Everyday (Anti-)Nationalization in Thailand: Power and Resistance in Khao Phra Wihan Conflict Narratives

Abstract

Through a compilation of four research articles, this Ph.D. thesis investigates everyday life nationalization processes in Thailand in relation to expressions of power and resistance. How individuals sustain and challenge the performance of the Thai nation through social practices is in focus. In particular, the analysis examines how interlocutors describe everyday forms of power and resistance vis-à-vis the nation in conflict narratives around the Khao Phra Wihan temple. The thesis employs a phenomenological research position, with a focus on subjective experiences and uses material from fieldwork in Thailand. The analysis combines social constructivist theory on everyday nationalism with the theory on everyday resistance to analyze individuals’ participation in nationalization from a power/resistance perspective. The research contributes with conceptual and empirical insights to studies of nationalism with concepts of ‘affective self-nationalization’ (which captures the connection between the nationalist emotional socialization and individual experience of nationalizing) and ‘nationalist everyday resistance’. The study also contributes to resistance studies and the theorization of ‘everyday resistance’ through the conceptualizations of nationalist everyday resistance, online everyday resistance, evasive everyday resistance, re-categorative everyday resistance, and re-imaginative everyday resistance. This thesis also provides new empirical insights to Thai studies concerning nationalization and the Khao Phra Wihan temple.