Abstract:
This research aims to understand the initiation of symbolic commodity and the symbolic commodity market occurred in the social movement group of the Peoples Alliance for Democracy. Also, the process of creating the shared identity of the Peoples Alliance and the social condition via the interpretation of symbolic commodity are studied in this research. This study employs a qualitative research which is the in-depth interview of 10 key informants. The empirical results show that the commodities, specifically produced in the protest area and leading to the special management process of commodity market which relates to the political movement, are the new phenomenon for Thai community, that is, the commodities become the instruments in participating in the political alliance. The commodities have the important impacts in both political and economic. For the aspect of identity, the commodities implicitly represent the people who support the political activity, to inform the people outside to acknowledge the political participation of the Peoples Alliance for Democracys supporters. On the other hand, the supporters also acknowledge the implicit representative of the outsiders. This study also found that, for the aspect of social condition in interpreting symbolic commodity, people which possess different roles and status have different interpretation and appreciation to the commodities.