Abstract
In recent years scholars have explored the geopolitics of spectacle in exciting ways. While tourism presents a rich opportunity to think about the intersection of geopolitics and spectacle, only a small but growing number of researchers have explored this area where state-society relations unfold in complex ways. This article draws on this work and other traditions in feminist political geography and non-representational theories to explore the embodied geopolitics of a festival and its tourist landscape in the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. As such, we glimpse a complex set of geopolitical relations at play in the multiple spaces of the Yii Peng Festival. A closer look at the Festival with the theoretical tools proposed here helps reveal ongoing geopolitical forces that shape its many contours, including a multiplicity of difference.
Highlights
On a slightly rainy November day in 2012 in the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, a small food stall owner hangs a sign over her booth advertising a local delicacy, khanom ciin, along with several other dishes commonly eaten in northern Thailand
As an activity that tends toward spectacle, is ripe for geopolitical intervention
We agree with Koch (2018) that a geographical approach to spectacle is necessary to uncover the multiple ways that geopolitics becomes an active force in everyday life
Summary
On a slightly rainy November day in 2012 in the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, a small food stall owner hangs a sign over her booth advertising a local delicacy, khanom ciin (fermented rice noodles), along with several other dishes commonly eaten in northern Thailand. In the Yii Peng Festival, state power unfolds in subtle ways that attempt to produce a non-event out of a long and complex history of colonialism by the central Thai state over the northern part of the country and its various ethnically diverse populations.
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