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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

dealing with the issue, including in the field of public/media education about
what is meant by inequality in land. Instances of land conflict signal the
contextual shaping of inequality. The contextual discussion of land inequality

includes reference to the wider regional level, both to put Thailand’s situation
into comparative perspective and to show how movement of capital across
borders complicates questions of unequal access to land. The latter part of the
article considers the implications of a nuanced understanding of land inequality
for its governance and suggests ways forward for research oriented to more
inclusive and context-specific governance arrangements around land.

Land and inequality

Measuring inequality in areal terms of who has more or less land than
whom is a useful starting point and one of the principal ways of comparing
concentration of land across different countries. However, defining land
inequality in this way is problematic, given the multi-dimensional nature of
inequality in land. In turn, this raises questions of what various measures
actually reveal or represent.

Dimensions of inequality

In measuring unequal area of land holdings, a number of qualifying
considerations need to be taken into account. There is a longstanding regional
difference in average size of agricultural landholdings, so that for example a
farmer in northern Thailand with 10 rai of productive valley floor irrigated rice
land would typically be considered well off, whereas many farmers holding 20
to 30 rai of upland fields in north-eastern Thailand would be considered poor.
Even within a single province, those with larger sloping plots, for example, may be

poorer and less secure in their livelihoods than those with smaller plots of
irrigable valley land (see Charoenratana and Shinohara 2018). Quality of soils,
irrigability, suitability for different kinds of crops and so on may thus be just as
important as area cultivated. In this case, measuring inequality by area needs
to compare like with like, suggesting the need for a disaggregated approach
whereby inequality in size of holdings within localities or on categories of similar
agro-ecological conditions serve as the basis for comparison.

116 Land Governance and Inequality in Thailand:
The Need for Context

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