Post-Fordist Desires: The Commodity Aesthetics of Bangkok Sex Shows

Wilson, Ara

doi:10.1007/s10691-010-9145-2

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It would thus be misleading to gloss the affective register of contemporary Myanmar migrants in Thailand as “post‐Fordist,” implying nostalgia for the lost promises of a Fordist‐Keynesian future (Berlant ; Muehlebach ; Muehlebach and Shoshan ). While the Fordist/post‐Fordist dichotomy has been applied to analyze labor‐regime transformations in Thailand (Piya ; Wilson ), Thai industrial workers even during the height of the 1987–96 boom were never promised the same level of socioeconomic security or allowed the same middle‐class aspirations as were equivalent workers in mid‐20th century North Atlantic welfare states. For Myanmar migrants, moreover, the historical experience is even more divergent, since many come from agrarian backgrounds and most are too young to remember even the moderate welfare provisioning of Myanmar's socialist past.…”

Section: Situating Recomposition Within Flexibilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday recomposition: Precarity and socialization in Thailand's migrant workforce

Campbell

2016

American Ethnologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As a site of manufacturing growth since the 1990s, the Mae Sot industrial zone in northwest Thailand has increasingly employed migrant workers from Myanmar. Yet the social dynamics of Myanmar migrant groups employed in Mae Sot's garment sector do not align with North Atlantic narratives of class fragmentation. Rather, labor flexibilization at this site has had socially constitutive effects. As flexibilization has expanded in Thailand, the very practices by which the country's garment companies have sought to create low‐wage, flexible workforces have themselves produced conditions of possibility for new forms of relationality and socialization among workers. The resulting social cohesion has formed, in turn, a basis for solidarity among workers when they carry out factory strikes. [flexible labor, precarity, solidarity, undocumented migrants, Thailand, Myanmar]

show abstract

Section: Situating Recomposition Within Flexibilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday recomposition: Precarity and socialization in Thailand's migrant workforce

Campbell

2016

American Ethnologist

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The music is loud and visitors are provided with a site of both visual and sexual consumption; there are neon lights, music playing and large television screens that play music videos (Wilson 2004(Wilson , 2010. Sex-workers are usually either outside of the establishment, drawing in clientele, or they are inside entertaining them.…”

Section: Affective Transactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This body is capable of being subject to the violent flux of desire, but we must remember that this body is carefully constructed by law in order to facilitate the effective encounter that is the transaction. The streets of Patpong 1 and 2 are constructed to appeal to predominantly heterosexual men, since there are bars that are easily accessed, which are filled with easily available women; there are different women at different bars; they are lined up caressing poles; and all of them are visible to the client entering the bar (Wilson 2010). As mentioned in the previous section, this is a space constructed by law to facilitate a transaction, which also provides the 'end' or orientating point for desire, by sexualising the space in a particularly heteronormative way.…”

Section: Affective Streetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting Law Affectively: Encounters of a Patpong Sex Tourist

Brooks

2014

Law Critique

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law's transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law's effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises.

show abstract

“…Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular have attracted the attention of different scholars [4,5]. The three red light hotspots (Nana, Soi Cowboy and Patpong) are considered to be the most popular nightlife and sex activity sites in Bangkok and have been the focus of academic research on sex tourism and prostitution [6][7][8]. Moreover they served as the setting for popular Western bestsellers and movies 2 and are known attraction sites of local organized tours (Hanghover Tours offer stag and bachelors' nights in a safe and fun way, see: bangkokhangovertours.com).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%