communities have developed two distinct types of social units to cope with the two dominant ideas and concepts of Isan silk. As a result, on the one hand the village has run the silk group to manage with the silk production to follow the idea of modernization, while of the other hand the village has formed an elderly group to keep and create for the local knowledge/wisdom on Isan silk to follow the way to preserve Isan silk’s values.