Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore Thailand's two museums of corruption. Through an ethnographic description of these museums and their exhibits, I argue that they construct "the people" as a moral category in the aim of problematizing democratic politics and reframing reform as an individual moral practice.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I explore Thailand's two museums of corruption. The first museum was a traveling sculpture collection that portrayed, often in grotesque fashion, the abuses of the powerful so as to remind "forgetful" Thais of the sins those in power have perpetrated against the country. The second is the permanent Museum of Corruption located in the old Anti-Corruption Office building in Bangkok. Through an ethnographic description of these museum spaces and their exhibits, I argue that they construct "the people" as a moral category to problematize democratic politics and transform reform into an individual moral project. I show how the pedagogical impulses of these museum spaces narrate corruption as emerging first from the immoral hearts of the people and second from the manipulative impulses of the powerful. In this way, corruption is recast, obscuring Thailand's endemic power structures which are organized around closely related and overlapping social networks, in favor of promoting a moral pedagogy that is dispersed evenly across society. This formulation has two implications: First, it links corruption and democracy, locating the problem in the immorality of the population; the immorality of demos produces an immoral government. Second, it recasts corruption as an apolitical problem that requires a long term project of moral reform like the one proposed by the current military government and its supporters. I demonstrate these claims by showing how these exhibitions conceive of their audiences, narrate their stories of corruption, and instruct citizens to transform themselves to change their country.