ABSTRACT
This chapter takes advantage of some of the new work on cultural intimacy, and proposes to show how some poorly developed arguments, can be productively deployed toward strengthening the original model and making it more useful. These extensions take three major forms: historical; institutional; and geographical. The municipal government's grandiose plans for the center of Bangkok call for the transformation of the central avenue of the old dynastic capital into the Champs Elyses of Asia. This effort has not gone unchallenged. The then governor of Bangkok's comparison of the homeless with stray dogs, and his declared intention of removing both so that visiting dignitaries' eyes would not be offended, have attracted distinctly unfavorable comments. The bearers of official discourse are themselves human and have access to the same kinds of intimacy; it is when they inject that intimacy into social spaces from which their role debars them that it misfires. The language and symbolism of such transgressions have a history.
