“Phua Farang”: Demanding Daughter Duty

Just stumbled upon this site: Critical Asian Studies. A worthwhile read caught my eye: “Demanding Daughter Duty: Gender, Community, Village Transformation & Transnational Marriages in Northeast Thailand.” A study about the increased favorable acceptance of Isaan women with foreign partners. An in-depth study about a social phenomenon not known some years ago. From the site’s abstract:

The transnationalization of rural villages in the northeast region of Thailand through women’s transnational marriages is reconfiguring gendered familial obligations in the form of “daughter duty.” This article shows how economic and social remittances from dutiful village daughters who are married to foreign husbands connect local villages and communities to the global, bypassing Thai nation-state institutions and agencies that have inadequately addressed the disadvantageous position of Thailand’s Isaan region.

This transnational process depends on daughters’ (and mothers’) commitment to their care work and to their role as nurturers of the family, kin, schools, temples, and community – the community being seen as a familial extension in this matrilocal society. Women’s upward economic mobility and their adherence to valued filial roles contribute to the community’s increased favorable acceptance of women with foreign partners, leading to a greater number of transnational marriages.

This article offers a nuanced reading of the so-called phua farang phenomenon (transnational marriages) based on an analysis of transformations brought about by daughter duty and the agrarian changes taking place in villages in Thailand’s Isaan region as the result of the rapid growth of transnational marriages.

Some stigma has been removed. It’s not longer mainly about the daughter allowing the brother to finally buy a motorcycle or to buy dad that car. But those disapproving looks? And the “bad girl” perception of a mia farang (foreigner’s wife)? The complete article is not free, but worth a paid download right here.

For free you can download Sirijit Sunanta’s “Global Wife, Local Daughter: Gender, Family & Nation in Transnational Marriages in Northeast Thailand.” A same same but different study, but as said: free. Find the 190+ pages here.

An abstract:

This dissertation explains the emergence and continuous growth of transnational marriages in northeast Thailand through a gendered and localized analysis of globalization. The foreign husband (phua farang) phenomenon, or inter-racial/cross national marriages between Thai women and foreign men, has grown substantially in the last ten years, particularly in Issan or the northeast region of Thailand. In 2003 to 2004 as many as 15,000 women from Isaan provinces are married to or engaged in romantic relationships with foreign men mainly from Western European countries and the U.S. Transnationally married Issan women send remittances to their families, schools and temples, thus contributing to the economic and social transformation of agrarian villages in Thailand’s poorest region. The phua farang phenomenon among rural Isaan women, and the volume of revenue the phenomenon generates, perplex Thai society and stirs nation-wide debates. (Sirijit Sunanta) I demonstrates through combined gender, class and political economic analyses how the phua farang phenomenon in Isaan is implicated in the interconnected “worlds” between the global and the local, the macro and micro scales, as well as the production and reproduction realms. Exploring localized global processes that take place at various scales – from the individual, the family and community, to the nation-state and the global political economy – this dissertation reveals on-going struggles between structural forces from “above” and everyday resistance on the ground by classed, ethnicized and gendered subjects exercising their agency. Internal struggles within the Thai nation, shown in ethnicized, classed, and gendered moral and nationalist discourses around the Phua Farang phenomenon, further problematize the dichotomy between the “colonizing global capitalism” and the much celebrated local alternatives to modernity.

Over to you.




Sphere: Related Content

Related posts on absolutelyBangkok.com:

  1. F-Farang
  2. Scientifically Proven: The Good Farang
  3. The Ten Commandments Of Thai Politicians
  4. Thai Love Talk
  5. Thailand Beyond The Fringe
  6. Walking The Bhikkhuni Path
  7. King BNE

January 8, 2010 | Filed Under Culture & Arts, Society, The Thai Mind 

Comments

16 Responses to ““Phua Farang”: Demanding Daughter Duty”

  1. stefan on January 9th, 2010 5.32 pm

    I was wondering when we would start to be analyzed and dissected like some sub species from a laboratory or zoological control group. If only the academics who made this study were to turn the microscope onto themselves and their “native” anthropology. I’m not sure the real resulting picture would be any better or less deserving of a racial profiling.

  2. Daren on January 10th, 2010 10.35 am

    The link to the free study doesn’t work. I hope you can fix it.

    (BD: Sorry ’bout that, works now.)

  3. Chdarat on January 11th, 2010 8.48 am

    stefan:

    Stop being so touchy and be realistic!

    Western anthropologists have made countless studies of us so why shouldn’t we turn the table round and ask some questions.

    If you continue this way then you’ll be accused of being a hypocrite.

    Plus asking questions about this subject will open eyes and peoples stubborn and misguided conceptions about this phenomenon.

  4. stefan on January 12th, 2010 3.11 pm

    Chdarat:
    A principle tenet of Buddhism defines “intention” as as a way to clarify what is behind certain actions we take. In this particular case the “study on farangs and their Thai wives” carries the underlying but unmistakable stench of a condescending trumpet call made on an “aberration” that has infiltrated an otherwise innocuous ethnic group (aliens marrying NE women).

    Objecting to being scrutinized by people with arguable credentials and duplicitous intention doesn’t a hypocrite make one. And one shouldn’t need academic pretensions to express such.

