The need for current education reform in Thailand starts with the problem of low educational attainment of the Thai people due to the low transition rate of primary school graduates to lower secondary level. It was realized that to be able to compete in the world market, Thailand could no longer rely on cheap labor as an incentive to production and inducement of foreign investment. An attempt has been made to reform the Thai education system with a commitment to expand the basic education to 12 years in the year 2002. An increase in basic education will lead to a need to expand the supply of higher education in the future. With the advance in communication technology and increasing longevity, the new generation of students who look for higher education will vary in age, needs, and places of study. To meet this new challenge, the higher education institutions must be flexible in their management of resources, personnel and curricula design. All state universities in Thailand are scheduled to be autonomous by the year 2002. This will in effect change the status of people working in state higher education institutions from civil servants to university employees. It is also expected that some criteria based on quality and equity will be used in allocating government budget to these institutions. Accountability of state autnomous universities will be required, and there will be an external evaluation by independent organization every five years. Internal evaluation is expected to be carried out by institutions themselves annually. The imposition of the evaluation process is hoped to improve the quality of education provided by all higher education institutions.

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The development of the property industry in and around Jakarta during the last decade was really conspicuous. Various skyscrapers, shopping malls, luxurious housing estates, condominiums, hotels and golf courses have significantly changed both the outlook and the spatial order of the metropolitan area. Behind the development was the government's policy of deregulation, which encouraged the active involvement of the private sector in urban development. The change was accompanied by various consumptive trends such as the golf and cafe boom, shopping in gorgeous shopping centers, and so on. The dominant values of ruling elites became extremely consumptive, and this had a pervasive influence on general society. In line with this change, the emergence of a middle class attracted the attention of many observers. The salient feature of this new "middle class" was their consumptive lifestyle that parallels that of middle class as in developed countries. Thus it was the various new consumer goods and services mentioned above, and the new places of consumption that made their presence visible. After widespread land speculation and enormous oversupply of property products, the property boom turned to bust, leaving massive non-performing loans. Although the boom was not sustainable and it largely alienated urban lower strata, the boom and resulting bust represented one of the most dynamic aspect of the late New Order Indonesian society.

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One of the conspicuous features of “village development” (pembangunan masyarakat desa) under the New Order is the mushrooming of various types of groups and organizations at the village level. These groups were formed as intermediaries to promote villagers' “participation” in the government development programs.
 Rural Java is one of the most advanced areas in “village development” in Indonesia. In K village in central Java, where I conducted a year of fieldwork in 1994/95, more than 140 groups were identified inside the village of about 900 households, and more than 80 percent of the groups were those introduced by the government during the New Order. Especially since the late 1980s, the number of groups has rapidly increased. At the time of my fieldwork, the village was highly organized, showing a very different complexion from the Javanese village of the 1950s, which Clifford Geertz characterized as “formless, ” “vague, ” “loose, ” and unable “to cooperate or to organize anything effectively.”
 Based on the field data obtained in K village in 1994/95, this paper attempts to describe dynamic relations between the government and village community as reflected in the activities of the government-initiated village-based organizations, and to reveal the characteristics of the New Order's “village development” seen at the village level.
 First, I identify all the groups that existed in K village in 1994/95 and examine the degree of villagers' participation by taking one of the hamlets as a case. To put the situation in 1994/95 into perspective, the history of group activities in the village is reconstructed through oral histories. The following four points are discussed as remarkable features of group activities : 1) villagers' mobilization for political events, such as events for Golkar, the ruling party under the New Order, 2) unending elaboration and complication of organizational administrative technique, 3) patterned and routinized group meetings, and 4) development of rotating saving and credit activities (arisan etc.). Under strong pressure for continued realization of “development” under the New Order, the village has, I argue, fallen into a state that can be expressed as “organizational involution, ” which is characterized by “increasing tenacity of basic pattern; internal elaboration and ornateness; technical hairsplitting, and unending virtuosity.” For comparison, the rapid changes that have been taking place in the village since the fall of President Suharto are also described based on my field observation in 1998 and 1999.

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The issue of ethnic identity—or more aptly the “cultural well-being” of indigenous peoples—has never been explicitly discussed in development economics. Development economics has as its academic concern the pursuit of economic well-being and is often unconcerned with such cultural aspects of human well-being as individual dignity and self-esteem. Moreover, development economics does not view individuals as actors who carry and embody a particular set of values and beliefs.
 With this reflection, the author employs a delineated case study of urban migration and adaptation, involving the Badjaos of Davao City, to examine the question of how people can improve their standard of living in their material and economic life without losing their sense of ethnic identity. The data for this study were collected through long-term fieldwork from August 1997 to December 1999. The analytical description of the adaptive process suggests that for them to survive both economically and culturally, it is necessary to have a cultural intermediary who assists them in acquiring the knowledge, information and values that will enable them to navigate across the horizons of economic opportunity.

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This study reconsiders Minami Kikan from a number of different angles.
 Minami Kikan has generally been thought to have backed the independence of Burma. In recent years, however, it has been the focus of particulary strong interest as a means for undertaking a partial review of the debate over the Pacific War.
 However, no full-scale analysis has been conducted of the concept of independence held by Minami Kikan. In the absence of such full-scale analysis, it has come to be regarded as an expression of the contemporary concept of independence through the self-determination of the people.
 The present study verifies that, to an extent, Minami Kikan had a perception, though imperfect, of a popular democratic movement as its authority. Even so, the independence of Burma that it promoted did not by nature exclude control by Japan.
 This finding changes considerably the image of Minami Kikan, which had been idealized and praised in many foregoing studies as “contributing to freedom in Asia.” Admittedly, aside from differences in the perception of the concept of independence, the fact still remains that Minami Kikan supported the Thakin party and played a certain role in advancing the popular movement.
 Moreover, in contrast to the conventional view, since independence as conceived by Minami Kikan attracted a degree of support within the Japanese military, Minami Kikan's backing of the popular movement was an inevitable move that was more influential than it has generally considered to be.

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