There is a deep historical dimension to Thai civil society, and one of the tasks of this panel would be to understand how history helps us understand what has happened. Such figures as Thianwan, K. S. R. Kulap, Narin Phasit and even King Vajiravudh (1910-1925) played a part in creating and shaping a public space for discussion of social, political, economic, and cultural issues. Before the expansion of universities in Thailand during the 1960s public intellectuals came from the worlds of journalism and writing. The legacy of this history is visible today. Academics write columns in daily or weekly newspapers or have found new careers as hosts of television shows.

Other dimensions to this topic include the gendered nature of public space, largely dominated by men, and the role Buddhism might play in discouraging the participation of women in that space. Another set of questions has to do with the character of the different kinds of ‘knowledge’ (khwamru, sastra, phum panya, farang-knowledge) possessed by these public intellectuals. To what extent do public intellectuals derive their authority from the knowledge in their possession?

This statement by no means exhausts the themes and questions that might be raised by papers in this panel. 

Civil society as the realm of autonomous citizens who desire to influence, or even oppose, the affairs of state is a modern phenomenon that has only recently arisen in Southeast Asia. Until now, it is in search of a format and a tradition. Its culture is in the making. People have yet to learn to think about public affairs. It is, therefore, relevant to investigate what people are being taught about these matters. 

To this purpose, this paper will offer excerpts of the Ministry of Education’s guidelines and explanations for teachers and summarize the relevant contents of official and approved school texts currently in use. From these it will appear that the present-day practice of Thai democracy is very negatively evaluated; that the image of ‘real’ democracy is highly idealized; that the national doctrine of the Three Institutions constrains social studies, and that, in the moralistic model chosen, it is not really possible to explain either democracy or autonomous, responsible citizenship. Apparently, the Ministry, as a ‘public intellectual’, still has to come to grips with the recent experience of living in a ‘modern’, urban-anonymous, businesslike and individualizing environment. As a result, it continues to preach ethics that no longer apply, and only makes a scant contribution to the development of a civil society.

From July 1844 until October 1845, and again from March 1865 till February 1867, a group of American missionaries led by Dan Beach Bradley published a newspaper in the Thai language called Bangkok Recorder. It was the first newspaper ever published in Siam. Its readership circled around Siamese executives and intellectuals of the time and included such leading personalities as King Mongkut, Prince Chulalongkorn, Prince Wongsathiratsanit, Chao Phraya Phra Klang as well as a number of commoners like Tianrue Wannapho (Tianwan) etc. Although the majority of the readers seemed to be Bangkok-based, others were living in Samutsongkram, Phetburi, Phang-nga, Songkhla and Nakhon Si Thammarat. The Bangkok Recorder became, in the latter period, a kind of public forum in which editor and readers were engaged in a lively and passionate discussion on social and cultural issues in a manner quite unprecedented in Thai history. 

In my contribution I try to analyse the rhetoric used in these debates and attempt to set this ‘civilizational’ discourse in its cultural and political context.

This paper is focused on the personal aspects of leading intellectuals in Thailand. The main objective is to find out which people are currently accepted as the most prestigious intellectuals in contemporary Thai public sphere. With the assumption that the high social prestige of intellectuals is expressed in public recognition, leading intellectuals in this study are people who express the most highly influential ideas influencing society. The inclusion of high influential intellectuals is indicated by members of the intellectual circle themselves. 

In Thai society today, the expansion of the public sphere has caused intellectuals to become dramatically more publicized. At the present time, Thai intellectuals increasingly use public media for participating in social debates. They have emerged to write and speak on social problems and crisis for a broadly educated public by means of the mass media. Highly literate daily newspapers, magazines of politics and culture, and TV talk shows are now providing as new platforms for intellectuals. Actually, being a prominent public figure, the main activities of Thai intellectuals involve in writing in daily papers or weekly magazines and speaking on TV.

As mentioned by members in the same circle, this paper also shows the  names of the top ten people who are playing the most influential role to mobilize public opinions and attitudes of the Bangkok middle class. These leading intellectuals have influenced to shape the social agenda and also the change of Thai politics. 
In addition, we also found that a large proportion of public intellectuals in Bangkok are professionally involved in the production of social knowledge. Thai intellectual community today is mobilized by the larger group of academics. More a half of them are social scientists concentrated at two famous universities, Chulalongkorn, and Thammasat. 

In the new context of Thai civil society today, most members of intellectuals play a critical role in representing the interests of the public sector and the people in general. The image of leading intellectuals in Thai society seems to generally provide the critical ideas against the state. Especially, the majority on the list of top ten intellectuals still keep such the self-image of being critical intellectuals. 

Today, leading intellectuals involved themselves in seriously rethinking and reinterpreting the new and alternative solutions for the society. Concretely, in the social practice of two public agenda, the political reform and the current economic crisis, they become as influential public figures in rather standing for the civil sector and cooperating with the mass media than the state.