ABSTRACT
A society may thus be perceived one way or another, depending on which of the features of the multi-stable image projected by that society one chooses to fixate and hinge one's interpretation upon. In the particular case of Thailand this becomes a crucial issue, owing to the contradictory nature of the cultural codes informing its social structure. The controversy surrounding the structure and change of Thai society can thus be seen as largely a consequence of the basic ambiguity of the messages emanating from the contrasting cultural codes that may endorse polarly opposed forms of behavior. The problem becomes to investigate how Thai society has sought to resolve the basic incongruency between its cultural codes. This investigation can be accomplished most effectively by focusing upon the direction and the extent of the shift in the institutionalized limits between the respective domains of contrasting codal pairs in various periods and in different institutional spheres.
