The goal of this paper is to explain Thai patterns of ‘public eating’—or the purchasing and consumption of prepared food in public places, namely: sidewalks, lanes and the growing number of indoor spaces such as educational institutions and office/shopping complexes. This is done through a historically contextualised gender analysis. Remarkably few Thai urbanites cook meals at home regularly, especially ‘from scratch’. It is not absolutely necessary to prepare meals given the ubiquitous presence of inexpensive cooked food around the clock as well as semi-prepared food now available (Napat and Szanton, 1986; Tinker, 1987, 1997).
The significance in this paper lies in its focus on the interrelationship between gender and foodways—a topic that is often ignored or taken for granted in mainstream scholarship. Fortunately, recent research attests to the growing interest in the study of food in general and its link with gender (Van Esterik, 1992). The Thai case in particular highlights the unusual dominance of women in a commercial aspect of the food system, namely small-scale food-retailing, which is highly related to the fact that Thai and Southeast Asian women are overwhelmingly involved in the paid labour force compared to other regions of the world. The specific contribution of this paper is the attention paid to the spatially gendered dimension of foodways in the case of Thailand.1 This analytical framework serves to open up the discussion on the spatial gendering of foodways cross-culturally (Breckenridge, 1995; Conlon, 1995).
To begin, I explore the Thai diet and eating habits to provide a broader context for the later examination of public eating. I then outline how the food system has been modified subsequent to the penetration of capital into agricultural production and food processing. Attention is paid to patterns of food retailing in Bangkok—includ-ing the system of public markets—and the changes which have taken place in distribution over the past 20 years.
Finally, I explore in some detail the role of the household and gender in public eating as a complement to what I have done elsewhere (Yasmeen, 1996b). I then provide explanations for the purchasing of cooked food and will outline diverse strategies for obtaining prepared food on a daily basis. The paper concludes by forecasting the future of public eating in urban Thailand given the current food marketing trends and a general commentary on the impact of the recent economic crisis which is dealt with substantially in a recent paper (Yasmeen, 1999).2
Villagers in Thailand, as well as parts of Burma, Malaysia, Bali, and Vietnam, see themselves as physically and psychically made up of rice. The Christian God made man and woman in His own image; Southeast Asians think in the same general way, but their self-image is one of rice. For them, rice is literally ‘the bones of the people’. (MacClancy, 1992, p. 24)
One of the defining characteristics of Southeast Asia as a region is that its diverse societies share basic characteristics related to diet. Rice is a primary staple. Most Southeast Asian languages equate the word for rice with food and/or eating.3 Indeed, the region is considered home to the domestication of rice, and its wet-rice agricultural system has been regarded with fascination because of its efficiency (Bray, 1986) complex irrigation schemes (Lansing, 1991) and the ability of the system to support high population densities (Geertz, 1963). Historically, there were hundreds of varieties of rice in Southeast Asia, but much of the diversity has been lost in the past hundred years due to ‘modernisation’ and the standardisation of production (McGee, 1992).4
Rice is so important to Southeast Asians that it is an almost sacred substance associated with life essence (Thai = khwan). As explained by Jane Hanks, femininity— specifically women’s bodies—is associated with rice and with this essence (Hanks, 1960).
Thus the khwan is sustained by, and its incarnation grows from, the physical nourishment of a woman’s body. What is to sustain it after a woman’s milk gives out? Rice, because rice, too, is nourishment from a maternal figure. ‘Every grain is part of the body of Mother Rice (Mae Posop) and contains a bit of her khwan.’ When weaning is to rice, there is no break in female nurture for body and khwan. (Hanks, I960, p. 299)
Indeed, pre-Buddhist fertility rituals persist in the Thai countryside and principally involve women during rice planting (Sharp and Hanks, 1978). Keyes has characterised the Southeast Asian region as subscribing to the cult of ‘women, earth and rice’ (Keyes, 1977, p. 132).
Fish is also a substantial element in the Southeast Asian diet, and a distinguishing characteristic of the region is the preparation of spicy fermented fish paste which is served as a condiment (Thai = namprik).5 Thai cuisine also includes a great variety of vegetables—some introduced by the Chinese—as well as indigenous varieties of yams, eggplants and the characteristic fragrant herbs and pungent spices. The familiar combination of fish sauce (a Chinese invention), garlic, lime juice and chillies (introduced by the Portuguese in the 16th century) is considered the essence of Thai flavour although tamarind (sweet and sour varieties), palm sugar, lemon grass and galangal also play a crucial role.
