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With economic progress, it was expected that smallholders would fade into history. This has been the experience in much of the global North and it was expected to occur as development proceeded in the global South. In East and Southeast Asia, however, smallholders have persisted in the face of rapid and profound social and economic transformation. This presents the core puzzle that the paper addresses: why has the farm-size transition not occurred in much of East and Southeast Asia? Why have smallholders stubbornly resisted the tide of economic history? The first half of the paper defines the smallholder and smallholding, sets out the historical evolution of smallholdings in the region, and explores the role of smallholders in national development. The second half of the paper explains the persistence of the smallholder through three explanatory lenses: the economics of smallholder farming; the role of farm policy; and the logics of smallholder-based livelihoods in a context of global integration. The paper concludes by setting out four possible rural futures for the wider East Asian countryside and smallholder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracking and explaining patterns and trajectories of social and economic change in the global South is a key challenge for geographers. Panel studies, though rare, offer a particularly rich alternative insight to more usual cross-sectional studies. Drawing on a 25-year longitudinal panel study of two villages in rural Thailand, this paper reveals the complexities of the processes underway, the shifting terrains of explanation, and the surprises that are easily overlooked in cross-sectional studies, particularly when it comes to household life chances and courses. The paper makes a case for the value of such approaches and the insights they can provide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, rural settlements in the Northeast of Thailand were farming focused, and strategies of living were structured around the need to secure subsistence in the face of a capricious environment and a weak developmental state. More than half of households in the region lived below the poverty line, and the immediate prospects for ‘development’ were not bright. Drawing on a 25-year longitudinal study of two villages in Mahasarakham, the paper describes and reflects on how risk and vulnerability have been re-shaped during a quarter of a century of profound economic and social change. From largely environmental and local, the pattern of risk and opportunity have become increasingly economic and non-local as external events wash across the shores of rural settlements like Ban Non Tae and Ban Tha Song Korn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]