Journal of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University

Subjectivity, Otherness, and Empowerment

Pinkaew Laungaramsri — 2025-12-14

Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Judith Butler: A Critical Review of Subject and Gender Subjectivity

Pinkaew Laungaramsri — 2025-12-14

This article provides a critical review of the concepts of subject and gender subjectivity from the perspectives of three influential feminist theorists: Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Judith Butler. These thinkers have significantly influenced the revolutionary reimagining of subject, subjectivity, and gender. The article demonstrates the divergent viewpoints of these three theorists regarding concepts of subject, subjectivity, the body and sexuality, while highlighting their challenges to dominant psychoanalytic theories that have been influential in explaining subjectivity, sexual relations, and sexuality. Furthermore, it presents the distinct alternative imaginative propositions each theorist offers regarding sex and sexual relations.

Gender self-determination and its limitation on gender non-conforming subjectivity

Cheera Thongkrajai — 2025-12-14

This article aims to question the subjectivity of non-conforming gender by examining discourses on gender and sexuality within a world grounded in the binary gender system. Furthermore, it seeks to illustrate the discursive processes through which non-conforming gender ontology are formed, resisted, and asserted as “truths” to establish a stable sense of self and challenge the dominance of binary gender norms. The author aims to connect this discussion to the discursive struggles in the historical context of transgender movement and the emergence of the gender self-determination discourse and its influence on Thai society, particularly through the advocacy efforts of LGBTQ+ groups in the fight for gender equality. The article reveals theoretical limitations of gender self-determination principles that may erase the fluid diversity of gender identity and sexuality and obscure the understanding of other intersecting factors that influence the formation of non- conforming gender as subject and its agency.

Exploring Concept of Subjectivity and Agency: Significant Framework for Studying Gender-based Violence Against Ethnic Minority Women in Thai Society

Maliwan Senawong — 2025-12-14

This article aims to review conceptual frameworks for the study of gender-based violence against women, by focusing on proposing a new analytical framework for understanding gender-based violence against ethnic minority women in Thai society. A review of the related literature from 2015 to 2024 finds that previous studies have limitations in explaining the complexity of gender-based violence against women within specific ethnic and cultural contexts. In particular, there is a lack of analysis regarding subjectivity and agency of women, as well as lack of application of intersectionality in examining gender-based violence and its effects. Therefore, this article develops a conceptual framework for studying gender-based violence against ethnic minority women by applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and symbolic violence, together with the concepts of subjectivity and agency as proposed by Sherry B. Ortner and Lois McNay. The article argues that constructing a new conceptual framework for the analysis of gender-based violence against ethnic minority women should incorporate the notions of habitus, symbolic violence, subjectivity, gender, and agency. This approach can reveal the interplay between social structures that perpetuate masculine domination as a form of symbolic violence, as well as the negotiation and agency of ethnic minority women. Furthermore, the concepts of subjectivity, gender, and agency allow us to consider how subjectivity, gender identity and agency are constructed within specific contexts, which are multiple and fluid. The experiences and perspectives of ethnic minority women reflect the complexed power structures and forms of oppression, and the diverse ways in which resistance and negotiation occur in everyday life. In addition, collective agency should be examined as an instrument for challenging masculine domination and gendered habitus, thereby fostering social transformation.

From Subjectivity to Desubjectivation: A review of women subjects in Anthropological studies of Buddhism in Thailand

Neeranooch Malangpoo — 2025-12-14

Buddhism is an important social arena to investigate gender relations in Thai society, especially, the issues of women's rights and gender inequality. In recent decades, Buddhist related beliefs and practices have diversified and proliferated under the rapidly changing socio-economic and political context. This paper aims to review Buddhist women subjects understood and represented in anthropological studies on Thai Buddhism to unpack the epistemology of subjectivity behind these academic narratives. This paper argues that, influenced by and resonated with feminist movement in Thailand, Thai Buddhist women subjectivities are framed by three dichotomies, namely, male/female, secular/religious, and worldly/salvation. They were also portrayed as modern subjects within the framework of subjectivity that prioritizes agency and autonomy of subjects in negotiating the dominating religious structure. Nonetheless, the epistemology of subjectivity has marginalized the non-normative Buddhist women subjects. Hence, the paper also argues for the attention to desubjectivation in the studies of women and Buddhism to allow the investigation to be more inclusive and reflecting the diverse experiences of women in religion.

