Suphanburi in the Fast Lane: Roads, Prestige, and Domination in Provincial Thailand

Abstract

The conventional views of road construction in late developing countries are not very positive. Scholars of provincial Thai politics, in particular, dismiss road-building projects as dirty pork-barrel politics. Using the case of Suphanburi Province, this essay argues that roads can constitute sources of collective prestige and pride. Suphanburi was once a remote province, and Suphanburians spoke pitifully of its backwardness. At present, however, Suphanburi boasts many roads of unmatched quality, thanks to massive road construction projects that Banharn Silpa-archa, Suphanburi's member of Parliament (1976–present), has channeled from the central state. In a global context that attaches a social stigma to backwardness, the appearance of these roads symbolizes Suphanburi's “modernity,” which non-Suphanburians admire, envy, and resent. Consequently, Suphanburians have come to take immense pride in their province. To understand why Banharn commands fervent local-level support, we must understand how he has transformed Suphanburians' social identity.

Roads in late developing countries do not get much respect. As in the United States (Evans 2004), road construction projects (and other public works) are typically viewed as “dirty” pork-barrel patronage resources that politicians and their bureaucratic colluders dispense to build and maintain their bases of support (e.g., Bates 1981, 113; McCormack 2001, 25–77; Rempel 1993, 19, 21; Robison 1986, 264, 277; Smith 1997, 164–86; Timberman 1991, 96; Vitalis 1995; Woodall 1996). Roads, according to another view, are haunted by deadly spirits, destroy traditional communities, or evoke traumatic memories of repression and forced labor under colonial rule (Chilson 1999; Pina-Cabral 1987; Hunt 1999, 185; Masquelier 2002). At worst, roads are part of pretentious and dehumanizing social engineering projects undertaken by arrogant “high-modernist” elites bent on making society legible (Scott 1998, 103–46). At best, roads are the tools that enable the state to promote economic growth or to enforce administrative and security control (Herbst 2000; Kreutzmann 1991; Thak 1979, 228–29, 264–67).

These views, I argue, are woefully incomplete. There is more to roads. For the people in the “third world” who have been visually and verbally represented in post-Enlightenment discourse and practices as “inferior” subjects mired in backwardness (Adas 1989; Dore 1975; Escobar 1995; Maxwell 1999; Mitchell 1995; Rydell 1984; Said 1978; Thongchai 2000a, 2000b), the arrival of roads, as several anthropologists and historians have suggested, symbolizes “modernity” or a temporal break with the stigmatized “uncivilized” and “backward” past (Bauer 1992; Flower 2004; Giles-Vernick 1996; Kusno 2001, 30–31; Mrázek 2002; Pina-Cabral 1987; Roseman 1996; Shao 1997; Thomas 2002; Tsing 1999, 177–78; Weber 1976). Roads, therefore, constitute an important source of collective pride.¹ A politician who supplies roads should not be seen facilely as exchanging roads for votes in an instrumental sense. Such a politician might also be seen as enhancing the pride of voters in the “progress” of their community. We need to accord more due attention to this nonmaterial, social-psychological dimension of roads and its political implications.

I make this argument by using the case of one provincial strongman in Thailand: Banharn Silpa-archa. Banharn has been a member of Parliament (MP) from Suphanburi Province since 1976.² Between 1995 and 1996, he even served as prime minister. Scholars typically dismiss him as one of the many corrupt rural bosses whose ascendance to power has accompanied the process of democratization in Thailand. Indeed, his long-standing political career, spanning thirty years, has been marred by numerous well-publicized corruption scandals. Not surprisingly, he has suffered from an extremely poor public image, especially in Bangkok. The media, for example, has called him “a walking ATM” who dispenses dirty money to anyone who needs it. The Chart Thai Party (hereafter CT Party), of which he has been deputy secretary-general (1976–80), secretary-general (1980–94), and leader (1994–present), is also regarded as one of the most money-tainted parties in Thailand. Curiously, however, Banharn continues to enjoy unchallenged domination in Suphanburi, as exemplified by his uninterrupted landslide electoral victories.³ Why?

The extant literature on rural Thai politics explains (away) this puzzle by pointing out that Banharn has pumped a huge number of development projects, especially roads, into his constituency and that he has thereby built a vast network of vote canvassers consisting of local contractors—an instrumental explanation that is consistent with the conventional view of roads (see King 1996, 136; Murray 1996, 371, 373; Ockey 1992; 1996, 353; Pasuk and Baker 1998, 263; 2000, 37; Robertson 1996, 924–25; for journalists' accounts, see Bangkok Post, September 22, 23, and 28, 1995; May 20, 22, and 23, 1996). Come election time, Banharn drums up electoral support by mobilizing these canvassers to offer carrots (e.g., money) and/or stick to venal and docile voters. He is thus regarded as the epitome of unsavory pork-barrel politics. This explanation derives from the still influential (and overused) sociocultural interpretation of rural Thai society, which views uneducated, tradition bound, and economically vulnerable villagers as being tied to wealthy power holders through a web of vertical and reciprocal relationships (Arghiros 2001, 9; Hanks 1962; 1975; Hindley 1968; Phillips 1958; 1965; Piker 1968; Potter 1976; Robertson 1996, 925; Scott 1972). This patron–client model translates into the prevailing transactional view that submissive villagers unquestioningly vote even for a debased politician out of deep gratitude for his “collective political patronage,” such as road construction (Arghiros 1995, 2; 2001, 167).

What is ignored in such a view, I argue, is that the roads built by Banharn have considerably boosted the reputation of the formerly backward and socially marginalized Suphanburi. Until the mid-1970s, Suphanburi had been looked down on as a wild, remote province with few roads. What few roads it had were of poor quality. But now, Banharn has transformed Suphanburi into a province that boasts many modern roads of unmatched quality. As a result, Suphanburians who once spoke shamefully of the backwardness of their province have come to take immense pride in being Suphanburians. Banharn's domination rests, in large part, on this provincial pride.

I make it explicit at the outset that this paper does not aim to deny that Banharn has been engaged in pork-barrel patronage politics. On the contrary, I will show that a handful of local contractors who enjoy intimate ties to Banharn have reaped handsome profits from his road construction projects. I openly admit this. My argument is simply that there is something else to Banharn's domination than just pork barrel. That something else is the enhanced prestige of Suphanburi. To understand why many ordinary Suphanburians support Banharn the way they do, we need to pay attention to this hitherto neglected yet extremely important nonmaterial ingredient of his domination.

