ABSTRACT
In Chapter 22 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Tuitjer presents a case study of the struggles of a small urban poor community living at Khlong (canal) Bang Sue in Huay Kwang, a northern district of Bangkok, Thailand. The community is threatened with eviction as the city plans to widen the canal to increase its flood water discharge capacity. Tuitjer argues that historical identity formations, capitalist relations, and the current military dictatorship in Bangkok hamper democratic and sustainable ways of enhancing the city’s adaptiveness to flooding events. The (mis)representation, within an official government address by Prime Minister Chan-o-Cha and elsewhere, of khlong communities as having negative ecocultural identities further diminishes the community’s chances to remain in the present location. The author demonstrates ways ecological struggles and the production of ecocultural identities in the Anthropocene often are profoundly urban, in particular bringing the urban poor into conflict with neoliberal development. Attending to the formation of ecocultural identities in the city sheds important light on how the urban is increasingly emerging as a site of ecological and social contestations.
