ABSTRACT
It is hardly a surprise that Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, looms largest in the popular imagination of Thainess, both domestically and internationally. Yet, Chiang Mai too, though a city of a much smaller scale, has an important place in this imagination, perhaps all the more so in recent years given that it is the home base of the country's most visible political family. Indeed, the two cities can be seen as in conceptual opposition, as adhering to differing poles of Thai identity-as had become all the more clear at the time of this writing in early 2014, in the context of a political crisis now routinely characterized in spatial terms, as a tension between the center of the country, on the one hand, and the north and northeast of the country, on the other-a tension simultaneously described as one between Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
