Burning Red Desires: Isan Migrants and the Politics of Desire in Contemporary Thailand

Abstract

The Red Shirt movement, which reached its peak during May 2010, has been met with puzzlement and ambiguity by media and scholars in and beyond Thailand. Often presented as a one-man-driven movement or a ‘peasant revolt’, the movement has remained opaque to many observers. This article analyses the ongoing conflict through the eyes of Isan (North Eastern Thai) migrants in Bangkok, especially motorcycle taxi drivers, as motivated by ‘politics of desire’. In particular, the article explores how desires for consumption are voiced by a new emerging regional middle class with a diffuse feeling of being stuck between an agricultural past and a self-employed present, due to structural limitations on social and personal development. The author examines the historical emergences and failures of these desires in a complex web of conflicting and overlapping claims to representation, capitalism and class mobility. Positioning desires at the core of the analysis and exploring their configuration and suppression in Thailand through discourses of capitalist access, self-sufficiency and social justice allows severed links to be recovered and apparent contradictions to be reconfigured. This seems necessary to understand the otherwise disconnected and incomprehensible economic, discursive and spatial dimensions of the Thai political conflict.

Keywords

political movement capitalist desire Sufficiency Economy Red Shirts Thaksin Shinawatra

References

Aulino

Felicity

(2012), ‘Senses and sensibilities: The practice of care in everyday life in Northern Thailand’, unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Anderson

Benedict

(1990), ‘Murder and progress in modern Siam’, New Left Review, No 181, May–June, pp 33–48.

Bello

Walden F.

Cunningham

Shea

Kheng Poh

(1998), A Siamese Tragedy: Development & Disintegration in Modern Thailand, Food First Books, Oakland, CA.

Calkins

Peter

(2007), The Sufficiency Economy at the Edges of Capitalism, website: http://www.sufficiencyeconomy.org/en/files/25.pdf.

Nartsupha

Chatthip

(1999), The Thai Village Economy in the Past, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai.

Gilbert

Alan

(2001), ‘On The mystery of capital and the myths of Hernando De Soto: What difference does legal title make?’ International Development Planning Review, Vol 24, No 1.

Glassman

Jim

(2010), ‘The provinces elect governments, Bangkok overthrows them: Urbanity, class and post-democracy in Thailand’, Urban Studies, Vol 47, No 4, pp 1301–1323.

Handley

Paul M.

(2006), The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Herzfeld

Michael

(1993), The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

10.

Hewison

Kevin

(2008), ‘Thailand Human Development Report. Sufficiency economy and human development’, Journal of Comtemporary Asia, Vol 8, No 1, pp 212–219.

11.

Ivarsson

Soren

Isager

Lotte

, eds (2010), Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, NIAS Press, Bangkok.

12.

Jackson

Karl D.

(1999), Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

13.

Tejapira

Kasian

(2006), ‘Toppling Thaksin’, New Left Review, Vol 29, pp 5–37.

14.

Krittian

Han

(2010), ‘Post-coup royalist groups: Re-inventing military and ideological power’, in Ivarsson

Soren

Isager

Lotte

, eds, Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, NIAS Press, Bangkok.

15.

McCargo

Duncan

Pathmanand

Ukrist

(2005), The Thaksinization of Thailand, Studies in Contemporary Asian History, NIAS, Copenhagen.

16.

Metcalfe

Andrew W.

(1980), ‘The demonology of class: The iconography of the coalminer and the symbolic construction of the political boundaries’, Critique of Anthropology, Vol 10, No 1, pp 39–63.

17.

Metcalfe

Andrew W.

(1988), ‘The struggle to be human: The moral dimension of class struggle’, Critique of Anthropology, Vol 8, No 2, pp 7–42.

18.

Missingham

Bruce D.

(2003), The Assembly of the Poor in Thailand: From Local Struggles to National Protest Movement, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai.

19.

Mitchell

Timothy

(2005), ‘The work of economics: How a discipline makes its world’, European Journal of Sociology, Vol 46, No 2, pp 297–320.

20.

Nelson

Michael H.

(2008), ‘Constitution referendum in Thailand: Observations from Chachoengsao Province’, KPI Thai Politics Up-date, No 4.

21.

NESDB – Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (2006), Sufficiency Economy: Implications and Applications, Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board, Bangkok.

22.

Eoseewong

Nidhi

(2003), ‘The Thai cultural constitution’, Kioto Review of Southeast Asia, No 3.

23.

Phongpaichit

Pasuk

Baker

Chris

(2004), ‘Pluto-populism in Thailand: Business remaking politics’, in Hedman

E.-L.

Sidel

, eds, Populism and Reformism in Southeast Asia: The Threat and Promise of New Politics, New Haven, CT.

24.

Phongpaichit

Pasuk

Baker

Christopher John

(2000), Thailand's Crisis, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai.

25.

Phongpaichit

Pasuk

Baker

Christopher John

(2009), Thaksin, 2 ed, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai.

26.

Serafin

Tatiana

(2009), ‘The world's richest royals’, Forbes, 17 June.

27.

Sidel

Mark

(2008), Law and Society in Vietnam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

28.

Siwaraksa

Sulak

(1990), Siam in Crisis, Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute & Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development, Bangkok.

29.

Taylor

Jim

(2011), Larger Than Life: ‘Central World’ and its Demise and Rebirth – Red Shirts and the Creation of the Urban Cultural Myth in Thailand, Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series 150, pp 1–13.

30.

Textor

Robert

(1961), From Peasants to Pedicab Drivers, Southeast Asia Studies Cultural Report Series 9, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

31.

Thompson

E.P.

(1971), ‘Moral economy of the English crowd’, Past & Present, Vol 50 (February), pp 76–136.

32.

Winichakul

Thongchai

(2008), ‘Toppling democracy’, Journal of Comtemporary Asia, Vol 38, No 1, pp 11–37.

33.

Truitt

Allison

(2008), ‘On the back of a motorbike: Middle-class mobility in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’, American Ethnologist, Vol 35, No 1, pp 3–19.

34.

Wah

Francis L.K.

Öjendal

Joakim

, eds (2004), Southeast Asian Responses to Globalization: Restructuring Governance, Deepening Democracy, NIAS Press, Copenhagen.

35.

Walker

Andrew

(2010), ‘Royal sufficiency and elite misrepresentation of rural livelihoods’, in Ivarsson

Soren

Isager

Lotte

, eds, Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand, NIAS Press, Bangkok.