This article consists of three parts. The first part describes the poor road conditions that prevailed in Suphanburi before Banharn's first election to Parliament in 1976. To appreciate the significance of his contributions to Suphanburi, we must examine this historical context first. In the second part, I discuss the quantity and quality of roads that Banharn has built in Suphanburi with an unprecedented sum of state funds since 1976. The last section discusses the effects of rapid road construction on the prestige of Suphanburi and the collective identity of Suphanburians.

Road Conditions in the Past

Suphanburi was a strategically important town in the Ayutthaya dynasty that ruled central Siam until the mid-eighteenth century. For Burma, Ayutthaya's archenemy, Suphanburi was situated en route to the heart of the dynasty. In fact, the famous battle of 1593, in which Ayutthaya repelled Burma, was fought in Suphanburi. However, once Ayutthaya was destroyed by Burma in 1767 and a new dynasty, the present-day Chakri dynasty, was founded in Bangkok, Suphanburi declined in relative importance. This was reflected in the neglected conditions of roads. To protect the new capital from future attacks by Burma, the ruling court devoted resources to building roads in the provinces situated directly between Bangkok and Burma. Located off this vital strategic route, Suphanburi failed to receive developmental priority (Waruni 2004, 190). This “benign neglect” continued well into the twentieth century, even after Suphanburi was upgraded to provincial status in 1910.⁴

Before 1956, for example, no road existed to connect Suphanburi to Bangkok or even to its neighboring provinces. Suphanburi was virtually isolated from the outside world. In 1936, the government had implemented an ambitious eighteen-year project, under which all provinces, including Suphanburi, were to be connected by road to Bangkok, but the project came to a standstill with the outbreak of the Pacific War (Kakizaki 2002a, 488, 490; 2002b, 6). As a consequence, before the 1960s there was “nothing but jungles” (mii tae pa) in Suphanburi, as many elderly Suphanburians recounted to me in recollecting the past. In another frequently invoked powerful oral representation of the past, these Suphanburians said that the shortage of roads had made Suphanburi a “closed town” (muang pit) (see also Khon Suphan, April 1, 2003, 4, where the same expression is used to depict Suphanburi's past).

In the absence of roads, the only means to get to Bangkok was to row a boat along the Tha Chin River (which flows through Suphanburi)—a means of transport that was available only in the rainy season (Manas 1995, 26).⁵ The trip would take two to three days, a condition that had changed little since 1843, when a French missionary spent four days traveling from Suphanburi to Bangkok (Pallegoix 2000, 51). In the mid-1920s, Suphan Phanit, a local company run by two brothers of Suphanburi governor Yi Kanasoot (term 1911–23), started operating an electrically driven boat, which made it easier for Suphanburians to “see civilization of the capital city.” The trip would still take over ten hours, however (Suphanburi Sarn, December 25, 1987, 6; Manas 1995, 9, 13–14; Association of Suphanburians 1996, 123; CT Party 2001, 4–5).

To remedy this situation, the government set out to build a highway between Suphanburi and Bangkok in 1950 (Khon Suphan, April 1, 2003, 4; Kakizaki 2002b, 9, 16). The construction was completed at long last in 1956, but the new highway did not link the two places directly. It was via Nakhon Pathom, a province situated west of Bangkok. Therefore, Suphanburians had to take the long way around to this province first before reaching Bangkok (see figure 1). The trip would take seven to eight hours. To go to neighboring Ang Thong, a province less than 30 kilometers away from Suphanburi, was even worse. Suphanburians had to take what they regarded as a ludicrous detour: Go down south to Bangkok via Nakhon Pathom first and then go up north to Ang Thong. The whole route was some 250 kilometers long. Thus, it was extremely inconvenient to go anywhere outside Suphanburi.

Furthermore, the new highway was inferior in quality. It was made of gravel or laterite (luuk rang), a construction material of the poorest quality. When it rained, the road would turn muddy and impassable. This highway was therefore one of the many roads that the National Economic Development Board (NEDB) admitted was “poor in quality” and “cause[d] many districts to be cut off from communication with the rest of the country, especially during the rainy season” (NEDB 1964, 107). It was only in 1966 that the highway was paved with asphalt (Khon Suphan, January 18, 1966, 1; BB 1960, 693; 1962, 923, 932, 935; 1963, 355; 1964, 392–93; 1965, 455, 460).

In reviewing its performance in 1965, the NEDB proudly trumpeted that 60 percent of all the highways nationwide (9,492 kilometers in total) had been paved with asphalt or concrete (NEDB 1966, 42). Suphanburi, however, accounted for only 1.2 percent of those surfaced roads. Even in 1976, by which time the Department of Highways (DOH) had surfaced 16,244 kilometers of roads nationwide with asphalt or concrete (DOH 1986, 79), Suphanburi had only four asphalted roads with a combined length of 168.2 kilometers (Khon Suphan, January 18, 1966, 1; BB 1969, 50; 1970, 387; 1971, 382; DOH 1977, 116). In 1958, the U.S.-backed developmental authoritarian state led by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat emerged in Thailand to promote rural development, particularly road construction (Thak 1979), but the evidence indicates that the supposedly “developmental” state was relatively absent in peripheral Suphanburi. There was a wide gap between official rhetoric and performance. If the presence of roads is a yardstick of “civilization” (Weber 1976, 208), there is good reason to believe that Suphanburi was one of the least civilized provinces in Thailand. It was a province in which more than nine hundred villages existed in physical isolation from each other.

To the extent that mutual human interaction is essential for fostering collective identity, Suphanburians living in dispersed villages probably had a weak provincial identity. To the extent that they had a provincial identity at all, the available evidence suggests that it was negative. Inferior road conditions caused Suphanburians to speak pitifully of their own province or to develop what Tim Oakes calls “a complex of backwardness” (2000, 683). For instance, one provincial newspaper edited by a local historian, Manas Ophakul (b. 1914), carried an editorial that lamented, “Suphanburi had been dumped by the state in a deep jungle, while other provinces from the north to the south prospered (at Suphanburi's expense).” Published in 1987, this editorial was titled “50–60 Years Ago, Nobody Wanted to Come to Suphanburi” (Suphanburi Sarn, December 25, 1987, 6, 12). Another editorial likened Suphanburi shamefully to “the bottom of a plastic bag (kon thung)” (Khon Suphan, March 23, 1965, 1, 16), which meant that Suphanburi was a “dead end”: Whoever came to Suphanburi from Bangkok had no choice but to return because there was no road beyond Suphanburi. Furthermore, in reporting the news that the state had failed to include Suphanburi in the 2,297-million-baht nationwide highway construction project in 1963, Khon Suphan bemoaned Suphanburi's unimportance with a front-page headline: “Building Highways throughout Thailand—[But] Nothing for Suphanburi” (February 10, 1963, 1). This kind of disappointment led one columnist to gripe with a mixture of resentment, jealousy, and frustration, “Every [Thai] government has traditionally paid little attention to Suphanburi, leaving it to develop on its own without giving it as much [budgetary] support as it needed.” Most tellingly, his editorial referred to Suphanburi as “the child of a mistress (luuk mia noi)”—a Thai expression carrying a set of profoundly negative meanings: ignored, inferior, unwanted, disadvantaged, mistreated, and of secondary importance (Khon Suphan, September 10, 1974, 3). A native of Suphanburi born in 1932, Banharn similarly recalled, “Suphanburi had been abandoned [by the state] for hundreds of years. Every Suphanburian was complaining about it” (Khomduean 1995, 133).

