Statement of Purpose

The boom in Thailand’s economy during the 1990s was matched only by its subsequent crash in 1997. Thai news outlets blamed much of the economic crisis on foreign investment, prompting a rise in nationalist sentiment among the middle class. Government officials and public intellectuals both began to advocate the rediscovery of a lost “Thai-ness.” According to this discourse, Thai business people had somehow sacrificed an authentic Thai identity on the altar of amoral profit. Only by remaining true to an imagined spirit of the nation could Thailand recover economically and socially. The discourse of khwampenthai, what Thongchai Winichakul terms “Thai-ness” (Thongchai 1994), is both produced by and directed at middle-class consumers, who had emerged during the 1980s and ‘90s to become symbols of Thai prosperity and modernity (Hewison 1997, Klima 2002). Speaking at an exhibition of Thai artists, Anand Praphaso, a public intellectual, said that Thais must ask themselves “whether we have forgotten what actually is the meaning of the word ‘a Thai.’ Is it not high time that each and every one of us revived the spirit of being a Thai?” (Kasian 2002:215). This call to nationalism as a bulwark against economic crisis has re-emerged in the past year with the rise in gasoline prices and the subsequent rise in the prices of ordinary goods.
In Chiang Mai, this authentic well of Thai identity is seen as under threat by modernity. Along with new high-rise construction projects and glossy shopping malls are notes of anxiety and ambivalence. Newspapers are replete with cautionary tales of the dangerous influence of “consumer society” [sangkhom boriphook], where well-off young people are driven to crime to satisfy a perceived thirst for modern commodities. A part of this discourse of anxiety is the assertion of an authentic but lost Chiang Mai, one that is continually under re-construction in both high-modern construction projects as well as in the movement opposing them. It is this idea of a revived spirit of Chiang Mai among the middle-class that I wish to explore in my research, specifically the image of Chiang Mai’s independent past, the articulations between the countryside and the city, and the symbolic divisions and connections between Chiang Mai, Bangkok, and the world.
I propose to examine this issue through looking at these sites where an image of Chiang Mai is being portrayed. Specifically, I will ask 1) How and where is the assertion of an essential Chiang Mai identity being promoted? 2) Who are the people involved in this debate, and how is being discussed (e.g. in films, newspapers, television, public spaces)? 3) As Chiang Mai changed from a regional center [muang] into a regional primate city [muang toh diaw], how has the relationship between the city and the periphery [jangwat] changed?