Political protest in Thailand: not all peasants wear red shirts
The media often portrays the current political unrest in Thailand as a straightforward class struggle, with poor, rural-born phrai (‘serfs’) supporting the radical ‘redshirt’ movement against the powerful ‘yellowshirt’ ammart (‘aristocrats’). But the reality is much more complicated, argues Yoshinori Nishizaki of the National University of Singapore. Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies, Nishizaki observes: “The image of the oppressed rural masses rebelling against powerful urban elites is intrinsically appealing, but fixing our attention only on [the redshirts’]