Whether these negative characterizations reflected objective reality is not important. The point is that they indicate the subjective sentiments of inferiority and neglect that Suphanburians felt in a national discursive milieu that attached (and still attaches) a social stigma to living in “backward” or “uncivilized” places (Thongchai 2000a; 2000b). While Thailand as a whole was making inexorable progress toward modernity, Suphanburians perceived their province as being relegated to the status of a developmental laggard. The absence of good roads led them to develop what social psychologists call a “negative or inadequate social identity” (Taylor and Moghaddam 1994, 83).

While Suphanburians felt inferior, non-Suphanburians felt superior, holding Suphanburi to ridicule for its poor road conditions. To illustrate with one joke, which was reported in a local newspaper with resentment: One day, a Bangkokian went to Suphanburi via Nakhon Pathom province. On the way back to Bangkok, he stopped over at a coffee shop in Nakhon Pathom. The shop owner looked at the man in the face and said, “You've just been to Suphanburi, right?” Amazed, the Bangkokian asked, “How could you tell?” The shop owner answered with laughter, “How could I not tell? Dust is all over your face, and that is red dust” (Khon Suphan, October 25, 1963, 5). The implication here is that unpaved roads made of gravel were in Suphanburi alone, whereas roads in Nakhon Pathom (and elsewhere) were all made of asphalt or concrete. In other words, inferior dusty roads were regarded as the quintessential symbol of Suphanburi. Suphanburi was the butt of this kind of joke, which made it synonymous with geographic and social backwater.

A developmental status hierarchy, as many scholars remind us, has not existed at the international level alone; it has also existed within each “third-world” country (Brow 1990, 11–12; Gottschalk 2000, 57; Guneratne 1998; Lewis 2000, 10; Oakes 2000, 679–80; Yea 1994; 2000). Thailand is no exception. In the very process through which the Thai nation-state has endeavored to achieve national integration, some of its constituent parts—regions, provinces, and ethnic groups—have come to be socially constructed and marginalized as “backward” (Thongchai 2000b). The evidence presented here suggests that Suphanburi was one of those parts until some three decades ago. To draw on the title of Michael Lewis's insightful study (2000), Suphanburi became physically “a part” of the Thai nation-state, but at the same time, it became or was made “apart” in social terms.

It was in this historical context that Banharn ran for office for the first time under the CT Party banner in the parliamentary election of 1976. Reflecting the reputation that he had established as a generous local developer by that time,⁶ he won the election by a landslide. This election marks a turning point in the recent history of Suphanburi.

Banharn and Road Construction

Since his childhood, Banharn had been acutely aware of Suphanburi's isolation. In 1946, at the age of fourteen, he went to Bangkok for the first time to take the entrance exam for a famous preparatory school (which he failed) by taking a two-day boat trip, the only way to get to Bangkok at the time. In 1949, he went to Bangkok again, this time as a migrant worker, by using the same mode of transport (Sarn khwam fan hoksip pii1992, 23, 46). In the course of traveling to and from Suphanburi this way, Suphanburi's remoteness was impressed painfully on his body. Therefore, ever since his first election to Parliament, Banharn has made road construction his top priority (CT Party 2001, 15). In no small part, the history of post-1976 Suphanburi is the history of Banharn building a vast number of high-quality roads and boosting the image of a “backward” Suphanburi.

Funds Allocation in the Patrimonial Democratic State

Banharn has done so by channeling an enormous amount of road construction funds from the state into Suphanburi. What has made this massive infusion of funds possible is the broad institutional context of Thailand, in which the post-1973 democratic state continues to be essentially patrimonial in nature. As in the age of authoritarian rule (Riggs 1966; Scott 1972), public office is still regarded as private property that power holders can manipulate to allocate scarce resources, notably state funds, in particularistic ways. Whereas only a narrow circle of elites exerted personal influence over funds allocation in the authoritarian past, democratization has allowed formerly excluded nonelites to attain formal positions in the state (Nishizaki 2004). Banharn, as well as his protégés, family members, and friends, has been among such people. This institutional factor has enabled him to tap the coffers of the central state that previously had been mostly closed to Suphanburi.

Relevant to my argument is Banharn's direct or indirect control over three major departments in charge of road construction: the DOH, the Department of Accelerated Rural Development (DARD), and the Department of Public Works (DPW). First, he served as minister of communications, the post overseeing the DOH, twice (1986–88, 1992). Likewise, he became minister of interior, the post in charge of the DARD and DPW, twice (1990, 1995–96). Most of all, he controlled all these departments as prime minister in 1995–96. Moreover, the other CT Party MPs of Suphanburi, all Banharn's henchmen, have attained cabinet posts in the Ministries of Communications and Interior.⁷ The same goes for Banharn's allies in the CT Party, such as Pramarn Adireksarn (interior minister, 1988–90, 1990–91) and Chatichai Choonhavan (prime minister, 1988–91).

No less important, many civil servants known for their exceptional closeness to Banharn have held key posts related to road construction. Two notable examples are Sathian Wongwichian, DOH director-general (1986–90) and deputy permanent secretary of the Communications Ministry (1990–92), and Winit Benjaphong, a Suphanburian-born DOH deputy director-general (1995–2000). Another good example is Aree Wong-araya, the former governor of Suphanburi (1983–88) who served as deputy permanent secretary (1988–90, 1991–93) and permanent secretary (1993–95) of the Interior Ministry.

