Youth Gangs, Violence, and Local Culture in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand

Abstract

Drawing on twenty-four months of ethnographic research, this article examines the role of violence among northern Thai youth gangs at the intersection of global capitalism and local culture. Contrary to dominant representations that depict youth gang violence as a means for psychologically coping as victims of dramatic social change, I argue that youth violence may be viewed as active and creative ways of negotiating change under conditions of rapid urbanization and modernization. For gang youth in northern Thailand, violence offers an opportunity to “fit in and stick out” in an anonymous cosmopolitan city. While some Chiang Mai youth subcultures draw primarily on global cultural resources as a means of standing out and enhancing one’s “subcultural capital,” northern Thai youth gangs rely more heavily on local culture to achieve status and a sense of self-worth, particularly in relation to enduring Thai values of masculinity centered on notions of invulnerability.