タイ農村における就業構造の地域差

Abstract

Rural society in Thailand has been changing drastically in recent times. Around the big cities, agricultural households have cut back their agricultural activities as some of their members have become part-time or full-time laborers. This note considers regional differences in occupation structure in agricultural households from the viewpoint of the development of regional labor markets around big cities and the householders' efforts to modernize their agricultural management. It also examines the impact of uneven development of capitalism on rural labor markets and the ways in which different peasant social classes have adapted to this. It was found that the upper peasant class has adapted by sending some household members to the urban labor market and by modernizing its agricultural management, whereas the lower peasant class has adapted by having some household members engage in daily wage labor in the local rural area while continuing the traditional style of agricultural management. These modes of adaptation by the different peasant classes differ somewhat from that of prewar Japan, where the effort to modernize agriculture was made primarily by the middle class of part-owner peasants.