Smouldering Aspirations: Burning Buildings and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Isan

Abstract

This paper examines the links between Bangkok's smoking skyline and the political and economic aspirations of North Eastern Thais. The author proposes that much of what was at stake during the 2009 and 2010 political upheaval was closely tied to a constricted sense of citizenship apparent in the frustrated political and economic aspirations expressed by North East Thailand's urban poor. Through an ethnographic analysis of the experiences of residents of Khon Kaen's railway communities as they participate in a new housing project, the paper explores the obstacles that poor citizens encounter when they try to ‘become right with the law’ and ‘unite’ in the name of ‘developing’ themselves, their communities, their cities and their nation. In reflecting on the politics of belonging that arise during this project, the author's analysis reveals how hard these citizens work to comply with laws and to take part in national development projects, even when many of those same laws and processes frequently work against them. The author argues that, although coups and mass mobilizations form the most public faces of the current political moment, they simply reflect more pernicious, complex forms of the everyday politics facing poor citizens. Indeed, these frustrated aspirations expose the links between Bangkok's burning shopping malls and the charred provincial government buildings of the North East (Isan). The analysis suggests that the events of 2009 and 2010 were not an uprising against the state, but rather a movement demanding recognition and the opening of the political and economic order to the poor as full citizens.