Owners of the Map:
Motorcycle Taxis Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok
WINNER OF THE 2019 MARGARET MEAD AWARD
On May 19th 2010, the Royal Thai Army deployed tanks, snipers, and war weapons to disperse the thousands of Red Shirts protesters who had taken over the commercial center of Bangkok to demand democratic elections and an end to inequality. Key to this mobilization were motorcycle taxi drivers who slowed down, filtered, and severed mobility in the area claiming a prominent role in national politics, ownership over the city, and challenging state hegemony. Four years later, on May 20th 2014, the same Army General who directed the dispersal staged a military coup, unopposed by protesters. How could state power have been so fragile and open to challenges in 2010 and yet so seemingly sturdy only four years later? How could protesters who had once fearlessly resisted military attacks now remain silent? Owners of the Map provides an answer to these questions—central to contemporary political mobilizations around the globe—through an ethnographic study of motorcycle taxi drivers in Bangkok. Sopranzetti explores the unresolved tensions in the drivers’ everyday lives, their migrations trajectories, consumers’ desires, and political demands amidst the restructuring of Thai capitalism after the 1997 economic crisis. Reconstructing the entanglements between their everyday mobility and political mobilization, Sopranzetti reveals mobility not just as a strength of contemporary capitalism but also as one of its fragile spots, always prone to disruption by the people who sustain its channels but remain excluded from their benefits. In so doing, Owners of the Map advances an analysis of power that does not focus on the sturdiness of hegemony or the ubiquity of everyday resistance but rather reveals its potential fragility as well as the work needed for its maintenance. |
Red Journeys
Inside the Thai Red Shirts Movement
Red Journeys is a first-hand account of the emergence and expansion of the red-shirt protests in Bangkok that took place in 2010. It traces the origins of the protest, focusing on the unique voices, stories, and motives of those who participated in the movement. Based upon hundreds of interviews and weeks spent alongside the red shirts in the middle of the protest, Sopranzetti vividly depicts daily life in the heart of the movement: its personalities, routines, rumours, and organization. As the peaceful occupation descended into violence and neared its tragic end, he describes the final moments of the protest when red shirts faced off with the Thai military. Styled engagingly between ethnography and daily blog, Red Journeys offers an unprecedented analysis of the biggest social movement in Thailand to date and highlights the discrepancies between the "official" media portrayal of the protest and the reality on the ground.
"The forty days between April 10 and May 20, 2010, changed Thailand forever. History will look back and try to make sense of the tragedy, and its meaning to Thai history will remain controversial for decades to come. Beyond history's verdict, the bravery, sacrifice, suffering, and determination of the protesters will forever be remembered. Claudio Sopranzetti has recorded the human component so vividly that we can hear the voices and cries of the people and can imagine their lives in those moments. This is as important as any verdict of history." -Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin
"He captures a sense of very ordinary people swept up into very extraordinary events for reasons that they can barely articulate beyond resentment at the society's deep unfairness . . . This is a brilliant little book - moving, eye-opening, unsettling." -Chris Baker, Bangkok Post, May 2012
"The forty days between April 10 and May 20, 2010, changed Thailand forever. History will look back and try to make sense of the tragedy, and its meaning to Thai history will remain controversial for decades to come. Beyond history's verdict, the bravery, sacrifice, suffering, and determination of the protesters will forever be remembered. Claudio Sopranzetti has recorded the human component so vividly that we can hear the voices and cries of the people and can imagine their lives in those moments. This is as important as any verdict of history." -Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin
"He captures a sense of very ordinary people swept up into very extraordinary events for reasons that they can barely articulate beyond resentment at the society's deep unfairness . . . This is a brilliant little book - moving, eye-opening, unsettling." -Chris Baker, Bangkok Post, May 2012