Reinforcing Banharn's budgetary power is his long-standing membership on the Budget Scrutiny Committee (BSC), a powerful parliamentary committee that has the authority to amend annual budget plans. Banharn served on the committee every year between 1978 and 1995 (except 1991–92, when Parliament was nonexistent because of the coup of 1991). No other MP has sat on the BSC for as long as Banharn. In addition, the other CT Party MPs of Suphanburi have sat on the BSC for varying periods of time, making Suphanburi by far the most well-represented province on the committee (the data obtained from the Office of National Parliament in 2000). Furthermore, Bodi Chunnanond, Banharn's “crony” bureaucrat who served as deputy director-general (1974–83) and director-general (1983–92, 1993–95) of the powerful Budget Bureau (BB), sat on the BSC continuously between 1975 and 1983 as the BB's representative. In the subsequent eleven years (1984–95), Bodi served as deputy chairman of the BSC (Hoksip pii Bodi Chunnanond1995, 10).⁸

In the patrimonial institutional context of Thailand, all these positions have enabled Banharn to exert considerable personal leverage over the process through which state funds are requested, approved, and allocated for road construction in Suphanburi, his primary area of development. His budgetary power became apparent immediately after 1976. As table 1 shows, starting in fiscal year (FY) 1977, Suphanburi became the recipient of an unprecedented sum of DOH funds. Between FY1977 and FY1980, the funds for Suphanburi jumped by 489 percent, whereas the funds for the whole country rose by a much more modest 33 percent. Equally striking is the increase in the relative share of funds for Suphanburi vis-à-vis seventy other provinces of Thailand. In FY1966–77, Suphanburi accounted for a yearly average of 1.3 percent of all the funds allocated nationwide by the DOH. In the four years after FY1977, the comparable figure jumped to 5.9 percent. In FY1980, it reached nearly 12 percent. The significance of this data becomes clearer in light of the fact that Suphanburi is a medium-sized province that accounts for only 1.6 percent of Thailand's population. The initiation of massive road construction by Banharn thus marked a sharp departure from the pre-1976 period, when Suphanburi was the recipient of a disproportionately small sum of state funds. With Banharn as an MP, Suphanburi, once a chronic loser in the zero-sum interprovincial competition for fiscal resources of the state, now emerged as a main victor.

Starting in 1976, Suphanburi also became the major recipient of funds from the DARD, the most important road-building agency at the village level. Founded in 1967 to counter communist infiltration into villages, the DARD traditionally concentrated on building roads in the northern and northeastern regions near Laos and Cambodia. Suphanburi (and other central region provinces) took a back seat. This situation changed appreciably after 1976, when a DARD Regional Center, the sixth in Thailand, was established in Suphanburi (BB 1976b, 467). Between FY1975 and FY1980, for example, DARD funds for Suphanburi jumped by 1,404 percent, whereas comparable funds for the country rose by only 389 percent (BB 1974b, 357, 382; 1975b, 407; 1976b, 435, 467; 1977b, 345, 370; 1978b, 308–9, 334; 1979b, 388–89, 417).

Since the 1980s, too, Suphanburi has continued to be a main beneficiary of road construction funds. This trend became especially noticeable from the early 1990s onward, when vertiginous economic growth kept bloating the coffers of the state. In FY1998, for example, DOH funds for Suphanburi reached an eye-popping 3,388 million baht, thanks to Banharn's wheeling and dealing in the budgetary process when he was prime minister in 1995–96. Only the economic crisis of 1997 could put a brake on the inflationary trend (figure 2).

A catalyst for the infusion of these funds was the establishment of Thailand's fourteenth Regional Office of Highways Department (ROHD) in Suphanburi in 1988. Banharn, then minister of communications, appointed the aforementioned Winit as the first ROHD chief. On paper, the ROHD undertakes highway construction projects in Suphanburi and its three adjacent provinces (i.e., Uthai Thani, Kanchanaburi, and Chainat). In practice, however, the office has acted as the de facto “front” for Suphanburi. It is also worth noting that besides the ROHD, Suphanburi has the Provincial Office of Highways Department (POHD), which has been divided into two branches since 1988 (DOH 2002, 159–60). That is, Suphanburi, unlike most other provinces (which have only one POHD), has had three branch offices of the Highways Department since 1988. These offices have combined to serve as the vital institutional conduits through which a big chunk of state funds constantly flow into Suphanburi, often at the expense of other provinces.

Comparative analysis makes the extent of unbalanced funds allocation clearer. Figure 3 shows that between FY1985 and FY1997, Suphanburi received far more DOH funds than the other provinces of the central region, except Ayutthaya. The contrast to Chainat and Uthai Thani is especially striking. In FY1995, for instance, whereas Suphanburi received more than 1.08 billion baht, these two provinces received a diminutive 18 million and 22 million baht, respectively (BB 1994, 210–13, 260–63, 270–73). Even Ayutthaya's preeminence does not detract from Suphanburi's uniqueness. The DOH channeled more funds into Ayutthaya primarily because it had to urgently upgrade the road network between Bangkok and an industrial estate that the Board of Investment set up in Ayutthaya in the late 1980s to attract foreign capital. In contrast, Suphanburi has not attracted any foreign capital to date, but it still received all the funds that it did.

Most of the funds channeled by Banharn are “continuous funds” (ngop phuukphan), a type of funding that guarantees recipient provinces an uninterrupted flow of funds for several years in a row. For example, once the government decides to allocate a continuous fund of 6 million baht for a given project over the next three years, the government is bound to honor this commitment, irrespective of whether there is any unforeseen political change during the three-year period. Given the highly volatile nature of Thai politics (as exemplified by frequent coups and cabinet changes), this type of “guaranteed funding” represents a distinct advantage over the yearly funds allocation process, whereby projects approved by one government might be arbitrarily terminated or scaled down by the next (interview with BB official, February 5, 2000). Banharn has made it a point to secure as many “continuous funds” projects as possible whenever he or his allies have held cabinet posts in the road-building ministries or departments. As a result, state funds have flowed uninterrupted into Suphanburi. For example, although the coup of 1976 abruptly ended Banharn's MP status and Parliament did not exist for the next three years, four highway construction projects, for which he had secured “continuous funds” of more than 331 million baht before the coup, were carried out without a hitch (BB 1976a, 156, 161, 172, 175; 1977a, 112, 121, 128; 1978a, 127, 135; 1979a, 131–32, 138). One Suphanburian, a senior schoolteacher, praised Banharn's prescience, saying, “Banharn is smart. He takes a long-term view. From the beginning, he has always asked for continuous funds to hedge against future uncertainty” (interview, November 30, 1999).

