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This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

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Fanny Töpper

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is funny, Tucker. I'm the publishing assistant at News-Press and a master's student in global and communication studies, and today I have the pleasure to be talking to voters at the bulldozer. Giuseppe Bolotta is assistant professor at the Department of Asian and North African Studies at the University of Venice and his research associate at the National University of Singapore East Asia Research Institute. In his research, he focuses on the history and cultural politics of childhood and youth in Thailand. Development, religion and humanitarianism in Southeast Asia. Transnational and a governance of childhoods. And the politics of children's rights in the global south. Recently, he published his book Belittled Citizens the Cultural Politics of Childhood on Bangkok's Margins Business Press, in which many of his research interests included. I am looking forward to talking about your work. Thank you for joining me here today, Giuseppe.

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00:01:14

Giuseppe Bolotta

Thank you for having me. Fanny.

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Fanny Töpper

Giuseppe Bolotta

So the title gives it away. Your work focuses on marginalised children in Thailand's capital. Children that lived in some areas. How did the focus on childhood and children come about?

Well, that's a great question to begin with. Well, the first time I visited Thailand, which was more than 10 years ago, I hadn't yet started my journey, took an image as an anthropologist. Actually, I was working in Milan with no children. As a newly graduated psychologist and there was also a member of a European humanitarian organization that promotes children's rights in several countries of the global south, including Thailand. In July 2000, these organizations set me off to Bangkok with the very generic mandate to assist local social workers and in developing child protection programs for poor children living in some areas. And this was my first time outside Europe. I remember that during a pre-departure training event designed for new volunteers, these NGOs, senior staff members who were mostly psychologists with no experience whatsoever of Thailand but then describe the children we were about to meet as neglected, abandoned, traumatized and suffering. This is the humanitarian destruction of the child victim with all its universalize and implications, which I didn't realize yet. It was the children I met in Bangkok who undermined my ideological and emotional convictions. If you want, despite the hardships of poverty, they looked incredibly vital. They quite far from the Eurocentric image of the innocent, traumatized victim to be seen. They were born in the slums of Bangkok and we're all Buddhists, but I met them in a Catholic charity run by Western missionaries. They were attending both state and private Catholic schools, but returned to the slums during school holidays. And more strikingly, they were simultaneously supported by several, both local and international aid organizations Christian, Buddhist and secular. And in each of these context, children were interpreted and educated differently by adults, according to conflicting ideas of what childhood powering forward morality and society are and should be. So school teachers most school teachers saw the children as a threat to national stability, insufficiently Thai citizens, as I describe in the book.

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00:03:55

Giuseppe Bolotta

Whereas the missionaries, the West, the missionaries working with them in Catholic Charities thought of them as God's evil sons. Many adults approached the children as more people poor now is the Thai word they used for peace, while Buddhist monks interpreted the social economic marginalization in terms of their supposedly poor karmic structure. The humanitarian portrayal of the global south child became the image that Western aid agencies seek to justify their own work, somehow find a complicated, kaleidoscopic representation of these kids. So over my two month volunteering experience in Thailand, he was repeatedly confronted with my inability to grasp these children's multiple childhoods. And more broadly, I was confronted with my inability to understand the different cultural material religious frameworks which were informing these children's heavily lives in Bangkok. A range of fundamental questions arose to which Western psychology couldn't clearly provide useful answers, such as What does childhood meaning? Island to begin with. What constitutes a child between a bank exam? How does the secular discourse of children's rights get translated in the context of a company can deal with in a primarily Buddhist country? And what is the role of state education and families so disturbed by these questions? In 2010, I decided to quit my job as a psychologist and to start in anthropology, which was quite the radical move. I returned to Bangkok to begin the long term ethnographic study that forms the foundation of this book, and I have explored the children's multiple social locations and living with them in Lam's schools, Buddhist temples, Catholic NGOs, state and international aid organizations venues. I will observe conscious taking shape in social media. Well, this book is the result of this study.

