Extraction of surplus by external power holders is often seen as a central definitional criterion of the peasantry. In The Moral Economy of the Peasant, James Scott wrote that “taxes and rents, together or individually, form the twin issues around which peasant anger in Southeast Asia has classically coalesced". Scott's famous “moral economy” derives from the subsistence vulnerability of rural cultivators: with only a fine line separating sufficiency and hunger, peasants are driven to resist any externally imposed measures that undermine local security or disrupt social protections. But what happens to peasant politics when the rural economy becomes much more affluent and when peasants become a target of state subsidy and electorally-motivated benevolence? What happens when resistance is transformed into desire?

This paper addresses these questions by exploring orientations to power in the northern Thai village of Ban Tiam. The paper argues that these overlapping networks of power are important elements in a new form of "political society" (a term borrowed from Chatterjee) which is oriented towards binding powerful forces into relationships of productive exchange.

Dr Walker came to ANU in 1993 to do a PhD in anthropology. This resulted in The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma (1999). He co-authored (with Tim Forsyth of the London School of Economics) Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (2008) and edited Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia (2009). He is currently writing a book about supernatural, economic and political power based on his fieldwork in a northern Thai village. Andrew is co-convenor (with Nicholas Farrelly) of New Mandala a blog which provides "anecdote, analysis and new perspectives on mainland southeast Asia."