Nongovernmental organizations and the work of memory in northern Thailand

Abstract

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provide an ideal context in which to examine the production and reproduction of identities and modernities in the contemporary world because they tend to concentrate within themselves ideas, people, and resources drawn from various sites in the world system. In this article, I examine the practice of memory among NGO activists, village leaders, and farmers in Nan Province, northern Thailand. Assessing the impact of NGOs on the cultural constitution of Thai modernity, I trace contending representations of the rural past to different social concerns with identity and interests that have emerged in the era of planned development and increasing global interconnectedness. [Thailand, NGOs, development, globalization, memory, modernity]