Recovering from Crisis: The Case of Thailand’s Spatial Fix

Abstract

Although the Asian economic crisis has been the subject of numerous analyses, the varied and uneven processes by which different Asian countries have recovered from the crisis have received comparatively less attention. This article focuses on the process of recovery in Thailand. While the crisis and recovery both have international dimensions that go beyond individual nation-states, the case of Thailand can be used to analyze some of the forces that are at work in both the national and international contexts. Thailand’s process of recovery can be analyzed by noting tensions and overlaps among different forms of spatial fix—those involving investment in Bangkok’ built environment, those involving the geographic decentralization of investment to lower-cost production sites, and those involving the effort to expand exports. Each of these spatial fixes involves different accumulation strategies and, therefore, political coalitions. This situation suggests the centrality of social struggles over the appropriation of surplus to both crisis and recovery.