ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine how recent debates on ‘the house’ (cf. Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995) could illuminate aspects of social structure, kinship and ritual in Northeast Thailand. The title suggests that ‘the house’ may have been a suitable analytical model for the Isan, as it is for numerous peoples in Indonesia and elsewhere, but that is no longer the case in the rapidly changing economic and social circumstances of Northeast Thailand. A ‘house society’ refers to the centrality of a dwelling in the ritual and social aspects of that society, whereas ‘household’ is primarily a building serving as a socio-economic unit and living quarters. Debates in Thai anthropology throughout the 1960s and 1970s focus very much on the question of ‘loosely-structured’ societies in which the individual appeared to be less confined by rules of social obligation and formal structure compared with other societies. This somewhat unsatisfactory debate about structures or lack of structures has never been concluded and lies hidden in much of what is written on Thailand (Ruohomäki and Sparkes 2000). It is my intention here to investigate ‘the house’ as an alternative analytical approach within the context of Thai anthropology and its transient nature.
