One of the few times I actually agreed wholeheartedly with something written in the Bangkok Post:
"Academic research and diverse views on Thailand supplied by foreign scholars help Thai society see itself more objectively, Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn said yesterday.
''As outsiders, they can see us from afar more clearly because we ourselves are too close to the subject,'' the Princess said while addressing some 500 academics at the opening of an international conference on Thai Studies at Thammasat University.
A wide range of topics and papers will be presented and discussed over the three-day conference, including the ''sufficiency economy'', censorship, the southern violence, Buddhism, sexuality, gender inequality and the monarchy.
In the seminar yesterday, academics lashed out at the inapplicability and irrelevance of the sufficiency economy concept in Thailand, saying the promotion of the principle was a political maneuver of the coup-installed government and Thailand's elite.
One of the critics, Peter Bell from the State University of New York at Purchase said the principle was not a coherent and viable economic theory. The United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) recommendation for other countries to apply the approach was not relevant, he added. ''The concept is simply a strong critique of Thai capitalist development. It comes with a sense of anti-globalization in light of the financial crisis in 1997,'' Mr Bell said.
Andrew Walker of the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, said the sufficiency economy had become an ideological tool used by the elite to take the pressure off them to address any serious redistribution of income or resources.
HRH Princess Sirindhorn said Thai scholars should conduct their own local research to compare notes with foreign academics' work because better understanding can help the country solve its problems more effectively.
Prof Charles Keyes, a respected anthropologist at the University of Washington, traced the changes of Thailand over the past 40 years in his keynote speech. He said that Thai villagers had left the sufficiency economy behind to unequivocally embrace the global capitalist system, but their economic decisions, aspirations and life choices remain significantly tempered by the Buddhist teachings based on moderation and self-reliance.
Piriya Krairiksh, an art historian, said that although research on Thailand has shifted from the hands of amateurs a century ago to professional academics, their common aim to create a ''united, free and good'' Thailand remains elusive."
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