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00:06:02

Fanny Töpper

Wow, fascinating. You already mentioned the multiplicity of childhoods that the children experience, and you really highlight that in your research as well. Can you maybe expand on that and on how it relates to the broader socio political processes of Thailand? Well, that's an important question. We should first agree on what we mean when we speak about China in Thailand, which is indeed one of the key questions. My book is built on and then try to understand why poor children living in some areas are commonly considered insufficiently pie by the sea now and in the Thai normative traditional social system. The term big, which we would usually translate into English as a child, often refers to someone of a lower practical status vis-a-vis another person rather than chronological age. In other words, how have all these one speaker, if their interlocutor is an older person among the teacher or simply an older friend, that speaker would be considered like a child. Childhood is thus relational concept in Thailand and works as a social linguistic indicator of hierarchical. Importantly, conceptual constructions of childhood are often intertwined with precise formulations of parenthood. And this is particularly true in Thailand, in a country now run by soldiers blessed by a Buddhist king, a royal father x historically as a national ethos that seeks to infantilize the citizenry. If children are situated at the bottom of the Thai social hierarchy, the king is positioned at its top as the national family's father. So the conceptual relationship between children and adults can be understood, as I described in my book as the metonymy base of the Thai social units, which means that especially in public spaces, children are expected to interact with adults as style subjects are traditionally expected to relate with the king. These conceptualisation of children provided the basis for specific understandings of citizenship and speed of citizen relations, especially as part of 20th century title against the military nationalism. So childhood is charged with political meanings by virtue of being tomorrow's citizens. Children's mind and bodies are at the centre of public debates about issues such as ethnic purity, national identity and the transmission of fundamental cultural values in schools.

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00:08:45

Giuseppe Bolotta

And these debates are procedurally contested when the children were conceived abnormal or somewhat distant from the national norm. And this is the case of children living in Bangkok's poorest areas as descendants of migrants from Thailand through the provinces, and that in minority regions, Islam children in Bangkok embody somewhat the notion that Thai either and that such they are practically targeted by the Thai Sea, militarized the damage. On the other hand, what these children encounter in their home environment and in the social media or in Buddhist temples, Catholic Charities and western NGO may well be different from this. In these contexts, childhood can be conceptualized in different ways, which has profound political implications insofar as these alternative educational projects can challenge the ties to each of them at the turn of poor kids in good, the Thai children and loyal citizens. So in an era of children's rights, the Thai state's control over supposedly deviant childhoods is significantly challenged by multiple agencies, which might hold a different ideas on the so-called the child's best interest. Now, the globalization of childhood in Thailand has been insufficiently. Denies this far, and they think that it has important connection with structural change and other social and political skills to our children's experiences in Bangkok, the social settings that they are confronted with, the different ways the are interpreted by adults are embedded in institutional arrangements. We the micro level accounts of broader national and global processes. And in my book, I realize some of these processes through the lens of childhood, such as the development of the urban poor in Bangkok, the emergence of highly socially engaged Buddhism, the activism of Christian organizations in humanitarian contexts, the increasing militarization of Thai schooling and of course, being pressed of digital literacy of younger generations. So by looking at marginal childhoods, what my book does is to invert scholars more conventional focus on monastic Buddhist and faith part, and both as the overarching features of Thai political culture and show how attention to children who are typically excluded from national politics and therefore invisible in most political analysis as actually important potential for producing factual understandings of Thailand's societal transformations,

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00:11:30

Giuseppe Bolotta

Those different spheres the children navigate. And that's really something that you wanted to understand from a bottom up perspective. In your book, you, you tell us how you attempted to immerse in the children's routines and activities by, for example, sleeping in their dormitories instead of adult housing, or by sitting in the middle of the classroom rather than next to the teacher. How did you experience this really close relationship with these children? Well, it was extremely difficult on many levels methodological, emotional, practical. The life of the children I met in Bangkok unfolded in multiple social scenarios, writing in multiple institutions, sites by public and private schools. I followed them around like a kind of bulky schedule with a strange white person on a site and we'll see was speaks Thai like missionaries, but he's not a priest as a child observed ironically once. So I spent six months with them in the slums. Eight months in the school. And about one year both religious and secular and jobs. And in each of these locations, particular constructions of childhood molded idols. The children packed in some direction in surprisingly different ways in exploring this diverse institutional and ideological and doorbuster support or to common slum children. My book reveals the extent to which the futurity inherent in childhood becomes the site of political contention and how different organizations that tiny that I sleep engaged to Buddhism. Catholic missionaries, Western and Jews are attempting to define Thai society and its Cuban worse future Renee, through the modeling of marginal children's minds and bodies. Now, in addition to investigating the multiple political meanings of childhood and society, these book also details how children who are children in Bangkok form the own a sense of self through these multiple cultural context and political processes. So in order to capture children social worlds from the bottom up, as you mentioned, I accessed the field site as the children normally did, which of course produced contradiction, paradox and ambiguity, right? I tried to participate in the children's routines as one of them, which of course I orphan failed miserably during school lessons. I usually sat in the middle of the cross, some rather than standing next to teachers, and I was perceived as a big right kind of student researcher, which was awkward. But yet I was perceived as aligning with the children rather than with teachers.

