Paper, Pottery and Prosperity focuses on the role of handicraft production in rural development in Northern Thailand, exploring how handicrafts evolve over time in the context of a modernising economy. This links with on-going debates on community-based development theory, including those related to rural industrialisation, rural-urban relations and biases, indigenous knowledge, rural poverty and livelihoods. The research seeks to return to an issue which was a popular area of investigation in the 1970s, namely the role of small-scale industries in rural development. Rural spaces have always contained an element of non-farm activities, often classified as handicraft production . To date, there is no book which takes such an approach to building an understanding of Thai handicrafts and rural development. The book provides an alternative and different insight into a range of rural development debates in Thailand