The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons and Avon Ladies in the Global City

Wilson explores the dynamic and highly complex interaction between global market economy and Bangkok's 'intimate economies' - meaning everyday practices and beliefs related to people's sense of their social identities and relationships, especially in terms of gender, sexuality an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Feminist review 2007, Vol.85 (1), p.151-153
Main Author: Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Bangkok
Boys
Cultural Studies
Gender
Gender Studies
Girls
Globalization
Manilow, Barry
Political Science
Reviews
Social Sciences
Sociology
Thailand
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Wilson explores the dynamic and highly complex interaction between global market economy and Bangkok's 'intimate economies' - meaning everyday practices and beliefs related to people's sense of their social identities and relationships, especially in terms of gender, sexuality and kinship. The book is divided into five main chapters that each portray and analyse in detail (seemingly) different Bangkok markets: the department store and shop houses, the go-go bar and sex market catering to Western tourists, downtown shopping complexes, professional corporate marketing and the direct sales market. Dominant messages of modern heteronormative femininity, sexuality and romance in shopping mall layout, shop structures and advertising, for example, are strategically modified by tomboy women who accommodate these unintended appropriations of spaces and discourses for displaying and developing a female masculine subjectivity, engaging in homo-social relationship in public, albeit unnoticed, with other toms or with their dee (feminine) girlfriends.
ISSN:0141-7789
0141-7789
1466-4380
DOI:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400330