Research & Article

Bangkok's natives see their city less as a grid of streets than as a patchwork of named places defined by activities, communities and historic events. This pluralistic popular image once competed with a single-centered royal image, and today it challenges a bureaucratic official image legitimated by modernity. Thai urbanization is the triumph of the royal and official images. These ruling images are effectively as fixed and given as texts, while the popular image arises from a discursive culture of place that is fundamental to not just the Thai but their larger family of Tai peoples.