Progress and Its Ruins

Ghosts, Migrants, and the Uncanny in Thailand

Bibliographic Data

ID2263554
AuthorsAndrew Johnson (0000-0002-0946-515X, National University of Singapore, corresponding author), Andrew Alan Johnson (National University of Singapore)
Year2013
Volume28
Issue2
Pages299-319
Publication date2013-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCultural Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0886-7356 • E-ISSN: 1548-1360
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/cuan.12005
OpenAlexW2165054698
LanguageEN
Citations received35
References cited15

This article analyzes stories of ghosts and criminals told by residents and workers in urban high-rise buildings and suburban gated communities in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. For many in Chiang Mai's "communities of exclusion," the fantasy of progressive, orderly neighborhoods and intellectual, prosperous communities coexisted with stories of empty streets haunted by violent ghosts and drug-addicted foreign invaders. With the added shocks of economic and political crises in 1997 and 2006, events that littered the Chiang Mai skyline with abandoned buildings, the idea of progress in Chiang Mai-in the Thai idiom of khwam charoen-underwent its own crisis. Through an analysis of these stories of progressive or haunted sites, I show how, for many in these communities of exclusion, the fantasy of progress and development has been rendered uncanny

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Sociology · Uncanny · Uncanny valley · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access