Notes & Comment: Bupphesanniwat Fever: Gendered Nationalism and Middle-Class Views of Thailand's Political Predicament (original) (raw)

Anti-Royalism in Thailand Since 2006: Ideological Shifts and Resistance

Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2018

Since the military coup d'état of 2006 and the downfall of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand has experienced chronic political turmoil. Crises of legitimacy expanded to engulf every political institution. This includes the monarchy, usually claimed to be the most "beloved" and "revered" of all institutions, and which has faced widespread anti-royalism since 2006. In this article, it is argued that this recent anti-royalism was neither a wellplanned scheme or plot, as claimed by the country's military junta, nor driven by Marxist or republican ideologies that featured in previous bouts of anti-monarchism. Rather, the new anti-royalism will be shown to have emerged from the royalist hegemony that has been deepened since the late 1970s. Moreover, anti-royalist ideas and expressions have shifted dynamically as society has become more polarised. Thailand's political conflict is overwhelmingly characterised by contestations over meanings. In this context and in a highly repressive political and legal context, those who wished to challenge royal power used metaphorical ambiguity, jokes, vulgarity and parody on a daily basis. These arts of resistance were reproduced through popular channels which tended to escape state surveillance, for instance, protest songs, poetry, chats at gathering sites, formal and informal speeches, and symbols in both on and offline worlds.

The Irony of Democratization and the Decline of Royal Hegemony in Thailand

Southeast Asian Studies, 2016

I intend to approach the current decade-long political crisis in Thailand from two perspectives: power shift and cultural political hegemony. From a comparative historical point of view, the current crisis fits into a pattern of cyclical power shifts in modern Thai politics in which an initial opening/liberalization of the economy led to the emergence of a new class/social group, which in turn grew and rose to politically challenge the existing regime of the old elites and their allies. An extended period of political contest and turmoil ensued, with varying elements of radical transformation and setback, reaction and compromise, which usually ended in a measure of regime change. A remarkable feature of the ongoing power shift in Thailand is the ironic reversal of political stance and role of the established urban middle class, who have turned from the erstwhile vanguard democratizers of the previous power shift into latter-day anti-democratizers of the current one, with the globally dominant ideology of liberal democracy being torn asunder as a result. The preferred strategy of recent anti-democratic movements has been violent street politics and forceful anarchic mass occupation of key administrative, business, and transportation centers to bring about socioeconomic paralysis, virtual state failure, and government collapse. The aim is to create a condition of un-governability in the country that will allow the movement's leaders to exploit King Bhumibol's hardearned hegemonic position and the deep-seated constitutional ambiguity of the locus of sovereignty in Thailand's "Democratic Regime of Government with the King as Head of the State" so as to appeal to heaven for divine political intervention. This has inadvertently resulted in the increasing politicization of the monarchy and concomitant decline of royal hegemony as the symbolic ties between democracy and the monarchy in Thailand become unraveled. In this light, the latest coup by the NCPO military junta-on May 22, 2014-was a statist/bureaucratic politic attempt to salvage the cohesiveness of the Thai state apparatus in the face of the societally self-destructive, protracted political class conflict that has reached a stalemate and the aggravatingly vulnerable monarchy.

