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The “Red Shirt” pro-Thaksin movement, which organized mass demonstrations in Bangkok in 2009 and 2010, reportedly consisted mainly of farmers from the North and Northeast (Isan) regions. However, within the Isan region, (1) in some areas, few people supported the Red Shirts; (2) within areas that had strong Red Shirt support, some villages were indifferent or negative toward the Red Shirts; and (3) within villages that strongly supported the Red Shirts, there were some villagers who did not support them. In this article I examine these diversities in Red Shirt support in relation to the transformation of local people's livelihood and surrounding ecological conditions. I do this by means of case studies in two contrastive areas that support the Red Shirts but share similar characteristics in livelihood and other sociocultural aspects, including high dependence on a market economy: TM village and the surrounding area in Nam Khun District, and NK village and the surrounding area in Si Muang Mai District, Ubon Ratchathani Province. Core supporters of the Red Shirt movement were motivated not by personal benefits but by the collective benefits for “poor Isan peasants” thanks to various policies of the Thaksin and pro-Thaksin administrations. They expressed a need for a democratic government so that their requests for government support could be fairly considered. On the other hand, in areas where natural resources were still abundant, and in case necessary a self-sufficient mode of life was possible, local people tended to keep their distance from factional politics, including the Red Shirts. They did not depend on government support for leading their lives. Instead, they held the idea of living with what they had.

Northeast Thailand experienced a rubber boom that began in the 2000s with a sudden swing away from the trend toward sustainable forest management that had been widely accepted by society in the 1990s. The rapid expansion of rubber cultivation caused various ecological changes in the farmers' living environment. Faced with environmental issues, various actors in society were reluctant to take the measures necessary to stop these changes, even when there were legal provisions to do so. Among the bureaucracy, agriculture agencies were indifferent to deforestation and, in some cases, gave subsidies to non-titled lands despite regulations against this. Conservation agencies hesitated to regulate illegal cultivation strictly in the forestlands. At the study site, the Tambon Administration Organization stressed the importance of forest conservation but never criticized or prevented rubber cultivation. Villagers reached no consensus on regulating forest clearing or herbicide use but changed their customs to allow the enclosure of non-timber forest resources in private forests. Various actors, without mutual communication, perceived a political atmosphere in which poor people's hopes of a socioeconomic upgrade via rubber could not be denied under the conditions of electoral politics, despite environmental degradation. These were all elements of the rubber boom assemblage. The friction arising from rubber cultivation combined with anxiety regarding environmental degradation became internalized in the actors because the forces driving the rubber boom were so powerful. Therefore, at a glance, all actors suddenly seemed to become optimistic about rubber.

In August and September 2013 Thai rubber farmers blockaded a main road in Khuan Nong Hong Junction, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Southern Thailand, demanding that the government guarantee the price of rubber. From there the movement spread to other places in the region. This article examines the development of the movement with special attention to participants' reasons and affect. Interviews with farmers who initiated or participated in the movement revealed multiple reasons for their involvement, ranging from events that took place during the course of the movement to the insincere attitude of the government. An observation of the blockade revealed that participants' gestures and expressions reflected emotions that coalesced in the form of physical anger, which finally led to the blockade. The government's misunderstanding of the role of emotion complicated the situation.

This article examines the role played by oil palm cultivation in transforming the living world of farmers in a village in Southern Thailand, based on the interaction between villagers' actions and reactions by the environment. The mode of living in the research site had been self-sufficient in terms of paddy cultivation and utilization of surrounding natural resources. However, the introduction of a modern style of rubber cultivation in the 1970s, followed by oil palm cultivation in the 1980s, completely changed the village's socio-ecological order. These two crops cover the entire village besides residences. The villagers purchase all food materials and even drinking water, and they enjoy a modern way of living fully equipped with electrical appliances and cars. The elders in the village still remember—and somehow miss—the past life, while the youth, mostly college graduates, have lost their ties with the natural environment in daily life. Oil palm, in spite of its smaller cultivation area, has played a more vital role than rubber in transforming the living world of the village, because harvesting and selling the fruit are outsourced to middlemen's labor. Some villagers employ labor for rubber tapping and harvesting. This system enables the villagers to be "white-collar" farmers. Although there are attempts by some villagers to reduce their living costs and secure food safety by cultivating upland rice and vegetables for self-consumption, it is difficult for them to drastically change their livelihoods and become completely self-sufficient. What appears at first glance to be a rich village is in fact vulnerable to both natural and market conditions.