Materializing Thailand

Description

Thailand has become well known throughout the world for wonderful cuisine, great package holidays, sumptuous temples and textiles. Noticeably absent from glossy tourist brochures but equally well known throughout the Western world is Thailand's seedier side - the world of child exploitation, rampant prostitution and AIDS. Thailand maintains its appeal by slipping the ugly and painful out of sight and by promoting women as exotic visual icons through beauty contests, state rituals and the sex trade. This book explores the construction of gender in Thailand and in particular the role Bangkok plays in establishing gender relations for the whole of the country. It examines the historical and cultural processes underlying Thai public culture, including historical theme parks. The author demonstrates how the materiality of the Thai world shapes gender relations and how Buddhism discourages essentialisms, including fixed binary gender identities. Throughout the book, appearances are shown to be critically important, and the essentialism of gender is maintained through display, public presentations, and everyday material practices. Anyone wishing to understand the complexity of Thailand will find this book provides a highly readable and insightful analysis.

Penny Van Esterik York University

'The reader will be rewarded with some interesting detail on the nature of Thai society and intriguing insights into the historical and cultural conditions that have shaped, and are still shaping, Thai gender relations. While the author may argue that superficial understanding is the inevitable fate of the outside analyst, this books stands as testament to one scholar's lifetime rejection of such a mundane truism.' Journal of Sustainable Tourism 'Penny Van Esterik provides a valuable synthesis of much recent work in Thai ethnography including nearly three decades of her own observation and engagement in Thai studies ... This book offers a perceptive analysis of the complex intersections between gender and the nationalist project that will interest readers both in Thai Studies and beyond.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 'A stimulating account of a lifetime's engagement with issues concerning women in Thailand. It is a clearly written contribution to the cultural study of Thailand, and will inspire other authors to take up some of the issues and questions posed in the book.' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 'Throughout, Van Esterik is careful to ground her analysis of Thai prostitution, marriage, and overall gender relation with in the larger context of Southeast Asia. In sum, this is a highly informative and insightful book the should be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the intersection of gender and public culture, in Thailand or elsewhere.' Journal of Asian Studies