The Unsettled Layers of Bangkok

Abstract

This chapter explores the history of Bangkok since its founding in 1782 by reconstructing the contingent and open-ended processes that created the conditions of possibility for the emergence of motorcycle taxis in the 1980s. In particular, it focuses on four elements. The first is a mode of administration: a set of formalized, yet often informal, interactions between state officials, citizens, and territory—the dynamic of transforming authority into influence—which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and continued to organize street life in Bangkok. The second revolves around a group of actors: millions of young and relatively unspecialized migrants from rural Thailand who, beginning in the late 1950s, provided the city with cheap labor. The third condition is technological: affordable motorcycles, which flooded Thailand in the 1960s. Finally, the last one is a physical setting: the maze of long and narrow alleys, known as soi, that solidified in the 1970s and rendered far-reaching mass public transportation in Bangkok virtually impossible. Contemporary Bangkok, this chapter shows, is the ever-changing product of incomplete attempts to impose order over the city, unexpected consequences and pushbacks, and the tensions and contradictions that resulted from them.