タイの新興「ミドルクラス」のライフスタイルと価値指向 : タイ公開大学(STOU)の学生・卒業生に対する訪問調査より
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概要
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The National Institute of Multimedia Education of Japan since 1989 has conducted an international field research project in order to clarify the functions and roles of distance higher education istitutions in Asian and Pacific countries. For the year of 1989, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU), the only distance higher education institution in Thailand, was targetted as a component of this big scale research. One of the purposes of the research was to analyze the function of this non-traditional university on the process of the development of the middle class in Thai society. Our hypothesis was that such an educational opportunity may accelerate up-wards social mobility. Many arguments have suggested that Thai society is a type of "dual society" in which the upper class and the lower one are completely segregated from each other and middle class has been less developed. However, a recent economic growth in Thailand has extended the scale and magnitude of middle class population in Bangkok. Thai society comes to face a structural change because of the rise of this new middle class population. In developing the middle class population, middle class values and its lifestyles are rapidly popularized throughout mass media such as TV, magazines, paperback publications, and so on. This paper tries to analyze the contents of middle class life as images provided by those media. In addition, students or graduates of STOU can be characterized as one of social groups seeking for a middle class life by getting a BA degree. Some of the graduates have successfully realized such a middle class life. Lifestyles and values of such upper middle class are described through interviews with professionals or intellectuals selected from STOU graduates.
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