Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex, and Popular Culture in Thailand

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Thailand's capital, Bangkok, took on an increasingly cosmopolitan character—a development fueled both by global economic forces and a local revolution in communications. The 1920s, a particularly dynamic period of social and cultural transformation, had a profound impact on the development of Thai modernity. This book examines the growth of a polyphonous and often vociferous Thai public, a public that used a range of new media outlets to express themselves and clamour for a more just and equitable social order.

Scot Barme mines a rich lode of previously ignored cultural ephemera found in popular newspapers, magazines, novels, short stories, film booklets, and cartoons to create a vibrant cultural history of early modern Thailand that moves beyond conventional, elite-based historical studies of the period. By focusing on such controversies and conflicts as the status of woman, relations between the sexes, class antagonisms, and the growth of a commercial mass culture, this book offers a new interpretation of the key decade of the 1920s and its significance for contemporary Thailand.

About the Author

SCOT BARME is visiting fellow in the division of Pacific and Asian history, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at The Australian National University.