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This paper is a report on anthropological fieldwork on the civil society movements in northeastern Thailand. The case of Kok Hin Khao land rights conflicts in the district of Nam Phong of Khon Kaen province was thoroughly examined to understand the current dynamics of civil society in the Northeast.It is argued that the discrepancy between the government's development rhetoric and what actually happened at the grassroots level has laid the ground for the emergence of contemporary civil society to protect its own interests. While the Thai state is responsible for initiating the concept of development, village discourses about the concept cannot be interpreted as reflecting unquestioned hegemony of a ruling elite. Development, thus, has become a political-cultural location that entails not only cooperation of villagers with state agencies, but also contestation of the authority of some of these agencies. The contestation over development meanings and practices is conducive to the establishment of grassroots civil society.The author concludes by reflecting on the impact of development and modernity, as many villagers today find themselves in competition with the commercial sector and some government agencies for local natural resources. Conflicts over the use and control of local natural resources, between local communities, various government agencies, and urban industries are rising. Local natural resources, which once were supervised by local communities as local common property, were gradually transferred to be under the tight control of the Thai state and urban capitalists in the names of development, progress, and law. The tensions which surfaced as a result of conflicting development interests have contributed to the rise of grassroots civil society. Village cultural constructions of development and the rise of civil society have emerged to provide a critique of state development strategies and to propose development alternatives that would enable many villagers to gain a better share of the fruit of development.
