Tourism, Visual Culture, and the State in Northern Thailand

The progressive assimilation of Highlanders into lowland Thai society is matched by the simultaneous promotion of these groups to foreign and domestic tourists for their distinctive cultures and ways of life. Highlanders is a collective term representing more than 10 ethnic minority groups living in the mountainous regions of northern Thailand. This article addresses these contradictory discourses of assimilation and distinctiveness and argues that picture postcards of Highlanders serve as assemblage components of a broader political project as well as highlights how tourism discourses can intersect with local and state politics. Arguments in this article are based on a content analysis of 77 picture postcards of northern Thai highlanders. Beyond illustrating how these images echo institutionalized forms of representation of ethnic minority groups as feminized, living in harmony with nature, and timeless, this article attends to how these tourism imaginaries are implicated in the material realities of Highlanders living in northern Thailand.