What does childhood mean in contemporary Thailand? What constitutes
childhood in a slum? How does childhood figure in the construction
of national citizenships? Rich in ethnographic detail, this
fascinating, engaging and illuminating study explores the daily
lives, constraints, and social worlds of children born in the slums
of Bangkok, and their ways of defining themselves in relation to a
range of governing technologies, state and non-state actors, and
broad cultural politics. It does so by interrogating the layered
meanings of “childhood” in slums, schools, Buddhist temples,
Christian NGOs, state and international aid organisations, as well
as social media. Giuseppe Bolotta’s analysis employs
“childhood” as a prism to make sense of broader
socio-political, religious, and economic transformations in Thai
society. By examining the competition between different Thai and
foreign actors to define and control the world-view formed by these
children, he demonstrates how Bangkok slums are political arenas
within which local, national and global social forces and interests
converge and clash. At the same time, this analysis highlights the
roles played by Bangkok’s poor children in processes of social
change, considering how young people’s efforts to make sense of
themselves in an era of authoritarian rule reflect the broader
tensions facing the urban poor in this complex moment of Thai
history. The book shows how “marginal childhoods” and the
“cultural technologies of childhood” – schools, religious
agencies, NGOs – reflect both endemic inequalities in
Thailand’s larger socio-political structure and global
transformations in transnational childhood governance. Marginalized
young people’s increasingly plural cultural references create
space for both existential fragmentation and creative
self-reformulation, which provide socially disadvantaged citizens
with unexpected religious, economic, and political resources to
challenge Thai society’s generational structures of power.
Through these arguments, Belittled Citizens demonstrates that
“childhood” is best understood in Thailand as a political
category that has been fundamental to the military state’s rule
and, potentially, its undoing. It also shows more broadly how
attention to children, typically excluded from national politics
and therefore invisible in most political analyses, has important
potential for producing startling insights into contemporary
Southeast Asian societies.
General
Imprint: |
NIAS Press
|
Country of origin: |
Denmark |
Series: |
NIAS Monographs, 155 |
Release date: |
September 2021 |
Authors: |
Giuseppe Bolotta
|
Format: |
Paperback
|
ISBN-13: |
978-87-7694-301-1 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
87-7694-301-1 |
Barcode: |
9788776943011 |
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