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00:14:22

Giuseppe Bolotta

Clearly, no app for both research and practical reasons. I also built the positive relationships with the adults in charge, but children were smart enough to understand that I had considerable influence over local adults, which they could use to their advantage. So I have to say I felt initially quite disoriented emotionally, especially by the continual shifts in the research setting. All the time, I'll have the Moon situated positionally to move myself and the children became a kind of crass, contextual, recognizable feature of our typical relationship a kind of stable, emotional element in the midst of. Changing realities, which deepened our mutual trust and affection. Yes, I was a white person, it was it brown, but but unlike Western enjoyable, NTSA spoke to me. I lived with them and Islam. I accompanied them to the temple. I was with them at school and more importantly, I tried not to intervene in the life choices as a whole. Children's and the different interpretations and reactions to my changing rules turned out to be an important source of data. The way the children interpreted my role and behaved with me at school, for example, stood in contrast to the way they related with me in the slums. And this allowed me to understand different constructions of childhood and different constructions of adult children interaction in various social contexts.

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00:16:03

Fanny Töpper

And is it right that you spend 12 years in total following these children or 10, 12 years? That's a long time thinking of that today in a different way? Or how are you reflecting on that? I'm still following them in a way. I believe this is a quite unique feature of my story. It's a longitudinal school. I followed these children's biographical trajectories over many years at a time during which they lives underwent radical transformations as they strive to reach a coherent sense of self in a context that is shaped by social suffering, poverty and political volatility. I think these work allowed me to capture the rules of culture and power during that stage of human life, where the connection between nature and culture so-called is more evident, which is typical today. I can't simply look at them as research participants. Obviously, we became friends and I'm still in touch with many of them. I saw them grow up, maybe becoming parents, which are also quite meaningful life events, although in different ways because each child had they all own projects and all of them struggled with what the social stigma related to baby and categorization as Islamic children, the catégorie of Islam or children implied the policing of all these children in a wider ethnic category of non-white by either a category that carries a heavy stigma, especially in family context. Where to see the discourse of penis recognition of identity is most strongly expressed. As a result, all over the years, the children use the different strategies in order to avoid being identified as Islamic children or to build their self-worth, despite the ethnic and class profile. I think that my analysis demonstrates the uncanny capacity of our children to to incorporate reformulate contacts and deploy multiple chocolates and to act as kind of social chameleons disguising or asymmetry in the body emotional and communicative expression of self. According to the situational comforting weekly, after forming at any one time as a show, this process of self formation engages different cultural notions of personhood, pioneer set music and the hierarchy at various points in time and with different themes.

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00:18:34

Giuseppe Bolotta

I would say as a whole that during doing research with growing up individuals presents specific challenges. The acceleration of radical transformation of research has been probably one of the most relevant. All anthropologists and social scientists have to deal with the problem of rapidly changing social realities. It's like the object of study changes faster than our own capacity to make sense of it. But this is particularly true with children. Though culturally varied, the region of personal and social transformations of children go through is particularly impressive as they approach puberty.

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00:19:15

Fanny Töpper

And you also learnt a lot from the children while doing your fieldwork right? Right? You literally had to learn how to survive in the slums of Bangkok. But in that same time of six months in the slums of Bangkok, you also observe the family structures that are being predominantly multifocal with households being run by mothers and grandmothers. And I'm curious to hear what impression was on women's and mothers sociopolitical leadership in the slums.

