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Author Sopranzetti, Claudio, author.

Title Owners of the map : motorcycle taxi drivers, mobility, and politics in Bangkok / Claudio Sopranzetti.

Publication Info. Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017]
©2018

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 314 pages)
data file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents The unsettled layers of Bangkok -- The dangers of mobility -- The unsolved tensions of migration -- The paradox of freedom -- Fighting over the state -- Transforming desires into demands -- Unraveling the Thai capital -- Combining powers.
Summary "On May 19, 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 and ownership over the city and challenging state hegemony. Four years later, on May 20, 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 challenge 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 answers to these questions--central to contemporary political mobilizations around the globe--through an ethnographic study of motorcycle taxi drivers in Bangkok. Claudio Sopranzetti explores the unresolved tensions in the drivers' everyday lives, their migration trajectories, consumer 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 focuses not on the sturdiness of hegemony or the ubiquity of everyday resistance but on its potential fragility as well as the work needed for its maintenance."--Provided by publisher.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Motorcyclists -- Thailand -- Bangkok.
Motorcyclists.
Thailand -- Bangkok.
Taxicab drivers -- Thailand -- Bangkok.
Taxicab drivers.
Thailand -- Politics and government -- 1988-
Thailand.
Politics and government.
Chronological Term 1988-
Subject Thailand -- Economic conditions -- 21st century.
Chronological Term 21st century
Subject Demonstrations -- Thailand -- History -- 21st century.
Political violence -- Thailand -- Bangkok.
Political violence.
Economic conditions.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Transportation.
Demonstrations.
TRANSPORTATION -- Public Transportation.
History.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- General.
Economic history.
Chronological Term Since 1988
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Other Form: Print version: Sopranzetti, Claudio. Owners of the map. Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] 9780520288492 (DLC) 2017020435
ISBN 9780520963399 (electronic book)
0520963393 (electronic book)
0520288491
9780520288492
9780520288508
0520288505
9780520288492 (hardcover alkaline paper)