The Internet is often touted as a panacea for perceived deficiencies in economic development. Its space-transcending abilities, which can instantly connect producers with consumers, have the potential to cut out intermediaries and to redistribute economic surplus in a more equitable manner. This doctoral dissertation research asks whether the promises of the Internet are being realized in the context of development programs in the Thai silk industry. The following questions are explored: (a) At which nodes in the production chain are information and communication technologies (ICTs) being used?; (b) How have the introduction of ICTs altered production chains and the flows of capital in the Thai silk industry?; (c) How are these changes altering the socio-economic conditions of actors who are involved in reconfigured production chains?; (d) What are the relationships between contemporary discourses about the economic benefits of disintermediated commodity chains and the actual effects of disintermediated commodity chains?; and (e) Are older local silk making traditions being replaced as producers interact with distant consumers through the Internet? This project will use a textual analysis of websites selling Thai silk to examine discourses being put forth about the effects of the Internet. Surveys and interviews with producers and merchants will provide data on changes that the Internet is having on the production chains of Thai silk. The investigators expect to find that instead of allowing small scale producers of silk to directly sell their products to distant consumers, ICTs are more frequently being used to strengthen the position of powerful actors in existing commodity chains.
The results of this study will expand our understanding of the social and economic impacts of ICTs. This project compares a variety of politically powerful discourses about the benefits and risks of disintermediation as an economic development strategy against some of the material effects that practices of disintermediation are having. Doing so will allow empirically informed theoretical critiques to be made of economic development objectives which involve the disintermediating effects of ICTs. By focusing on the intersections between ICTs, disintermediated and globalized commodity chains, and economic development in the Thai silk industry, this project will significantly contribute to literatures on development, technology, and economic change in Southeast Asia. The study will highlight the complexities of ICT adoption, in contrast to simplistic assertions of the disintermediating potentials of ICTs being a panacea for poverty, and in doing so will provide useful guidance to policy makers attempting to increase local incomes. This research becomes even more useful in such contexts because little has been published to date on this topic due to the contemporaneity of widespread access to Internet technologies.
