2019, Vol.11, No.2

SUVANNABHUMI 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.03

pISSN : 2092-738X / eISSN : 2799-7839
https://journal.kci.go.kr/svn

The paper addresses Erik Cohen’s pioneering work on tourism in Thailand, specifically his publications on the relations between Thai women and foreign (farang) men in tourist-oriented encounters. Of sociological-anthropological interest is his conceptualization of these relations as “open-ended prostitution as a skilful game of luck” based on his study of a Bangkok soi (lane) in 1981-1984, and his exploration of Thai culture in terms of ambiguity and contradiction. On the basis of recent ethnographic research in the northern Thai tourist hub of Chiang Mai and wide-ranging observations on tourism development in Thailand, we examine continuity and change in these male-female engagements since Cohen’s research, especially in the context of the increasing availability of such electronic agencies as social media, messaging, video chat, and internet dating. Whereas Cohen’s concept of ambiguity and illusion has tended to disappear from physical spaces, it seems to have resurfaced in virtual space. The complexities of host-guest relations, and particularly the interactions both within the variegated category of “guests” themselves and then between their “hostesses” are explored in terms of sites of tourism-oriented encounters in both physical and virtual space so as to deconstruct these oppositional categories which have been formative in studies of tourism.

The Chinese Belt Road initiatives in the Southeast Asian countries marked a new chapter in the development of China political influence on this region. This article looks at the initiative from the cultural dimension and aims to place its narrative as the entry point to understand the use of identity politics in Asian countries that target the Chinese diaspora. This topic relates to the primordial sentiments of Southeast Asian nations amid massive Chinese investment in the region. The issue of Chinese investments under the Belt Road Initiative corridor has a relationship with the formation of anti-Chinese discourse and anti-communist in some Southeast Asian countries. We took the cases of Indonesian and Malaysian elections to observe the use of identity politics and anti-Chinese political discourse in Southeast Asia. In both cases, a common issue emerged, that of the strengthening both Islamic and indigenous sensibilities. The establishment of ASEAN during the Cold War may be seen then as an anti-thesis to emerging Chinese power. However, anti-Chinese and anti-communism sentiments were not enough to unite the forces of the nations of Southeast Asia. We have concluded that brotherhood, mutual prosperity, and anti-neo-colonialism are yet to be fostered completely to make a distinct ASEAN identity.

Investigating the clash among different forms of international relations has been a frequent issue in modern research and attracts interest in the fields of history and politics. In the nineteenth-century, Asia witnessed a fierce struggle between traditional relations in Asia that existed during the feudal period, that of "The Heavenly Dynasty, China and its vassal states"; and a the new form of relations introduced by the West, that of relations between "colonial powers and colonized countries." As a result, the formation of "colonial societies" in Asia with very specific features was established. However, as stated by Vu (2015), for many reasons, which include the lack of material resources, the politically sensitive nature of the object, and the focus on gains and losses in previous studies, there were little studies on the process of demarcating the Tonkinese border between Franco and Chinese in Vietnam, especially from a globalization perspective. This study thus aims at examining the issue of the demarcation of the Tonkinese Border between Franco and Chinese (1885-1895), in view of globalization, as a case study for the transition process of the modern history of Vietnamese society.