POVERTY DISCOURSE IN LUK THUNG ISAN SONG

Abstract

This study aims to examine the discourse of poverty constructed through Isan country music composed by Sala Khunawut. The research analyzed Isan country songs from YouTube spanning from 1982, marking Sala Khunawut's debut in the music industry, to March 30, 2024. The corpus comprises 122 songs with lyrical content pertaining to poverty, encompassing financial deprivation, economic hardship, and limited financial mobility.. Michel Foucault's discourse theory was employed as the theoretical framework for this investigation. The findings reveal four distinct constructions of poverty discourse: 1) poverty as social disadvantage and inferior social status, 2) poverty as a driving force for struggle, 3) poverty as a teacher, and 4) poverty as a mechanism for distinguishing people, respectively. The poverty discourse constructed in Sala Khunawut's Isan country music unveils concealed power dynamics across multiple dimensions, including inferior social status, limited educational opportunities, exclusion from modern culture, rural-to-urban migration for employment purposes, ambition, and social inequality. Conversely, the poverty discourse also manifests positive dimensions that serve consolatory functions. These include the elevation of poverty as a teacher of patience and perseverance, the conceptualization of poverty as an instrument for testing human sincerity, contentment with one's possessions, and the normalization of poverty as an ordinary condition. Such normalization of poverty potentially results in the neglect of demands for justice and equality from the state apparatus.