In other regions of the world, we have seen a resurgence of the great religious traditions, in part as a response to the effects of globalization in its many forms. This study of a particular locality in Thailand may illustrate how and why such dynamics can develop, as global influences change local circumstances for ordinary people. Buddhism is as fundamental to Thai culture today as it has been for centuries, yet it appears that its essential qualities have changed in some respects (compare Reynolds 1994). If the injury narratives provide a reliable indication, the effects of globalization have contributed to a separation of Buddhism from locality-based beliefs and practices. Buddhism in Thailand is increasingly a universal religion whose norms can influence belief and action without regard to the location of the believer. Separated from the local systems of social control to which it was formerly linked, which had routinely compelled injurers to pay damages, Buddhism's general precepts now guide injury victims away from the pursuit of compensation and toward a quest for selflessness, nonaggression, and forgiveness

Injury victims no longer view the legal system as a viable alternative through which to pursue culturally acceptable goals by a different means, nor do community pressures encourage the aggressive pursuit of a remedy. Rather, the legal system increasingly represents the antithesis of deeply held religious and cultural beliefs about injuries and appropriate responses. Although injured persons may in some overtly political contexts have considerable respect for the language of rights, they do not view their mishap in terms of a potential rights claim. The language of rights is nowhere to be found in the injury narratives, and in any event, it is not evident to the narrators how their own rights can be safely and effectively vindicated. At the same time, ordinary Thai citizens appear to view law as existing in tension with their religious convictions, and they perceive the Buddha's teachings as morally superior to the ideology of liberal legalism. Although globalization may indeed have transformed legal consciousness in Thailand, the accounts provided by injury victims suggest that the end result--somewhat unexpectedly-- has been an atrophy of locality-based remediation systems, a further diminution of the role of law in everyday life, and a heightened sense that justice for the ordinary person is more likely to be achieved through self-abnegation than through the pursuit of rights.


9. REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Berger, Peter L., and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. 2002. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bilmes, Jack. 1976. Rules and Rhetoric: Negotiating the Social Order in a Thai Village. Journal of Anthropological Research 32:44-57.

Black, Donald. 1976. The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press.

Bloom, Anne. 2001. Taking on Goliath: Why Personal Injury Litigation May Represent the Future of Transnational Cause Lawyering. In Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, ed. Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bunnag, Tej. 1977. Provincial Administration of Siam 1892-1915. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Oxford University Press.

Cassells, Jamie. 1996. The Uncertain Promise of Law: Lessons from Bhopal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Dixon, Chris. 1999. The Thai Economy: Uneven Development and Internationalisation. London: Routledge.

Engel, David M. 1975. Law and Kingship in Thailand During the Reign of King Chulalongkorn.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asian Studies, No. 9.

1978. Code and Custom in a Thai Provincial Court. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (Association for Asian Studies Monograph Series).

2001. Injury and Identity: The Damaged Self in Three Cultures. In Between Law and Culture, ed. David Theo Goldberg, Michael Musheno, and Lisa Bower. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Engel, David M., and Frank W. Munger. 1996. Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation of Difference. Law and Society Review 30:7-53.

2003. Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Engel, David M., and Eric H. Steele. 1979. Civil Cases and Society: Process and Order in the Civil Justice System. American Bar Foundation Research Journal 1979:295-346.

Ewick, Patricia, and Susan S. Silbey. 1992. Conformity, Contestation, and Resistance: An Account of Legal Consciousness. New England Law Review 26:731- 49.

1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Felstiner, William L. F., Richard Abel, and Austin Sarat. 1980-81. The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming. Law and Society Review 15:631-54.

Friedman, Lawrence M., and Robert Percival. 1976. A Tale of Two Courts: Litigation in Alameda and San Benito Counties. Law and Society Review 10:267- 301.

French, Rebecca Redwood. 1995. The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Galanter, Marc. 1985. Legal Torpor: Why So Little Has Happened in India after the Bhopal Tragedy. Texas International Law Journal 20:273-94.

1986. When Legal Worlds Collide: Reflections on Bhopal, the Good Lawyer, and the American Law School. Journal of Legal Education 36:292-310.

1996. Real World Torts: An Antidote to Anecdote. Maryland Law Review 55:1093-160.

Giddens, Anthony. 2003. Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives. New York: Routledge.

Gilliom, John. 2001. Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hall, Stuart. 1997. The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity. In Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed. Anthony D. King. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hanks, Jane Richardson. 1963. Maternity and Its Rituals in Bang Chan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University.

Harvey, David. 1990. The Conditions of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. 

Heinze, Ruth-Inge. 1982. Tham Khwan: How to Contain the Essence of Life: A Socio-Psychological Comparison of a Thai Custom. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Hussey, Antonia. 1993. Rapid Industrialization in Thailand, 1986-1991. Geographical Review 83:14-28.

Inda, Jonathan Xavier, and Renato Rosaldo, eds. 2002. The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.