Thai-ed up, un-Thai-ed, toward a genealogy of Thai-western relations

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis is an exploration of Thai-western relations using Foucault's genealogical method. The complex interactions of Thailand and the west are examined through readings of texts in the domains of history, ethnography, and feminism, paying particular attention to how western writers have conceptualized Thailand and Thai life and how Thai academics have responded to those constructions. The historical inquiry focuses on two moments in Thai history, the first in the 1680s when embassies flew between Europe and Thailand, then Siam, and the second in the 1860s when Anna Leonowens spent some years in the kingdom and laid the foundations for the views of Siam which were to metamorphose into the fabulous musical fantasy "The King and I". The ethnographic examination looks at English-language literature on Thailand, organized around themes of emotion and affect on one hand and structure and hierarchy on the other. The feminist investigation evaluates whether or not women are subordinated in Thailand, paying special attention to the topic of prostitution; the chapter concludes with a discussion of transgender individuals and how they function in the Thai sex/gender system. These academic and published discourses are contrasted to the personal and immediate understandings of nine couples who the author interviewed while living in Thailand, one member of which was a Thai, one a white westerner. It is suggested that sociocultural analysis take account of powerful discursive constructions like orientalism yet allow individuals agency. In this study this is accomplished in two major ways: in the historical, ethnographic, and feminist analyses by juxtaposing western voices wherever possible to Thai ones; and in the work as a whole by contrasting academic and generalizing discourses to the particular, momentary, and practical experiences conveyed in the interview material.Ph.D