This dissertation is about progressive alliances across boundaries of class and
space, state and para-state repression, and the meanings of politics in Thailand.
Taking the social and historiographic silences surrounding the period between the 14
October 1973 movement for democracy and the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup as
a point of departure, I locate my analysis of the struggle for hegemony in rural
contention in Chiang Mai and Lamphun provinces in northern Thailand. Employing a
comparative frame with Gramscian and subaltern studies of South Asia and Latin
America, I foreground farmers as central political and historical actors. I draw on oral
histories, fieldnotes, newspaper accounts, and state and activist archival documents to
illustrate conflict, contention, and collaboration among state actors, progressive farmer
and student activists, and landowners.