Quantitative and Qualitative Expansion of Roads

A huge sum of funds has enabled Banharn to build a correspondingly huge number of roads in every nook and cranny of Suphanburi. Table 2 shows that Suphanburi now stands out in relation to other central region provinces, both in the absolute and proportional length of highways. The three maps (figures 4–6) bring into stark relief the phenomenal physical change that Banharn has brought about over time. In 1968, Suphanburi had only five highways, four of which were unsurfaced. Three decades later, fifty-nine paved highways crisscross Suphanburi like a spider's web. The total length of highways increased by 1,645 percent, from 111.3 kilometers in 1966 to 1,942.5 kilometers in 2001 (calculated from ROHD 2002). Furthermore, the new highways have stimulated the construction of numerous feeder roads (n = 390 in 2002) that branch out into and interconnect villages. Suphanburi is far ahead of its neighboring provinces in the length of these secondary and tertiary roads (1,705 kilometers in 2002) (calculated from computer data obtained from the DARD and DPW in 2002). The feeder roads are not included in figure 6. If included, they would make the map look like a truly dense spider's web.

The expression “roads, roads, and still more roads,” which Eugen Weber uses to describe early twentieth-century France, captures the mood of the times in post-1976 Suphanburi. Before Banharn embarked on massive road construction, space or nature, as Weber says of premodern France, was “the master; its distances run wild, overwhelming man.” It represented a menace, something intimidating, mysterious, awesome, and daunting. With the advent of roads, however, space was “conquered, distances [were] tamed, brought to heel or, rather, increasingly to wheel.” If history is “the tale of men struggling against space” (Weber 1976, 195), there were signs that Suphanburians were rapidly and finally emerging as victors in this struggle.

The taming of physical distance entailed the taming of the psychological distance that had existed between formerly scattered villages of Suphanburi. This is suggested in an episode reported in the provincial newspaper Khon Suphan. One day, the paper's reporter drove along a newly completed road to a subdistrict situated in the westernmost part of Muang District. Once he got there, he saw that there was another new road that extended further westward. He took the route to drive another 3–4 kilometers, at which point he got to a temple that was connected by still another new road. Having lost his sense of direction, he asked villagers where he was, and their reply was “U-Thong (District).” The reporter described the metaphysical sensation he felt at that time as “odd” (plaek jai) because he “had never thought that U-Thong and Muang Districts were so close to each other.” As soon as he got back home that day, he brought out a map of Suphanburi to see exactly where he had been. The two districts are actually contiguous to each other, but the absence of roads had made the distance seem much greater than it actually was. U-Thong had appeared so “far” away before, both physically and psychologically, but now it was brought much closer (Khon Suphan, March 16, 1982, 3). A dense network of roads built by Banharn has made possible this kind of unprecedented physical mobility of Suphanburians, which has served to shorten the psychological distance among previously segmented villages and to create a growing sense of extra-village provincial awareness.

Nothing is more symbolic of the dissolving of physical and psychological distance than the completion of a paved highway linking Suphanburi directly to Bangkok. To build this highway, Banharn obtained an astonishing 460 million baht, a five-year continuous fund supplied by the World Bank, from the DOH in 1979 (CT Party 2001, 15–16; BB 1979a, 178; 1980, 84; DOH 1981, 63; 1982, 63; 1983; 1984). Completed in 1984, the highway, which some Suphanburians proudly call “Banharn Highway,” made the distance to Bangkok shorter by 60 kilometers. In terms of time, a road trip to Bangkok was shortened by at least five hours. The “Banharn Highway” has thus enabled numerous Suphanburians to get to Bangkok for work, education, or entertainment far more easily than had ever been imagined before. The highway signifies the opening up of a formerly isolated Suphanburi to the outside world, especially to Bangkok, the center of modernity, civilization, and progress. It is no longer possible to speak of Suphanburians as stuck in a far-flung “uncivilized” province.

Banharn has put as much emphasis on the quality of the roads as on their quantity. Consequently, roads in Suphanburi have come to possess outstanding qualities. First, they are distinctly durable and smooth. Suphanburi now has far more concrete and asphalt highways than other central region provinces (table 3).⁹ Highways in Suphanburi are therefore much less prone to develop holes or bumps. The same holds true for village-level feeder roads. As table 4 shows, Suphanburi ranks third among Thailand's seventy-five provinces in the length of concrete and asphalt feeder roads. None of Suphanburi's neighboring provinces are among the top ten. Suphanburi's distinctiveness becomes even more pronounced when we consider that among the top ten provinces, Suphanburi has by far the smallest population and area size. Thus, in terms of the length of feeder roads per person and per square kilometer, Suphanburi is the most advantaged.

Second, Suphanburi's highways are exceptionally wide. As of 2001, 359.4 kilometers (18.5 percent) of all the highways in Suphanburi had two or more lanes. Comparable figures for adjacent Kanchanaburi and Uthai Thani provinces were 27.6 kilometers (3.7 percent) and 42 kilometers (6.2 percent), respectively (ROHD 2002, 7). The most impressive road in terms of width is the aforementioned Bangkok–Suphanburi highway, which presently has six lanes on each side at some points.

In addition, Suphanburi's highways are well lit. Most of them have a long stretch of modern electric poles that give out bright illumination at night. For example, the 2-kilometer portion of the Suphanburi–Bangkok highway that passes the central market town of Muang District has eighty-nine towering electric poles (about 25 meters in height), each one of which was built at a cost of 400,000 baht (figure 7). The 25-kilometer highway between Muang and Don Chedi Districts has 567 slightly shorter electric poles, each one of which cost 200,000 baht (interview with DOH official, February 1, 2000). In stark contrast, most highways in Suphanburi's adjacent provinces are dimly lit or have no lights at all. They are therefore enveloped in spooky darkness after sunset. Insofar as darkness is regarded as one of the metaphysical marks of backwardness, Suphanburi's brightness at present vividly represents its escape from backwardness.

Roads in Suphanburi are also extremely clean and beautiful. To the extent that provincial Thais believe that one aim of development is to “make … roads and streets clean and to make [their] community tidy and neat” (Ratana 1997, 130; see also Hirsch 1991, 331–33), Suphanburi qualifies as a very “well-developed” province, for there is hardly any litter on the roads. A wide range of civil servants who are dependent on Banharn for funds allocation and promotions assiduously keep the roads free of rubbish to satisfy his penchant for cleanliness (see Nishizaki 2006 for details). In addition, many highways have beautifully embellished median strips, where neatly trimmed bonsai-style trees and flowers are planted (figure 8). As the Bangkok Post aptly described (September 25, 1995, 6), the roads in Suphanburi display “a touch of Singapore.”¹⁰

The aesthetic conditions of roads are maintained by DOH workers. Working on three shifts six days a week, these workers sweep roads, collect garbage, trim trees, and mow the lawn. Suphanburi has far more of these workers than other provinces. In 2001, for example, Suphanburi had 1,145 workers, whereas Kanchanaburi, Chainat, and Uthai Thani had only 372, 284, and 388, respectively (ROHD 2002, 6). The ROHD also dispatches trucks equipped with water tanks twice a day to sprinkle water on median strips throughout Suphanburi (interview with ROHD official, February 1, 2000). In addition, the Banharn-Jaemsai Foundation, a private foundation founded by Banharn in 1986, employs hundreds of workers who perform the same duties as DOH workers (interviews with workers, January 27 and 30, 2000).

