ARI Working Paper Series

This paper examines the changing roles of monks in alternative development in northeast Thailand. Specifically, it is an attempt to understand the relationship among development monks, NGOs, and the state in the context of localist development ideology and practice. When the phrase ‘development monk’ first entered the Thai lexicon, it was primarily used to refer to monks who engaged in social activism aimed at combatting state-led development policies. Support for these projects often came from localist NGOs, many of whom were anti-government. However, with the creation of the “People’s Constitution” and the passage of the National Decentralization Act in the late 1990s, the Thai government began adopting the language and symbols of localism in its own development strategies. I argue that this has worked to crowd out localist NGOs critical of government policy and has created a practical and symbolic ‘infrastructure’ that serves as the basis for future development activism. This has resulted in the ‘channeling’ of monastic development practice into state-initiated projects at the exclusion of others. This research is based on fieldwork conducted in Northeast Thailand from 2013 to 2015, consisting of participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews with development monks and their lay collaborators.