Podcast: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility and Politics in Bangkok

When the army brutally dispersed Red Shirts protestors in Bangkok’s busy commercial district in May 2010, motorcycle taxi drivers emerged as a key force, capable of playing cat-and-mouse with security forces, evading military checkpoints, and rescuing protestors. 

Claudio Sopranzetti talks to Mahuri Karak, a PhD student at the Graduate Center in New York, about Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility and Politics in Bangkok  (University of California Press, 2017). Owners of the Map not only confronts the specific realities of ordinary Thais resisting military authoritarianism, but also the question of how modes of circulation can become sites of collective action, particularly for precarious workers, in the neoliberal moment.

Listen to the podcast here.