Chumchon Kha Praveni (The Prostituting Community).

Niwat Suwanphattana. Chumchon Kha Praveni (The Prostituting Community). Chiangmai, Thailand: Women's Studies Center, Chiangmai University, 1998. (In Thai).

Niwat Suwanphatthana, the author of The Prostituting Community, has been involved in the activities of the Thai women's movement in Chiangmai since the late 1980s. In the mid 1990s, he enrolled in the graduate program in Social Development at Chiangmai University. The Prostituting Community is based on his master's thesis, a result of over 10 months of field research in a village in the Chiangrai province in Northern Thailand, a province branded as the country's prime supplier of sex workers. His analysis is influenced by both existing scholarly analyses of prostitution in Thailand and his professional experiences in the Thai women's movement, whether he admits the latter or not.

According to Shalardchai Ramitanondh, The Prostituting Community marks another step forward in feminist scholarship on issues relating to prostitution in Thailand. Situated in feminist discussions on prostitution and women's rights over their own bodies, this publication seeks to unravel the historical, economic, cultural, and social complexity underlying the decision to enter the world of sex trade by women of Northern Thailand. Since the 1970s, women from rural communities in the upper Northern Thai provinces have increasingly viewed prostitution as a vital occupation. This seemingly confirms a feminist view of prostitution as sex work and a result of women's "voluntary" engagement. But, such a decision is not free from socioeconomic pressure. It is a reflection of the community's changing management of women's sexuality. A topic, as Shalardchai points out, that has received inadequate attention from feminist scholars.

In his study, Niwat utilizes "daughter" as an analytical category. He questions the meaning of daughterhood in rural northern Thai communities, especially those which have witnessed young girls coming and going from the world of sex work for the past twenty or so years. The Prostituting Community carefully details the variegated meanings of daughterhood as a concept that has gradually shaped community ethics and socioeconomics, and framed the life choice of young girls in the community. The community, the parents, and the women may at times share their interpretation of daughterhood and at other times not.

Niwat traces the history of prostitution in the community. Based on oral history interviews with the village's elders, their discussion on the notion of "indecent women, disorderly men" shows community's old-time classification of men and women who do not observe monogamy. These individuals failed to manage their individual sexual life in a way that would generate benefit for their parents and families. In the women-centred kinship system of the Northern Thai community, marriage gives the household another productive member. While women can freely choose their life partners, the daughters cannot ignore that marriages serve to strengthen their families' economic welfare.

For women with failed marriages and those whose pre-marital sex did not lead to marriage, they often fled the community to escape societal dispraise. Many "went Southward" to the flourishing sex trade in Bangkok and its vicinities. This pattern is far older than twenty years; it has occurred since the turn of the century, when Siamese noblemen's demands for Northern Thai women were emerging. A career in the sex trade, with its promising economic return, has enabled a number of women to redeem their reputation provided that they can financially support their family members.

Over the years, societal/national critics have accused parents in rural Northern Thai communities of being over-materialistic. The Thai press and the Thai academic community have condemned the parents' allegedly unethical practices of selling and encouraging their daughters to enter the sex trade. In 1997 an anti-prostitution law, since repealed, imposed criminal punishment upon parents found guilty of sending their daughters under fifteen years of age to the sex ring.