From Sex Tourist to Son-in-Law

Abstract

Farang (foreign, Caucasian) men have played a significant role in Thai society for several decades as sex tourists and, more recently, as farang sons-in-law, men who marry Thai wives and often settle down in rural Thai villages. While both of these phenomena have received considerable attention, in neither case have the experiences and motivations of the farang men involved been adequately examined. Based on fieldwork in Bangkok and the northeast region of Isan, we examine the relationship between emergent masculinities of sex tourist and son-in-law at a societal level and the transient subjectivities of men who experience them. Anthropological theory regularly conflates subjectivities and the cultural and social formations, particularly “identities,” that shape them. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that a distinction between the two is needed in order to adequately theorize changing masculinities. The ways in which men’s subjective experiences of masculinity change are different from the ways in which culturally shared, socially constructed, and politically-economically facilitated masculine identities emerge. We caution that evidence of the former—transient subjectivity at an individual level—is not evidence of the latter— changing or emergent masculine identities at a societal level.