Foreign Bodies, Tourism, and Prostitution in Thailand
This paper puts sex tourism, which expanded in Thailand from the 1960s’ onwards, back into the global context of prostitution as it is locally conceived and practicized. Various historic and cultural factors are considered to explain the scale of the phenomenon. The images of the prostitutes and of their Western customers depicted by the local urban elites and the poor peasantry are compared, and their differences pointed out. Based upon mobility and the contact with foreigners from inside or outside, prostitution stands in a deep state of ambiguity which relates to the identity stakes it crystallizes and to the latent tensions between social classes and ethnic components of the nation it expresses.