ABSTRACT

Bangkok is one of Asia's most interesting, varied, controversial and challenging cities. It is a city of contradictions, both in its present and past. This unique book examines the development of the city from its earliest days as the seat of the Thai monarchy to its current position as an infamous contemporary metropolis. Adopting insights from anthropology, urban studies and human geography, this is a powerful account of the city and its dynamic spaces. Marc Askew examines the city's variety from the inner-city slums to the rural-urban fringe, and gives us a keen insight into the daily life of the city's inhabitants, be they middle-class suburbanites or sex workers.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Interpreting Bangkok: place, practice and representation

part I|94 pages

Krung to global city

chapter 1|33 pages

Cosmology, accumulation and the state

The urbanism of early Bangkok

part II|208 pages

Making Bangkok

chapter 4|30 pages

Banglamphu

Change and persistence in the yan

chapter 5|31 pages

Genealogy of the slum

Pragmatism, politics and locality

chapter 6|24 pages

A place in the suburbs

Making a neighbourhood in the middle-class housing estate

chapter 7|32 pages

Fields of cultural capital

Land, livelihood and landscape transformation on the rural–urban fringe

chapter 8|25 pages

Condo land

Global forms and local ecologies

chapter 9|33 pages

Sex workers in Bangkok

Refashioning female identities in the global pleasure space

chapter 10|31 pages

Contesting urbanisms

Constructing the past and remaking the present