“... Isan look is not beautiful to Thai people so if you are Khon Isan or you have na lao, what we call na lao – Lao face or Isan face. If you have na lao you cannot be famous – oh you can be famous but you cannot be what we call beautiful or handsome. ”
(Khon Kaen University graduate, personal interview, 18 April 2002)
Abstract
People living in the northeast of Thailand interchangeably label themselves and are labelled by others as Isan, Thai Isan, Lao Isan, Thai or Lao, depending on the ethnic, political, social or familial nuances of any given situation. I use the term Lao Isan to refer specifically to Isan people of Lao origin or ethnicity. Lao Isan are subject to complex and often competing notions of Isan-ness, Lao-ness and Thai-ness by insiders and outsiders. Using data derived from an ethnographic study of popular Thai television and Lao Isan youth (aged 17–25) living in the city of Khon Kaen and the town of Mahasarakham in northeast Thailand in 2002, this paper explores contemporary and co-existing interpretations of Isan identity or Khwampenisan among Lao Isan youth in relation to self-image and connections with national understandings of physical beauty as they are perpetuated in Thai-produced television programs.
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Notes
The contextual ideas on Lao Isan identity formation presented in this paper were first discussed in my previous papers: Hesse-Swain, C., 2002: Who do they think they are? Popular Thai television and external and internal constructions of Lao Isan identity among youth in northeast Thailand. In AlSayyad, N. (ed.), Discourses in Hybridity and Identity, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Working Paper Series 159: 33–57. California: International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, University of California at Berkeley; and, Hesse-Swain, C., 2002: Speaking In Thai, Dreaming In Isan: Popular Thai Television and Emerging Identities among Lao Isan Youth in Northeast Thailand. TAI Culture JournalVII/1: 49–61.
Student interview, Khon Kaen University, 30 September 2002.
Some of these experiments in micro-social description and contextuality arise from the field of political economy where there has been a drive to conduct local level studies of processes and their social construction; ethnography that is sensitive to its context of historical political economy (Marcus, 1986, p. 167). The link between post-modern problematising of cultural identities theory and paradigm shifts in larger Western social philosophical frameworks (i.e. challenges to positivism) has led to the appropriation of ethnography by those that recognise we live in a much more complex world – one that can no longer depict cultural diversity in terms of spatio-temporal cultural preserves of otherness (p. 168).
Farang is a word used in the Thai language to loosely refer to any person with Western or European appearance. The word refers not to actual ethnic origins but rather the way a foreigner looks – a farang is basically a white person with Western European features (i.e. narrow nose, wide eyes etc...). Asians are not farang even though they might be foreigners in Thailand.
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 16 January 2002.
Youth Focus Group, Chiang Mai, 6 March 2002.
Youth Focus Group, Chiang Mai, 7 November 2001.
Van Esterik’s publication Materialising Thailand (Berg, Oxford) is a comprehensive and coherent exploration of the complex relationships between beauty, race, power and rank in Thailand.
Goon & Craven, 9: Paragraph 31.
Ibid
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 16 January 2002.
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 15 January 2002.
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 15 January 2002.
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 16 January 2002.
Student focus group, Khon Kaen University, 16 January 2002.
Goon & Craven, 2003: Paragraph 27.
The Suu Khwan ritual is a regular feature in the spiritual and social life of people living in Isan (northeast Thailand) and the Lao on the other side of the Mekong River. Suu Khwan can be loosely defined as ‘go the souls’ or ‘calling the souls’. The ritual marks all significant rites of passage in the human life cycle (i.e. birth, marriage, and death). It can also function as a healing ritual or as a way to mediate in cases of conflict, in the form of a ritualised apology. (Raendchen O., 2002: Suu Khwan: Ritual Texts and Ceremonies in Laos and northeast Thailand. Parallel Paper Presentation Session on Thailand and Laos, 8th International Conference on Thai Studies, p. 1, 9–12 January 2002, Ramkhamhaeng University, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand).
Student interview, Kalasin, 18 April 2002.
Field journal, 19 February 2002.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ajarn Wirat Wongpinunwatana, Thai Language Department, Khon Kaen University; Associate Professor Jaruwan Thammawat, Dean Humanities and Social Sciences, Mahasarakham University; and, Ajarn Mayuree Siriwan, Head English Department, Rajabhat Mahasarakham for their generous assistance in organising focus groups, and the students and their families for giving valuable time to participate in this study. My pilot focus group was thanks to the support of the Ruam Mit Bakery in Chiang Mai, a NGO vocational training program for recovering substance users. The skill and energy of my two research assistants Kullakarn Mamber (nee Chanakarn), Khon Kaen, and Areeluck Phankhian, Chiang Mai, was likewise pivotal to this project. Thanks to Duncan McCargo for engaging in the Isan identity debate by email whilst I was still in Thailand. Finally, I would like to thank my mentor and PhD supervisor Dr Nancy Hudson-Rodd, Coordinator Development Studies Program, Edith Cowan University (ECU) and the university for awarding me with a 3-year postgraduate research scholarship and travel grant.
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Hesse-Swain, C. Programming beauty and the absence of Na Lao: popular Thai TV and identity formation among youth in Northeast Thailand. GeoJournal 66, 257–272 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-006-9028-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-006-9028-x