Product details
- ISBN 9780742501577
- Weight: 372g
- Dimensions: 148 x 227mm
- Publication Date: 14 May 2002
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
During the early decades of the twentieth century, Thailand's capital, Bangkok, took on an increasingly cosmopolitan character-a development fueled both by global economic forces and a local revolution in communications. The 1920s were a particularly dynamic period of social and cultural transformation that had a profound impact on the development of Thai modernity. This book examines the growth of a polyphonous and often vociferous Thai public, a public that used a range of new media outlets to express themselves and clamor for a more just and equitable social order.
Scot Barmé mines a rich lode of previously ignored cultural ephemera found in popular newspapers, magazines, novels, short stories, film booklets, and cartoons to create a vibrant cultural history of early modern Thailand that moves beyond conventional, elite-based historical studies of the period. By focusing on such controversies and conflicts as the status of women, relations between the sexes, class antagonisms, and the growth of a commercial mass culture, this book offers a new interpretation of the key decade of the 1920s and its significance for contemporary Thailand.
