Contributor: Jonathan Rigg Jonathan Rigg is professor of human geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.

This is a sophisticated and nuanced account of contemporary rural Thailand, elegantly combining scholarly viewpoints and the voices of rural people themselves. The book’s chapters are theoretically and empirically rich explorations of the qualities and characters—the textures—of rural livelihoods. More than Rural is first-class scholarship. . . . Rigg has done a superb job on the varied textures of transformation. --- Throughout the book, Rigg emphasises the proposition that agrarian transition and rural transformation in Thailand cannot be comprehended merely on the basis of changes in basic metrics of economic development, such as productivity, incomes, standards of living, poverty, technology, and trade. The multi-dimensional transformations that occurred are revealed as Rigg examines how the rural – labour, households, families, villages, and society – negotiated modern economic development and emerged in a form and character transcending its former rural quality and essence. --- Particular strengths of this book are the historical perspective that starts with the first efforts of Siam/Thailand to modernise agriculture in the 1890s, and a solid grounding in primary fieldwork. . . . [T]his is a fascinating book, which I read with great pleasure and rich gain after my most recent journey through rural Thailand in February 2020. It answered so many questions that arose during the trip, and I found the complexity and dynamics of agricultural transformation in Thailand – as unravelled and re-condensed by Jonathan Rigg – a healthy antidote to the simpler narratives that I had read before. . . . More than Rural is an example not only of geographical research, but also of science writing at its best. --- Rigg’s study is significant not only for what it says about “rural” Thailand, but also for its implications for understanding the “rural” more generally in Asia. A strength of the work is Rigg’s attention to fieldwork and other primary sources. Particularly impressive is the historical perspective, beginning with Siam/Thailand’s first efforts to “modernize” in the 1890s and the transformations through Thailand’s “development era.” --- Jonathan Rigg brings the full strength of his three-and-a-half decades of research and publication on rural Thailand to reflect on meanings and conundrums surrounding the Thai countryside and on rurality more widely in Southeast Asia and the Global South. This book tells us much about the rural as constructed within Thailand’s modern, urbanized, hybrid, politicized present-day context, as well as giving us an expert account of people’s experience of life away from the city.