Socioeconomic Metabolism and Colonization of Natural Processes in Sangsaeng Village: Material and Energy Flows, Land Use, and Cultural Change in Northeast Thailand

Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and global environmental change requires an understanding of how societies cope with their natural environment. Indicators for society-nature interactions are fairly well developed for national-level analyses. Th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human ecology : an interdisciplinary journal 2003-03, Vol.31 (1), p.53-86
Main Authors: Grünbühel, Clemens M., Haberl, Helmut, Heinz Schandl, Winiwarter, Verena
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural production
Communities
Community Change
Ecology
Energy
Energy crops
Ethnology
Global Local Relationship
Human Ecology
Human ecology, environment
Human influences
Humans
Materials flow
Modernization
Morphological source materials
Renewable energy
Rice
Rural Communities
Socioeconomic factors
Socioeconomics
Subsistence Economy
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable Development
Thailand
Villages
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Summary:Conceptualizing environmental problems as sustainability problems contributing to local and global environmental change requires an understanding of how societies cope with their natural environment. Indicators for society-nature interactions are fairly well developed for national-level analyses. This study adapts some of these indicators to the local level and relates them to a qualitative assessment of economic and cultural change in a single community. Indicators are derived from material and energy flow accounting methods and address two major objectives: Firstly, to identify mutual influences between the global and the local level. Secondly, to assess future potentials of environmental pressures and impacts that can be expected to occur as such communities follow a path of further modernization. This study of a small rice-farming community in Northeast Thailand deals with physical as well as sociocultural aspects in order to produce a broad picture of society-nature relations. The indicators developed portray a society in the midst of transition and rapid modernization. This becomes apparent when comparing the results to those of similar studies in traditional and industrial societies. What we see is a community struggling to adapt to global influences, while at the same time maintaining subsistence with traditional coping mechanisms.
ISSN:0300-7839
1572-9915
DOI:10.1023/A:1022882107419