On the Politics of Thai Identities
by Pinkaew Laungaramsri

Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD)
Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University

The question about what it means to be “Thai” and what constitutes “Thai identity” reflects the unresolved tension between primordialism and constructivism. Primodialist practice of “Thainess”, officialised/institutonalised as national identity, has often been claimed as a successful collective identity shared among Thai people based on the three commonalities of Thai language, Buddhist religion, and monarchy (chat, satsana, phramahakrasat). Essentialist affirmation of Thainess and its power is however not limited only within official discourse but has been extensively reinforced by media and commoditised in popular culture (movies: Bang Ra Chan, Suriyothai, Si Paen Din, etc, music: Ad Carabao, advertisement: Chang beer, etc.). The masculinisation of Thainess has also become prevalent (e.g. the drinks Red Bull and the concept of “tough male” (luk phuchai), Red Carabao and the image of “great warrior” (naksu phu ying yai), etc.)

Constructivist scholars and activists dismiss the “myth” of “Thainess” as being arbitrarily, politically constructed, and coercive (influential work includes Thongchai’s Siam Mapped, Nithi’s Thai Nation, Thailand, Textbooks and Monuments, etc.) while pointing to the incomplete/never complete construction of the official Thai identity as it persistently attempts to mediate the tension between the desire/quest for modernisation/westernisation and the yearning for the preservation of the perceived “unique Thai culture/value”. Central to the constructivist critique is the dreadful dualism between the nationalist narrative of Thainess and its construction/codification/stigmatization/ of the “non-Thai Other”. Often time this non-Thai Other has been defined as a “threat” needed to be got rid off (e.g., discourse about “hill tribes” (chao khao), minorities (chon klum noi, and most recently the “Muslim bandits” (chone mussalim). To liberate oneself from the primordialist/essentialist domination and the process of Thai-isation, it is argued that one must look at Thainess outside the discourse of nationalism. Suggested approaches include disengagement (e.g., the community culture school, going back to the “village” and search for “local culture/wisdom” as a new form of Thai identity, the Tai Studies school), deconstruction (e.g. work by poststructuralist historians, political scientists, anthropologists to demystify the myths of national narratives), pluralisation (emphasizing cultural diversity as a significant component of Thai identities, e.g., the discourses of community forest, ethnic rights).

However, what is missing from the constructivist contribution to the understanding of Thai identity politics is the dialectical aspect of identity making. I argue that by downplaying the everyday experiences and nationalist practices and subject populations, constructivist approach overlook the dialogical processes between the master narrative of Thai identity and local negotiation at various levels and across class, ethnic, and gender relations. Unlike academic practices, local people do take the nationalist Thai identity seriously. Nevertheless, their engagement with the Thai identity is not as simply as the sharp divide between conformation and rejection. Diverse versions of Thainess must then be scrutinized to see how local identification of Thainess in the modern world are also alloys (hybrids), bearing traces of cosmopolitan, official, external elements that they have absorbed, reworked, translated and transformed (examples of the Hmong’s version of Thai-Hmongness, the Karen discourse about the “poor”, women’s struggle over the Surname Law etc.). By doing this, I argue one can come to realise that what needs to be dismantled is perhaps not the national project of Thainess , but the hegemonic/universalisation and monopolisation of the Thai identity and look for the room for manoeuvre between different modules and their contradictions.