Reconfiguring Social Capital through Community-Based Beekeeping: From Livelihood Practice to Collective Agency in Southern Thailand

Abstract

This study re-examines the role of social capital in rural development by
investigating how community-based beekeeping reconfigures social capital and
contributes to the emergence of collective agency in Southern Thailand.
Challenging conventional perspectives that treat social capital as a pre-existing
resource, the study conceptualizes social capital as a dynamic and relational
process that is continuously produced through everyday livelihood practices.
Drawing on Husserlian phenomenology, qualitative data were collected through
in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, non-participant observation, and
document analysis with beekeepers and community stakeholders in Na Bon
District, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. The analysis focuses on participants’
lived experiences and the relational processes through which economic activities
generate social connections, shared meanings, and collective action. The findings
reveal that beekeeping functions not only as a livelihood activity but also as a social
arena in which trust, reciprocity, knowledge exchange, and institutional linkages
are actively cultivated. Through these processes, social capital is reconfigured
through new forms of participation and collaboration, strengthening community
capacities and fostering collective agency. Community members gradually
develop the ability to coordinate actions, negotiate identities, and engage with
external actors such as state agencies and market institutions. At the same time, the
study highlights uneven access to networks and resources, suggesting that
community-based development may generate both inclusion and exclusion. The
study argues that participation should be understood not merely as an outcome of
social capital but as a generative mechanism through which social capital is
produced and reconfigured. By linking social capital theory, community economy
perspectives, and phenomenological inquiry, the research offers a process-oriented
framework for understanding grassroots rural development in the Global South.