    Can anyone explain what benefits the NE woman achieves from such a study, beyond being at the butt of a smug profiling from sanctimonious academics?

  5. Meow Naam on January 12th, 2010 11.16 pm

    stefan – this study appears to have touched a nerve. I wonder why. You seem to show immense ignorance about anthropology as a discipline – hence your comments about racial profiling.

  6. stefan on January 13th, 2010 12.04 am

    Sea Lion, admittedly I did comment without first obtaining a degree on the subject matter at hand, and that’s the beauty of blogs like this. But I do know how to spot a Pecksniffian when I see one. Sorry if the troglodyte in me upsets you. I’m still waiting for an answer to my last question.

  7. Chdarat on January 13th, 2010 8.45 am

    Yes stefan – intention and the Buddha also recommended watching one’s own reaction to clarify why one reacts to certain impingement.

  8. Mithran on January 13th, 2010 10.40 am

    stefan:

    “(…) scrutinized by people with arguable credentials and duplicitous intention (…)”

    According to the Mahidol website she’s got a PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia. What’s arguable about that? As for “duplicitous intention,” you do actually know what she’s thinking then?

    Any anthropologist would be interested in how a minority group affects the culture of a country they’re living in. For example, I am sure many U.K. anthroplogists have studied the interactions and behaviors of Hindu and Muslim communities in the U.K.

    And as Chdarat says, God knows enough Western anthropologists feel happy pontificating about Thailand.

  9. Rich on January 13th, 2010 10.45 am

    Buddhism has little to offer these days, everything that Buddhism offers is explicable and achievable using plain common-or-garden psychology. Most of what remains is just superstition.

  10. Chdarat on January 13th, 2010 12.03 pm

    Yes on one level that is true Rich.

    A lot of what is called Buddhism is not the religious practice but something that has blended into this bizarre mix of cultural tradition that has very little to do with what Gotama himself intended.

    However, strip this off from all this extra packaging and you can still find what the Buddha taught if you care to look for it that is.

  11. Hobby on January 13th, 2010 2.03 pm

    “Buddhism has little to offer these days, everything that Buddhism offers is explicable and achievable using plain common-or-garden psychology. Most of what remains is just superstition.”

    That still seems to be slightly more than what the other major religions are offering, IMO. :)

  12. stefan on January 13th, 2010 4.25 pm

    Predictable responses, as always piety and academic hegemony are spouted by the righteous – still don’t see where all this benefits the NE woman? I suspect it isnt really about the NE woman and her choices, but about academics finding a convenient subject for a dissertation. Why don’t they do a study on the network monarchy? Now that might actually reveal something useful.

  13. Mithran on January 14th, 2010 10.08 am

    stefan: How it benefits the NE woman? You mean by trying to understand how the society around her is changing and how she is herself part of that change? No that’s not useful at all. Why bother, or in fact pay any attention to society in the NE? When we set laws that affect a society lets not try and understand it first.

    Sorry about the predictable response by the way. I was just surprised to learn you knew the writer’s intentions. But then if you can read minds everything’s predictable, right?

  14. stefan on January 14th, 2010 5.04 pm

    Mithran:

    I did read the study linked here, so what more do I need to know about what the author was “thinking”? While there is no such kerfuffle about other asians marrying Thais, maybe its more profitable for caucasians with Thai spouses to stay under the radar.

    What kind of laws do you think will be implemented on the back of such a study? In reality it means even more laws that penalize both the foreigner and the NE woman and their families. Does anyone for a second believe that the existing laws don’t already loudly reflect the policy makers bias?

    Again, maybe a study on the machinations of the unholy marriage of lame academia and a subordinate judiciary cemented with a hefty dose of xenophobia, chauvinism and secterianism, such a study might elucidate what’s behind the lawmakers intentions. Unfortunately we know well what the criteria is. I don’t see that getting better before it gets much worse. Does anyone really believe that bringing an “aberration” into the spotlight will soften the lawmakers stance?

  15. Siam.Rick on January 16th, 2010 2.45 pm

    The study purports to see an emerging pattern of change brought about these marriages. The changes are having a measurable impact on many levels in the local communities and economies, all of which may have regional and national impact.

    Or put another way: foreigners are helping Isaan people overcome their economic and racial status in a country where Northeasterners get scant notice or aid.

    I only read BD’s summary and the verbose abstract, but that’s what it looks like to me and it seems worth pursuing.

  16. Rich on January 16th, 2010 5.48 pm

    @Siam.Rick:

    Yep. In a lot of the villages you can see changes, and the changes extend to attitudes as well, not just improvements in the quality of life. In the village I visit from time to time, the foreigner population has shot up in the past three years, and to be honest it is easy to understand why. The lifestyle is better than BKK (though the mod-cons are sparse and the entertainment is almost zero), the weather is better than BKK and to be candid, the people are a shed-load more pleasant and honest than in BKK (yes, a generalization, I know, but not untrue for being so).

    As far as aI know none of these foreigners believe it is their job to change anything, they are just bringing their own lifestyle and attitudes with them and the Thais generally seem to like them better. So the villages change, and the people change. This is what populations have been doing for millennia, but I’m damn sure this stupid government will think it’s a bad thing.

Leave a Reply