In sum, by using his power in the patrimonial central state, Banharn has injected a prodigious amount of road construction funds into Suphanburi. As a result, Suphanburi's roads have become distinctively long, durable, smooth, wide, bright, clean, and beautiful, the way they are now. The appearance of these high-quality roads embodies a vast temporal improvement over the pre-Banharn past, when Suphanburi was connected to Bangkok by only one unpaved, dusty road.

Critics would condemn these roads as extravagant and wasteful pork-barrel projects that Banharn has used to reward his supporters and to co-opt (potential) rivals in his constituency. This critique is not misplaced, for most of the road construction projects in Suphanburi have enriched contractors who are personally close to Banharn. To give but one example, Sai Samphan, a Suphanburi-based limited partnership owned by kin members of Sriphol Limthong, the nephew of Banharn's wife, won more than 601 million baht worth of road-building projects (n = 191) from the DARD, DOH, and DPW between 1997 and 2000 (DBD/MC, Suphanburi Limited Partnership File no. 60). The presence of well-connected contractors such as Sai Samphan certainly supports the instrumentalist view of provincial Thai politics, which regards road construction projects as patronage resources for politicians; Banharn is undoubtedly a seasoned “virtuoso” in pork-barrel politics. However, while scholars criticize such coziness for breeding corruption and for contributing to long-term economic instability (as manifested by the economic crisis of 1997), few ordinary Suphanburians actually complain about who gets rich thanks to Banharn. They are well aware of his “crony” contractors (many people rattled off the names of these contractors to me), but they still continue to support him eagerly. To understand why, we must shed light on what scholars of rural Thai politics disregard: the positive effects of road construction on the reputation of Suphanburi.

The Effects of Road Building

Enhanced Prestige of Suphanburi

As but one indication of their enhanced prestige, the roads in Suphanburi have won several regional- or national-level “best highway contests” conducted by the DOH. In 2001, for instance, the 25-kilometer highway between Don Chedi and Muang Districts—the road that had been made of laterite up to the early 1970s (DOH 1955, 18, 36; 1956, 13, 27; BB 1970, 387; 1971, 382)—was chosen as “the most beautiful, the most convenient, and the safest highway.” Another good indication is in the annual report issued by the DOH in 1999. This report carried twenty-one photos of modern highways that the DOH had built nationwide in 1998–99. Seven of these photos were of the highways in Suphanburi. In addition, the front and back covers of the report showed Suphanburi's highways (DOH 2000). Seeing Suphanburi's highways as the cream of the crop in Thailand, the DOH used them as the symbols of its sophisticated, modern road-building technologies. Indeed, many roads in Suphanburi at present look so modern that they would compare favorably with some of the best highways in industrialized nations.

The dissemination of radios, television, and newspapers, coupled with frequent interprovincial travel, has allowed non-Suphanburians to see, read about, and hear about the superior nature of roads in Suphanburi. Suphanburi's fame has thus spread nationwide. Accordingly, Suphanburi has come to win the respect, admiration, and envy of many non-Suphanburians. For example, Thai Rath, a major national newspaper, admired Suphanburi for having “roads as wide as [the airport's] runways” that “put other provinces to shame.” The newspaper also introduced a letter sent by one resident in Nakhon Sawan Province, who grumbled bitterly, “I was born in Nakhon Sawan and have lived here all my life. All this while, I haven't seen Nakhon Sawan develop in the same way as other provinces.” Foremost among those “other provinces” was Suphanburi. The letter asked why Suphanburi has many excellent public works when “our hometown, the Muang municipality of Nakhon Sawan, can't have anything good.” The newspaper also reports that its office often receives letters from non-Suphanburians, criticizing their MPs for not developing their provinces the way Banharn has developed Suphanburi (Thai Rath, July 24, 1998, 6). While scholars criticize Banharn for showing provincial favoritism in funds allocation, many non-Suphanburians admire him precisely for this reason.

My conversations with 101 non-Suphanburians in twenty-five provinces supported these reports. In response to my question, “At the mention of Suphanburi, what comes to your mind?” 81 percent of the respondents answered “roads,” which they praised in various ways. For example, a hotel employee from the northeastern province of Mukdaharn was “impressed” with Suphanburi's four-lane roads during her first visit in 1997, for in Mukdaharn “even the biggest highway has only one lane.”¹¹ An industrial wage worker in Saraburi Province praised Suphanburi's roads for their “beauty” and “order,” which she contrasted to Saraburi's “noisy, crowded, polluted, and chaotic” roads. A civil servant in the northern province of Phayao commented half-jokingly while admiring Suphanburi's well-lit highways at night, “They are so bright that you can even see ants moving!”

Many respondents also expressed admiration for Banharn—admiration that verged on frustration or even anger at their own MPs. For example, a civil servant's chauffeur from Petchaburi Province lambasted Piya Angkinan, Phetchaburi's local godfather and MP, for being “much better at killing people” than building roads. Another respondent, a janitor in Saraburi, said that her province's MPs “are not bad, but they don't love Saraburi the way Banharn loves Suphan. Banharn loves his birthplace and his people very much, so he has done so much for them” (see also Arghiros 2001, 213, for an account given by villagers in Ayutthaya).

Not surprisingly, many non-Suphanburians have expressed a strong desire that their provinces will “develop” (phathana) or “prosper” (charoen) like Suphanburi. Knowing their wishes (see Khon Suphan, August 1, 1993, 3), Banharn has tried to rally electoral support for the CT Party by evoking the image of a “developed” Suphanburi. Before the 2001 general election, for instance, he had a big signboard erected at a busy intersection in Chainat Province that said, “If you want Chainat to develop like Suphanburi, vote for the CT Party” (personal observation; see also Bangkok Post June 11, 18, and 27, 1995, for similar campaign slogans in Ang Thong, Singburi, and Kanchanaburi provinces before the 1995 election).

This kind of campaign tactic has paid off. In the eight elections held between 1983 and 2001, the CT Party won an average of 27.5 percent of the seats in eleven provinces around Suphanburi, despite the fact that more than ten parties contested each of these elections (author's research). Suphanburi has now become something of a centripetal icon of development, behind which popular support in other provinces can be successfully mobilized. The existing literature has us believe that ideology is irrelevant in Thai politics, but there are signs that what one respondent, a former farmer, called “developmentalism” (phathana-niyom), exemplified by Banharn's visible contributions to road building in Suphanburi, has emerged as an incipient yet immensely appealing ideology for the electorate in the provinces that are labeled “backward” (as Suphanburi once was).