Rethinking Subjectivities of Women Farmer in Special Economic Zones

Thouchanok Sattayavinit — 2025-12-14

The challenges of development in traditional Western thought are often explained and understood through dichotomies such as agriculture versus industry, rural versus urban, and backwardness versus progress. This framework emphasizes economic development in quantitative terms, focusing on industrial growth and urbanization as primary indicators of progress. Similarly, the state often prioritizes measurable economic outcomes, striving to transform various regions into special economic zones to attract investors. In this process, the agricultural sector is frequently neglected and marginalized, deemed "backward" for failing to generate income comparable to that of the industrial sector. However, development cannot be neatly divided between agriculture and industry. This is particularly evident in the experiences of female organic farmers in Thailand's Eastern Economic Zone, where industrial capital encroaches upon agricultural land. These women must actively work to protect their land by creating multidimensional forms of negotiating power to resist further industrial expansion into organic farming spaces. As a result, this article reviews the previous studies and challenges the binary concept of development that separates agriculture and industry, where there is an intersectionality in the status of female organic farmers in the context of the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC). These women bear the dual burden of engaging in agricultural responsibilities and resisting industrial capital groups. It re-examines women’s agency within the context of economic and agricultural relations and seeks to understand the subjectivities of female organic farmers within the broader political framework of development policy.

Rethinking Subjectivity and Remittances of Isan Women in Transnational Marriage Contexts

Pintong Lekan — 2025-12-14

This article reviews studies on the concepts of subjectivity and remittances among Isan women married to Western men within the complex context of transnational life. Drawing on anthropological and feminist perspectives, it explores how remittances are not merely an economic phenomenon but also a social and cultural practice that reflects relationships, emotions, and power negotiations of Isan women across borders. The study argues that the notion of the “dutiful daughter,” often used to describe Isan women who send money home, represents only one dimension of subjectivity constructed within moral structures and social discourses. In reality, each woman defines and practices “sending money home” in diverse ways - whether as a means of maintaining family ties, negotiating power within marriage, or asserting her cultural identity. This article therefore highlights that understanding the subjectivity of Isan women in the context of transnational marriage requires moving beyond stereotypes and examining the intricate interplay between economy, culture, and emotion embedded in the practice of remittance.

The Objective Endurance of the Minimal Self According to Dan Zahavi and Its Implication on the Use of Facebook

Phanomkorn Yothasorn — 2025-12-14

This paper examines the endurance of the Minimal Self in digital environments, particularly within the context of Facebook. Drawing on Dan Zahavi’s phenomenological framework, the study challenges the dominant assumption that online identity is entirely constructed through narratives or social interactions. Instead, it argues that digital engagement - including self-presentation and interaction on Facebook - presupposes the Minimal Self as an essential experiential structure. The paper critiques conventional theories of online identity that overemphasize narrative self-construction, demonstrating that, despite Facebook’s role in mediating social relations, there remains an irreducible first-personal dimension to digital selfhood. Through an analysis of how Facebook users navigate their profiles, interactions, and digital traces, this study reveals that self-experience persists beyond social or algorithmic structuring. The findings reinforce Zahavi’s claim that selfhood is not contingent on external validation but is grounded in pre-reflective self-awareness. The paper thus calls for a reconsideration of digital identity theories, recognizing the Minimal Self’s role in shaping online presence and its implications for the study of human self-experience in networked environments.

Negotiations of Othering Among Myanmar Migrant Workers in Bangkok

Krittiya Kantachote — 2025-12-14

This research examines Myanmar migrant workers’ experience in Bangkapi District, Bangkok, with a focus on understanding their daily lives, network supports, access to basic rights and services, and the structural constraints they face. This qualitative research employs in-depth interviews and fieldnotes. A specific group of key informants, namely Myanmar migrant workers, employers and neighbors, totaling 40 people. Content analysis was utilized to analyze the qualitative data.

