Nationalism and the Radical Intelligentsia in Thailand

Thongchai Winichakul

Third World Quarterly, 2008, vol. 29, issue 3, 575-591

Abstract: The prominent Thai scholar, Chatthip Natsupha, has gone from being a Marxist intellectual in the 1970s to a cultural nationalist advocate of a genuine Thai essence which, he believes, is an antidote to the dominance of the Western neoliberal capitalism. His case is not an anomaly. The intellectual path from the Marxist left to the cultural nationalist right is well-trodden and reflects broader changes in nationalism in the country. The cultural nationalist Thai ex-left rejected what it called ‘bad’ nationalism and embraced a ‘good’ one. However, its ideas were significantly drawn from conservative nationalism. Such nationalism, which is widespread among the Thai intelligentsia, was an important factor in their support for the military coup which, in 2006, ousted an elected government on the dubious grounds that it was a proxy for global capitalism.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436590801931520 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:29:y:2008:i:3:p:575-591

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436590801931520

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().