The Rise of Positive Provincial Identity

As seen earlier, roads in Suphanburi have now come to possess superlative qualities that many non-Suphanburians respect, admire, envy, or resent. Roads have therefore come to constitute the most important component of Suphanburians' provincial pride. My respondents in Suphanburi (n = 229) from all ages and classes claimed the superiority of Suphanburi's development by pointing to various public works supplied by Banharn, but by far the most frequently cited works (cited by 211) were roads. Because memories of Suphanburi's isolation in the not-so-distant past are still strong and are orally transmitted from generation to generation, roads serve as emotionally resonant symbols of Suphanburi's current development.

Suphanburians' provincial pride finds concrete verbal expression in various everyday stories, jokes, and (unfounded) gossip that they recount among themselves and to outsiders about roads. These social narratives exaggeratedly and humorously poke fun at, put down, and despise the (putative) “backwardness” of other provinces and at the same time hold up Suphanburi as “modern” or “developed.” One example is a joke that many Suphanburians cracked to me by singling out Ang Thong. It goes like this: “If you are traveling on a bus or in a car from Ang Thong to Suphanburi, how can you tell, without looking at road signs, whether you are still in Ang Thong or have reached Suphan? Very easy! Just hold a drink in your hand. If it shakes and spills onto your hand, you are in Ang Thong. If it doesn't, you are in Suphan!” Banharn himself told a similar joke: “When you enter Suphanburi [in a car], you fall asleep. When you enter other places, you wake up” (CT Party 2001, 17). The meaning is obvious: All the roads in Suphanburi are smooth, whereas Ang Thong's roads are bumpy. Thus, one janitor asked rhetorically with a sneering chuckle, “Why do they bother to put up those signboards saying, ‘Welcome to Suphanburi’? There is no need for them.” According to another Suphanburian, a vendor of drinks in Don Tarl subdistrict (which borders Ang Thong), even King Bhumipol told the “drinks never shake in Suphanburi” story to his entourage. Another common joke goes, “If you are driving at night, you can turn off your headlights as soon as you reach Suphanburi. That saves you energy.” This joke plays up all the modern illumination poles in Suphanburi, conjuring up just another invidious binary contrast, a contrast between “a bright Suphanburi” and “dark other provinces.”

Pride in the superiority of Suphanburi's roads is reflected in numerous other narratives. To give several representative examples,

While Suphanburians give these kinds of prideful narratives, some non-Suphanburians actually express nonchalance or flatly deny that they are envious of Suphanburi's roads. Suphanburians are aware of the presence of these non-Suphanburians, but they have convenient ways to explain away or rationalize such “anomalous cases.” One illustrative response, given by a hotel employee, is, “OK, suppose I have a brand-new European car, and you don't. I ask you, ‘Are you jealous of me?’ What would you say? You would never say ‘yes’ to my face, right? You would probably say, ‘I am happy with what I have now,’ although deep down in your heart, you are very jealous. Nobody wants to admit being jealous. That is human nature.” In other words, non-Suphanburians who fall short of admiring Suphanburi are brushed off as dissimulating their indifference or as crying sour grapes. Suphanburians obtain heightened provincial pride by imagining non-Suphanburians' envy, jealousy, or antipathy.

Viewed from the detached perspective of outsiders, many of the Suphanburians' social narratives are purely subjective and clearly exaggerated. While Suphanburi is certainly “developed” in terms of roads, there are, objectively speaking, several persistent signs of its relative underdevelopment.¹² Also, not all roads in Suphanburi are as smooth and bright as my respondents made them out to be. Many Suphanburians actually know this, but they defend or discount the level of Suphanburi's backwardness.¹³ At the same time, they accentuate the presence of superior “Banharn roads” in their subjective attempt to acquire, maintain, and bolster their positive provincial identity (see Edelman 1976, 12–13; Kulik 1983; and Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979 for a discussion of this human selectivity). “Development,” just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Political “scientists” might try to examine the extent to which Suphanburians' narratives are “objectively true.” Such an exercise would be pointless, however. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Suphanburians' social narratives have overlapping elements of reality, imagination, and exaggeration. Given this, trying to determine the “objectivity” of their narratives would produce inconclusive results at best. Suphanburians would not be interested in such a detached empirical test anyway. They believe what they want to believe. Their narratives, just like any other subjective narratives that reflect one's deeply cherished inner beliefs, are impervious to scientific or logical falsification.

The significance of Suphanburians' (exaggerated) narratives lies in the fact that they are told at all and that they reflect a very strong and positive provincial identity—“provincialism” (jangwatniyom), as one farmer's son called it—which a great many people living in ten districts, 110 subdistricts, and more than 900 villages of Suphanburi have acquired. Suphanburi was once the object of ridicule for its bumpy and dusty roads. Consequently, Suphanburians used to speak of their province with a sense of shame. But now, thanks to Banharn, Suphanburi boasts an extensive network of nationally renowned roads. Suphanburi has thus become the object of admiration, respect, and jealousy. The relative social position of Suphanburi has been completely reversed. Reading this change into the landscape that presents itself before their eyes, Suphanburians now find themselves in a position to make sweeping, value-ridden, and subjective generalizations that discursively construct or uphold Suphanburi as a cut above other (putatively) “backward” provinces. Suphanburians have replaced what Edward Said (1978) might call the old version of Thailand's “imagined social geography” in which they were inferior with a new version in which they are superior. In a nutshell, the way in which Suphanburians represent themselves to outsiders has fundamentally changed. Banharn has brought about this dramatic transformation of Suphanburians' social identity in the short space of less than three decades, a transformation that would have been dismissed as unbelievable before.

Suphanburians' strong, emotion-laden support for Banharn can best be understood in this historical context. When I asked 171 Suphanburians to rate the strength of their support for Banharn on a scale of 1–5, they gave him an average of 4.1. Some respondents expressed their support in quite intense terms, referring to Banharn as their “pride” (pen thi phum jai), the “darling of Suphanburi” (khwan muang), “the most beloved” (sut thi rak) individual, and so on. Few of these people worship Banharn as “a spotless saint,” given all the news concerning his alleged corruption. But they consider his invisible, alleged corruption as far outweighed or offset by what he has so visibly done for Suphanburi. They have thus come to develop a strong sense of comradeship with him. As one respondent, a wage worker, said, “Banharn may be corrupt, but he is our corrupt MP,” who has a proven record of having developed Suphanburi's roads (and other public works) to such an extent that Suphanburians can be intensely proud of their province.

