Chiang Mai (literally, “new city”) suffered badly in the 1997 Asian financial crisis as the Northern Thai real estate bubble collapsed along with the Thai baht, crushing dreams of a renaissance of Northern prosperity. Years later, the architectural ruins of the excesses of the 1990s still stain the skyline, signs of a trauma, brought back vividly by the political crisis of 2006, that haunts efforts to remake the city. For many Chiang Mai residents, new developments harbor the seeds of the crash, manifest in anxious stories of ghosts and criminals who conceal themselves behind the city’s progre ... More

Chiang Mai (literally, “new city”) suffered badly in the 1997 Asian financial crisis as the Northern Thai real estate bubble collapsed along with the Thai baht, crushing dreams of a renaissance of Northern prosperity. Years later, the architectural ruins of the excesses of the 1990s still stain the skyline, signs of a trauma, brought back vividly by the political crisis of 2006, that haunts efforts to remake the city. For many Chiang Mai residents, new developments harbor the seeds of the crash, manifest in anxious stories of ghosts and criminals who conceal themselves behind the city’s progressive veneer. Hopes for rebirth and fears of decline have their roots in Thai conceptions of progress, which draw from Buddhist and animist ideas of urbanity and sacrality. Cities, in this cosmology, were centers where the charismatic power of kings and animist spirits were grounded; these entities assured progress by imbuing the space with sacred power that would avert disaster. Via revisiting Clifford Geertz’s “theater state,” I argue that new ideas of urban revitalization and questions about history’s forward trajectory reflect anxieties within older, animist and Buddhist ideas of sacred space and centralized power rooted in older, animist and Buddhist models.