The study reveals that in the Bangkapi area, most Myanmar workers are employed in the service sector- fresh markets and restaurants. Myanmar workers are categorized into two groups: undocumented and documented workers. Both groups face language barriers and discrimination. Undocumented workers are more vulnerable as they risk crossing borders, get taken advantage of by brokers, scrutinized by government officials, and deported. Nevertheless, documented workers also face obstacles in renewing their foreign worker permits and the scrutiny from government officials. Both groups rely on social networks to survive and receive information on housing and jobs. Social networks reduce vulnerabilities that arise from structural constraints.

Sexual Diversity in the Muslim World

Salamah Longsatia — 2025-12-14

This article interrogates how sexual and gender diversity in the Muslim world is rendered meaningful and positioned within overlapping structures of religion, law, culture and the modern nation-state. It argues that such diversity should not be treated merely as an attribute of individuals, but as an outcome of negotiations across three interconnected levels of social order: Islamic legal texts and doctrines that organize gender through a heteronormative binary; local gender orders and pre-Islamic cultural heritages in particular regions; and modern regimes of law and public morality that incorporate religious prohibitions into criminal law and public moral discourse.

The analysis draws on close readings of Islamic legal texts alongside historical and ethnographic studies and develops four comparative case studies: persons with intersex status (khuntha), the practice of bacha posh in Afghanistan, the sacred gender category of bissu in Bugis society, and same-sex relations classified under liwat. Taken together, these cases show that sexual and gender diversity in Muslim contexts takes the form of a ‘stratified diversity’. Categories with explicit textual recognition and clear juristic reasoning, such as khuntha, tend to be conditionally accommodated by being reinserted into the male–female binary. Practices such as bacha posh and the bissu are located primarily as cultural and ritual capital rather than as fully legitimized gender categories, whereas same-sex relations under liwat are repeatedly produced as a ‘moral threat’ to be controlled and punished, particularly when religious prohibitions are codified in state criminal law.

Theoretically, the article contends that the relationship between Islam and sexual and gender diversity cannot be reduced to the binary question of whether Islam ‘accepts’ or ‘rejects’ such diversity. Instead, it should be understood as a negotiated process among religious authorities, cultural actors and state institutions that together shape the visibility, placement and degrees of legitimacy accorded to different gendered and sexual subjectivities in contemporary Muslim societies.

Practices of Polyamorous Relationships in Thai Society

Natcha Thanasombat — 2025-12-14

This study explores the experiences of individuals engaged in polyamorous relationships in Thai society. “Polyamory” here refers to forms of romantic or sexual relationships involving more than one partner, with the knowledge and consent of all parties. The research focuses on three main questions: (1) the reasons and conditions for entering polyamorous relationships and participants’ self-perceptions, (2) lifestyles within the social, romantic, sexual, and work domains, and (3) social reactions and the coping strategies of those in such relationships. The study draws on in-depth interviews with five participants, representing diversity among heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual groups. To protect participants’ privacy, the interviews were conducted online.

The findings reveal that the processes of entering polyamorous relationships varied widely in terms of motivations and conditions and were characterized by ongoing negotiations and the management of personal feelings in relation to social contexts. From the participants’ perspectives, “polyamory” does not have a fixed or formulaic definition but is grounded in open communication, mutual agreement, voluntariness, and honesty among all parties. The participants faced stigma and prejudice stemming from monogamous norms in Thai society; however, most expressed positive views of their own identities. These positive experiences illustrate the dynamics of negotiating against social pressures and biases, shaped by individual backgrounds, gender identities, and resources. The polyamorous relationships of the participants further reflect the intersectionality of power, class, gender, and capital, which shape each person’s relationship patterns, experiences, and opportunities. The study also highlights that the practice of polyamory in Thai society represents negotiations with mainstream culture and social morality, rather than a straightforward imitation of Western models.