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00:19:44

Giuseppe Bolotta

As you mentioned, many of the children live in multicultural families. Most of the residents in the slums, where ex farmers from Thailand's north and northeastern regions, where matrilineal and local kinship patterns are deeply rooted. Social realities among local ethnic groups households very often included grandmothers mothers. A large number of nephews and foster children when compared with rural contexts. Urbanism study in fact, marked by the absence of men and by a privilege the bond between mothers and children. Men in the slammer are often described by women as reliable providers and violent and likely to spend all the time and money with practice. So in the book, I show how mothers in the slums are actually taking up leadership roles and that been becoming prominent figures in leading poor people's social movements in the capital. And what I argue is that their leadership is connected to the humanitarian value of the children and to the related proliferation of NGOs and aid organizations in some areas. Why? Because the humanitarian construction of slum children, as victims from which we began our conversation is actually something that can be a factor. Instrumentalized by some residents as an economic and political resource, particularly by the children's minds, thanks to the strategic use of their relationship with both children and Bingo's mothers. This is what they described in the book and been able to push Islamic issues into the political spotlight, thereby making the urban poor more visible. And this is a remarkable achievement in a country where political participation is usually considered as a meteorologist. So I argue that inside the nation's cosmological, political and economic center that these Bangkok slums constitute. And now that we're being to borrow an expression coined by Heidi Story and protract on chiding chuckle, another within which the government struggles to govern. While mothers and children are probably becoming the new weapons of the urban, weak

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00:21:58

Fanny Töpper

Giuseppe Bolotta

Fascinating, I'm a little afraid we have to come to our last question. But I'm eager to hear about more recent developments. Young people have been featured as key players in recent mass protests in Thailand, and a study demonstrates that children can play an active role in the remaking of adult society. So what are your thoughts on that?

Well, my book demonstrates precisely marginalized children's ability to affect social political change. Many of the children I worked with were now young men and women, having joined the youth movement that is currently shaking Thailand's political landscape. Among the many feature of this youth movement, I believe, too, are quite remarkable. Its digital infrastructure and its variegated expressions. Protesters drew on a range of cultural symbols to articulate their dissent, which go from from Japanese manga to Hollywood, from astrology to the French Revolution. So they seem to be shaping up what anthropologists are doing, what I described as a Bottom-Up cosmopolitanism. Some conservative observers argue that how you display symptoms of so-called cultural schizophrenia, which is a fragmented, subjective split between the so called the Thai sound, which is perceived as authentic and unknown Thai sounds, which is projected externally in the shape of fashion trends, consumer behaviour and Western like activities. In contrast to these reading, other scholars have analyzed high youth consumption of popular culture. See social media, music and fashion trends, movies and TV shows, etc. as a form of generational rebellion, the official paradigm of China's central Bangkok's political traditions. Now, my research shows how the globalization of children's rights and the transmission expansion of the humanitarian enterprise have introduced a broad set of new assumptions about childhood education and citizenship, and in Thailand's politically marginalized landscapes and in the process. They have also provided poor children with alternative discourses, social venues, role models, religious ethics and economic tools. Moreover, younger generations, privileged access to new media and the global connectivity of social networks constitute yet another species of collective south collaboration and virtual framework of subversive expression, which can be, as we are witnessing nowadays, vector of years, generational descent and where Thai social norms are constantly questioned, reconfigured or reinforced. So rather than a symptom of cultural schizophrenia.

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00:24:58

Giuseppe Bolotta

I believe that to be children's hybrid, multi and poly selves can actually work as a valuable resource against state violence. Although at times, as my research shows, this highly unusual plurality of cultural references can become disorienting for the famous subjects and thus lead to plexus financial fragmentation.

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00:25:23

Fanny Töpper

Just that, it has been great talking to you and hearing more about your fascinating work. Thank you so much for joining me here today.

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00:25:31

Giuseppe Bolotta

Thank you so much. It was great speaking to you

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00:25:34

Fanny Töpper

and thank you for joining the Nordic Asia webcast, showing Nordic collaboration and studying Asia. I am passionate about publishing assistant at news press, and I have been talking to issues that got her author of The Little Citizens. This book is available on our website, News-Press K, and you can find more details in the description of this podcast episode. You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast