(Im)mobilizing Bangkok: motorcycle taxi drivers, street protest, and the fragility of power in the Thai capital

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• Claudio Sopranzetti (University of Oxford)
• Wednesday 30 April 2014, 17:30-19:00
• Room S1 of the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB39DT, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact .

Please note this talk is taking place on a WEDNESDAY, not Tuesday as usual.

This talk explores the mobility of motorcycle taxi drivers in Bangkok as well their adoption of it during the Red Shirt protests of 2010. I analyze how the drivers’ physical mobility through traffic shapes their ability to find unexplored routes in the social, economic, and political landscapes of the city and to create paths for action where other urban dwellers see a traffic jam or a political gridlock. Such ability, I argue, directed their roles in the street protest which blocked the center of Bangkok. When the everyday life of the city broke down, this talk will show, the drivers took advantage of their position in urban circuits of exchange to emerge as central political actors in contemporary Bangkok by blocking, slowing down, or filtering the circulation of people, goods, and information which they normally facilitate. In this sense, they reveal the fragility of state power in the Thai capital and its inability to control these mobile subjects.

This talk is part of the Cambridge City Seminar at CRASSH series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge City Seminar at CRASSH
• Room S1 of the Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB39DT, Cambridge

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