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Abstract
My doctoral research examines how women and men negotiate contradictions between traditional values and new social practices in contemporary Bangkok, Thailand. Specifically, my dissertation examines how notions of gender equality, with its imagined possibilities of modern love and sexual freedom, are adopted into the lives of heterosexual couples residing in a government-designated migrant "slum community". I base this inquiry on ethnographic research utilizing participant-observations, interviews, and life history sessions with slum informants and their networks.
To begin, I found that couples within the community accept gender equality as a new social value, one which is related to changing definitions of women's work, popular discourse influenced by the women's rights movement and Bangkok's high cost of living. Secondly, I found that ideals of how to marry and what marriage means are increasingly being linked to ideals of a middle-class consumerist lifestyle and moral propriety. A consequence is that persons with low-education levels and skills are effectively priced-out of marriage. Related to the rising costs of weddings is a third finding concerning slum women's desires to marry foreigners. These women perceive foreigners to be better marital prospects over local Thai men, because foreigners are imagined to be wealthier and more egalitarian partners. In a striking fashion, these attitudes - supported by my other findings namely contemporary conceptions of marriage as egalitarian and marriage as a form of upward mobility - are reflective of widening gender and class inequalities within Thai society. This third finding is also illustrative of how women, bolstered by a global awareness of alternative lifestyles, are strategically re-working the constraints upon them.
I argue that these changes in marriage reflect ideological beliefs which obscure the issue of who can wed from one based on structural inequalities to one based on personal morality and national belonging. In sum, my dissertation details how traditional constructions of social difference, particularly gender and class, are perpetuated despite popular calls for equality. It contributes to theoretical discussions on globalization and the uneven articulation of capitalism within less-developed country contexts.
