[Recording] Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand

Join Dr. Eli Elinoff for an ethnographic account of the citizenship struggles and political engagements of residents living alongside the main state railway running through the city of Khon Kaen, in Northeast Thailand. What does it mean to design democratic cities and democratic citizens in a time of mass urbanization and volatile political transformation? 'Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand' addresses this question by exploring the ways that democratic urban planning projects intersected with emerging political aspirations among squatters living in the northeastern Thai city of Khon Kaen. Based on ethnographic and historical research conducted since 2007, 'Citizen Designs' describes how residents of Khon Kaen’s railway squatter communities used Thailand’s experiment in participatory urban planning as a means of reimagining their citizenship, remaking their homes, and acting upon their aspirations for political equality and the good life. It also reveals how the Thai state used participatory planning to manage situated claims to land and residents' emerging political sensibilities. In this talk, Dr Eli Elinoff argues that the convergence of these sensibilities transformed Khon Kaen's railway communities into vibrant spaces of disagreement over the meaning and value of democracy.