Of course, not every Suphanburian interprets all the roads in the same positive way. To Banharn's detractors (mostly bureaucrats), who made up 11 percent of my respondents, the roads signify nothing but his nefarious corruption. Some respondents (5 percent) associated rapid road construction with impersonal capitalist development that has eroded their closely knit villages, although their narratives are conspicuously devoid of any traumatic meaning that formerly colonized Africans impose on roads (precisely because Thailand escaped colonization). Some 84 percent of the respondents, including even those who hate Banharn, mentioned the contributions of roads to making their daily travels to schools, the market, and so on more convenient and to promoting a more vigorous exchange of commercial goods and services—a view that is consistent with that of mainstream economists. Some of these respondents, especially women, also note that it is now much safer to go out at night because the roads are well lit. Thus, Suphanburians confer multiple and conflicting meanings on roads; the symbolic universe of Suphanburi is not seamless. With that noted, I highlight the social-psychological aspect of road construction that the majority of Suphanburians play up. In a context in which rural Thais have been socialized to view development as “competition” (Arghiros 2001, 213; Hirsch 1991, 332; Ratana 1997, 131, 145), many Suphanburians interpret “Banharn roads” as emotionally gratifying prestige symbols that indicate Suphanburi's triumph in an interprovincial development competition. The roads have boosted Suphanburians' pride in being Suphanburians.

Concluding Comments

This case study compels us to critically revisit the conventional view in provincial Thai politics, which reduces road-building projects to a politician's pork barrel. This, I reiterate, is not to claim that Banharn has never been involved in pork-barrel politics. He certainly has; my argument is not dependent on rejecting this dark side of Banharn. But there is much more to what he has done. He has enhanced the prestige, status, image, or reputation of Suphanburi by building roads. The aggregate of these roads, as many Suphanburians and non-Suphanburians believe, now distinguishes Suphanburi from many other “backward” provinces. If these roads are ostentatious, that is exactly what pleases most Suphanburians and what most non-Suphanburians envy about Suphanburi. Just like middle-class Thais enjoy showing off their big and expensive cars as their status symbols, many Suphanburians take delight in flaunting or bragging about their big and beautiful roads to non-Suphanburians as the “indisputable” proof of Suphanburi's superior development. The roads have taken on the semiotic quality of “prestige goods on display.”

Stated more broadly, precisely because rural Thailand (ban nork) has been traditionally represented as an inferior “backward” category (Thongchai 2000b), its inhabitants desire to acquire as many visual signifiers or even trappings of civilization, modernity, or development as possible in an attempt to move up the social status hierarchy; they do not resign themselves to the inferior social status imposed on them by dominant higher-status groups.¹⁴ For Suphanburians, all the “Banharn roads” constitute one type of such positive signifiers. These roads collectively embody the rise of what might be called “a new Suphanburi,” a socially distinctive province that has escaped the humiliating stigma or label of backwardness. The roads are vivid and concrete signifiers of this well-respected “imagined” provincial community created and spearheaded by Banharn. The otherwise amorphous and abstract “geobody” of this community is spatially represented in the form of all the roads. The roads are also the symbolic means through which Suphanburians have come to identify themselves positively as part of their “well-developed” provincial community that transcends parochial villages. Suphanburians derive, reaffirm, and reinforce this provincial identity through their “everyday spatial experiences”—through the mundane act of watching, traveling on, and talking about all the modern roads that now cover the face of Suphanburi. The roads, in other words, are the sites of Suphanburians' continual provincial identity production and reproduction. In their widely read works, Benedict Anderson (1991) and Thongchai Winichakul (1994) highlight the contributions of newspapers, novels, maps, and other discursive products of “print capitalism” to the social-psychological process of collective identity formation. My study complements their arguments, showing that roads, one type of public development works, have the same representative and integrative effect.

Scholars of provincial Thai politics who fix their attention on the patronage dimension of road construction alone overlook this nonmaterial social-psychological effect. To echo Katherine Verdery's trenchant critique of political science (1999, 26, 127), their “narrow and flat” analytical focus “desiccates” or “impoverishes” Suphanburians' “enchanting” outlook on their history and society. My argument supports that of several anthropologists and historians, who take a more sensitive, hermeneutical approach to decipher symbolic meanings of modernity which the appearance of seemingly impersonal hard roads generates in a formerly roadless, “uncivilized” community. I go a step beyond these scholars, however, by highlighting what they do not emphasize enough: the nexus between semiotics of modernity, collective pride, and social relations of domination. Roads do not merely have a symbolic dimension. The collective prestige and pride that they symbolize also help underpin the legitimate domination of their supplier.

Viewed from another angle, this case study suggests that we need to take public space seriously as a constitutive element of domination (cf. Kusno 2001; Shao 1997; Yea 1994, 24). Space is not an immutable and politically impartial thing that is “out there.” It can be used or sculpted by a politician to his or her advantage. Banharn has tamed and embellished Suphanburi's formerly wild space by putting a huge number of high-quality, aesthetically pleasant, and geometrically awesome roads on it. The transformed space is part and parcel of his domination and Suphanburians' pride that underwrites it.

Some critics might write off pro-Banharn Suphanburians as too naive, mystified, or even stupid. I do not share such a condescending view. Suphanburians should actually be seen as quite normal human beings who, in the parlance of social identity theory, desire or need to belong to a well-respected social group (Taylor and Moghaddam 1994, 78–79, 83). Contrary to what the U.S.-led individual-centered paradigm (e.g., rational choice theory) would have us believe, human beings live primarily as social group members. As such, they care deeply about the prestige, image, reputation, or status of their group(s). The roads supplied by Banharn have had the cumulative effect of satisfying this all-too-human desire or need of Suphanburians. Paying due attention to this prestige factor helps us better understand why an allegedly corrupt provincial strongman like Banharn continues to command strong popular support at the local level.¹⁵

Acknowledgments

This paper has benefited immensely from the critical and useful feedback offered at various stages by Mary Callahan, Ellis Goldberg, Irving Johnson, Benedict Kerkvliet, Charles Keyes, Goh Beng Lan, the late Dan Lev, and Michael Montesano, as well as JAS editor Kenneth George and three reviewers. Paul Hutchcroft helped improve the paper title. The bulk of my fieldwork, on which this paper is based, was supported by the Ford Foundation. The National University of Singapore and Australian National University provided a collegial and stimulating environment, in which I revised this paper in 2005–07. I extend my deep thanks to all these people and institutions. I am also indebted to the numerous people in Suphanburi and elsewhere in Thailand for their willingness to share their views or data with me.

Notes

List of References