2016 Thailand’s Hyper-royalism: Its Past Success and Present Predicament

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • Thailand’s political impasse in the past decade is partly attributable to the royalist dominance of the parliamentary system, a dominance developed and strengthened under the cultural condition of hyper-royalism. • Hyper-royalism is the politico-cultural condition in which royalism is intensified and exaggerated in public and everyday life. It is sanctioned by legislation that controls expressions about the monarchy in the public sphere. • Hyper-royalism began in the mid-1970s as a measure to counteract perceived communist threats. Despite the fact that these threats had disappeared by the early 1980s, hyper-royalism persisted and was strengthened to support royalist democracy. • Hyper-royalism generates the concept of the ideology of modern monarchy — a charismatic king who is sacred, righteous and cares for his people, and who is indispensable to Thailand — and the belief that royalist democracy is best for Thailand. • Hyper-royalism also generates the illusion that the monarchy is divine, thanks to visual performances and objects, especially through television and majestic pageantry. • Accordingly, the ideal monarch is found in King Bhumibol. Given the mortality of Bhumibol, however, future prospects of hyper-royalism and royalist-guided democracy are grim. Thailand’s political future is highly uncertain. Thongchai Winichakul, “Thailand's Hyper-royalism: Its past Success and Present Predicament” TRENDS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, no.7, Singapore: ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 2016. 36 pp. You can download this article and more TRENDS from this link, https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/trends-in-southeast-asia

Dear Thai Sisters: Propaganda, Fashion, and the Corporeal Nation under Phibunsongkhram

Southeast Asian Studies, 2019

Embodying modernity and nationality was a self-improvement task for fin de siècle Siamese monarchs. In post-1932 Siam, kingly bodies no longer wielded the semantic and social potency necessary to inhabit the whole of a nation. Siam required a corporeal reassignment to signify a new era. This study examines previously neglected propaganda materials the Phibunsongkhram regime produced in 1941 to recruit women for nation building, specifically, the texts supplementing Cultural Mandate 10 addressed to the “Thai Sisters.” I argue that with the Thai Sisters texts, the regime relocated modernization and nation building from male royal bodies onto the bodies of women. Moreover, these texts specified gendered roles in nation building and inserted nationalism into the private lives of women by framing nationbuilding tasks as analogous to self-improvement and the biological and emotional experiences of a mother. Vestimentary nation building prescribed by Mandate 10 turned popular magazines into patriotic battlegrounds where all Thai Sisters were gatekeepers and enforcement came in the form of photo spreads, advertisements, and beauty pageants. By weaving nation building into fashion and the private lives of women, the Phibunsongkhram regime made the (self-)policing of women’s bodies—formerly restricted to elite women—not only essential but also fashionable and patriotic for all Thai Sisters.

Thailand’s “Twilight of the Gods”: Understanding Thai Politics in the Interregnum

Ten years ago Thailand had a popular elected government operating under a publically-endorsed democratic constitution, a thriving economic model dubbed “Thaksinomics” that was being held up as an example for the Southeast Asian region, and had begun to implement historic welfare reforms. Since then the country has seen two military coups, intense political polarization, killings of pro-democracy protesters in the streets, frequent judicial interventions in politics, leading to today’s full-blown military dictatorship which rules by decree. What went wrong? In this talk I explain the reasons for this tumultuous period in Thailand’s politics, assess the strength of the current regime, and consider prospects for the county’s immediate future.

Thailand's First Revolution? The role of religious mobilization and 'the people' in the Ayutthaya rebellion of 1688

Modern Asian Studies, 2021

In the 1680s, King Narai, ruler of the cosmopolitan kingdom of Ayutthaya, was the subject of competing French and Persian attempts to convert him to monotheism. These attempts were not only embarrassing failures; they also helped to precipitate a coup in 1688, in which Phetracha forcefully intervened to place himself on the throne and eject French influence from the realm. But to what extent did the execution of the coup depend on popular involvement? And what ideals and emotions seem to have animated this participation? After pondering the role of ethnicity and xenophobic sentiment, this article considers the construction of powerful discourses of Buddhist intellectual opposition to Christianity, the role of the sangha in the orchestration of the coup itself, and then considers in more detail the extent to which 'the people' demonstrated some kind of autonomous political agency. Lastly, it considers whether the events of the coup and its immediate aftermath were shaped by anti-Christian emotion. As a movement with conservative and restorative aims, 1688 was not a 'revolution' in the modern sense, but it may have ushered in an enlarged sense of popular investment in the legitimation of royal contenders associated with the defence of Buddhism.