Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Thai local imaginaries of corruption and good governance. In so doing it reveals both the imaginative power of vernacular languages and how an ethnographic theory of political concepts can contribute in getting political analysis out of present impasses.

Paper long abstract:

Over the course of the last two decades, political languages promoted by International Financial Institutions (IFI) have taken a life on their own among Thai urban middle classes. Words like corruption and good governance, apparently part of Euro-American political imaginations, have been translated and immersed into a vernacular conceptual landscape, in which they morphed and which they contribute to re-orient. As a result, demanding an end to corruption and advocating for good governance have become part of the ideological infrastructure supporting military coups and unelected officials.

This paper propose to explore this process ethnographically, both to reveal the imaginative power of vernacular languages of corruption and good governance and to show how an ethnographic theory of political concepts can contribute in getting political analysis out of present impasses. In particular, given the growing geo-political significance of these shifts and its effects on Thailand's relations with China, scores of political observers have been puzzling over the apparent paradox of people traditionally seen as the bedrock of democratic transition now ditching representative democracy. Through this analysis, I show that this paradox is nothing more than one of the observational distortions of political theory, one caused by the lack of ethnographic engagement with vernacular political languages and imaginations.