Combi-nation: Thai nation building and national identity in Thai TV dramas with Northern Thai focus

This thesis aims to investigate how Thai TV dramas with a Northern Thai focus demonstrate and are used to construct the Thai nation and national identities. As a researcher, I am interested in how hegemonic narratives are used and depicted in selected television dramas and how the dominant power creates and distorts the pictures of subaltern/less powerful regional cultures. My major argument is based on the hypothesis that the Thai nation is not only constructed from ‘Thainess’ but also from the combinations of many ethnicities, cultures, and identities of many groups of people. Many scholars in the field of Thai Studies have shown that many Western elements are hybridised with Thai identities. This thesis goes further in investigating the Thai nation by focusing on Northern Thai culture as an example of subordinate culture and identity which are not hybridised but combined with and into Thai nation-building. The key term, ‘combi-nation’, means the unequal, selective way that constructions of the Thai nation often adopt some specific cultures and identities to form the idea of a ‘modern nation.’ This combi-nation depends on their hierarchical relationships with Thai nation. While Thais choose to hybridise with the West by selecting what is good for their nation, that hybridisation is barred from northern identities as Thais regard the North as inferior and subordinate. This research uses qualitative analysis via close readings of key points and moments in four selected dramas. Chapter three is ‘history and nation’ in which I aim to show how Royalist Nationalist Historiography dominates presentation in these dramas, how the state exploits history to construct the Thai nation, and how history creates different combinations to form the Thai nation. This is done by examining three combinations - with the West, with other ethnicities, and with the Others within. Chapter four is concerned with ‘body and nation’, in which I investigate how Thai national identities are created by different combinations by looking specifically at combinations between genders and through concepts of beauty.