Market Formation in the Rural Garment and Weaving Industries in Northern Thailand

The aim of this paper is to identify the socioeconomic factors that facilitated the market competitiveness of two rural household industries the hand -weaving and garment industries in northern Thailand From the mid -1980 the reg on witnessed the dynamic growth of these industries in concurrence with the emergence of largescale factories In this situation rural entrepreneurs created apprQpriate new strategies for placing their products on the urban and even overseas markets rather than stay ng within the existing SOCial StrUCtUre We conclude that 1 )rural household industries had a comparative advantage in labor management over their modern counterparts but at the same time they faced marketing difficulties and 2 )the relational contracting system -in the form of either the putting - outor the advance order systems was a deVice that allowed rural household industries to overcome marketing difficulties At the same time it was also device for their large - scale counterparts to overcome difficulties in labor management Due to an increase in real wages and he currency crisis of 1997 many modern garment enterprises have recently closed dQwn The rural garment industry is on the verge of annihilation whereas the rural weaving industry has survived

Clothing · Clothing industry · Weaving · Work (physics · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Silkworms and Sericulture Research · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies