Seminar Series: Abstract

Thai fresh markets to Tai hypermarkets: new class based consumption in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Bronwyn Isaacs, Geography Honours Student (Uni of Sydney) and ANU Summer Research Scholar

Increasing attention is being given in academic and policy research to the rise of TNCs supermarkets in the Global South but few cultural analyses or ethnographic investigations of this ‘supermarket revolution’ are yet available (Coe and Wrigley 2007). This research uses ethnographic study in Chiang Mai, Thailand to reveal how European supermarkets are integrated into national and local level modernities, histories and narratives, and used by local subjects to define class differences and create middle class identities around notions of cleanliness, leisure and development. In particular, this paper examines how Chiang Mai hypermarkets transfer agency away from the consumer as they present themselves as new spiritual and cuisine authorities, rendering fresh markets as nostalgic motifs of obsolete Thai tradition. The research also explores the possibility of local circumvention and resistance of global markets by considering Chiang Mai consumers’ parallel participation in the relational economies of local fresh markets.