Khlongs and Subaks Workshop 2025

The Khlongs and Subaks Workshop was held at CMKL University in Bangkok, April 21–25, 2025. The workshop examined two canonical examples of traditional water management protocols — the khlong canal networks of Thailand and the subak communal irrigation systems of Bali — as models for understanding how premodern societies designed, maintained, and adapted complex coordination infrastructure.

Khlongs and subaks both represent highly evolved solutions to collective action problems: the allocation of scarce resources, the enforcement of shared obligations, and the reconciliation of individual and communal interests across time. The workshop explored what these systems reveal about the deep structure of protocols and what contemporary designers of coordination systems might learn from them.