Abstract
This is the second of the serial articles titled "Socio-economic Basis of Social Communication in Southern Thailand, " the first of which was published in Vol. 5, No. 4 of this journal as "Land Tenure in Southern Thailand ― a Case Study in a Thai-Islam Community ―." In this article, the author tries to analyze systematically the basic sociological factors which condition the formation of the range of intermarriage among people residing in different communities in the Songkhla Thai-Islam belt.
In Part I, general observations are made on aspects of the mode of marriage. Rigidity of principles characteristic of any Moslem marriage is apparently being lost in the community, where the author conducted a field survey on this topic from July 1964 through June 1966. There are also no rigid rules for post-marital residence, although neolocality is comparatively rather frequent. Various types of household are examined with reference to negligeably few case of polygynous house-holds. Adoption and infant betrothal are not matters of cultural prohibition.
In Part II, the author focuses his attention to the "marginal" cases of intermarriage : intermarriage with Buddhist neighbors on one hand and that with people from geographically detached areas on the other. As many as ten cases of marriage with Buddhists were counted among nearly three hundred samples collected in this Moslem community. There are clear-cut common characteristcs of social background in all of those cases. As to remote areas, there are several cases of intermarriage with people from remote districts and provinces although the villagers show striking propensity for preference of in-village coupling.