Prior to the introduction of the automobile and other forms of land-based transport in central Thailand, food retailing most often took place on canals (Chira et al., 1986, p. 9). Floating markets (talad nam) were the dominant type of food market and persist today in parts of central Thailand and often cater to tourists. Women dominate these traditional markets of central Thailand as vendors. Land-based markets (talad din) selling fresh produce, meat and fish have replaced the quintessential central Thai form of retailing (Chira et al., 1986, p. 9), Land-based markets are considered by many to be originally a Chinese commercial form and, thus, are traditionally male controlled; ‘. in those days the Chinese were the pioneers of street-living hence the talad or food markets usually resembled the fresh food market pattern in China’ (Chira et al., 1986, p. 9). Today, Thai and Sino-Thai women are widely represented as vendors in land markets.
Today, Bangkok continues to have the same basic system of public markets but—as the next section demonstrates—elite shopping practices now include regular trips to North American style supermarkets. The city has one large wholesale market (pakk-long talad) which supplies many of the smaller neighbourhood talad with fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers (Warren and Lloyd, 1989, pp. 48-49).
Neighbourhood markets involve both male and female entrepreneurs who work in the middle of the night to get the food ready for dawn. The markets sell semi-prepared items such as curry pastes and coconut milk—labour saving devices for both housewives and employed women. Owners of foodshops (Thai = raan ahaan) or small restaurants and stalls also sometimes make use of these shortcuts.6
Now that traditional retailing systems have been introduced, I shall try to summarise the impact of urbanisation and modernisation on the food system. Following Goody (1982), it is clear that, as a society industrialises and urbanises, it becomes uprooted from its agricultural way of life, and food becomes a commodity purchased from the market. With the involvement of both women and men in the paid labour force, an opportunity for the sale of value-added food arises (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). This demand can be fulfilled in several ways: through neighbourhood catering networks or the hiring of a cook; however, it is in the interests of large-scale business to direct the consumer’s spending to a standardised range of value-added goods. The classic theatre for the sale of these goods is the supermarket where highly processed foods are the most vigorously promoted due to their commercial profitability.
The term ‘industrial palate’ refers to the growing share of value-added, often mass-produced, processed food products in the diet of the average consumer (Salih et al., 1988, p. 4). Urbanites figure prominently in this shift from family-based food production to the commodization of ‘people’s most basic requirement—food—from a part of their place to a placeless industrial commodity’ (MacLeod, 1989, p. 4), The social and environmental implications of these changes are alarming as documented elsewhere (Sanitsuda, 1993; Sinith, 1998).
In the, 1980s and early 1990s, Thailand experienced spectacular levels of economic growth, ‘The Asian food market could be worth over $450 billion a year by the end of the century’ wrote The Economist (1993, p. 15). Asians were and sometimes still are seen as a profitable target population by large food multi-nationals because of their supposed brand consciousness, ‘At the luxury end of the market, especially, Asian consumers seem to be more conscious of the snob value of brands than their western counterparts’ (The Economist, 1993, p 16), The appearance and diffusion of supermarkets, related retail outlets such as convenience stores, Western-style fast food chains and the newest addition, the mega-wholesale outlet (Costco, Makro and/or Wal-Mart) is a burgeoning feature of the Asian urban landscape (Robison and Goodman, 1996).
In Thailand convenience stores such as 7-11 have made impressive inroads. These are new institutions that have multiplied rapidly in the last ten years. They are generally open 24 hours and sell household products, Western and Thai fast food and fountain drinks. Customers include schoolchildren, the increasing number of people working late and commuters (The Nation, 1992, pp. B1-B3).7 Managers of some of these stores (such as 7-11 and Central mini-mart) claim that their clientele includes lower-income groups as well as the wealthier urbanites.
It would be spurious to attribute these changes simply to the infiltration of ‘Third World’ economies by Western and Japanese capital. More precisely in the case of Thailand, locally owned conglomerates control the largest share of the domestic industrial palate and have expanded their operations to China and other parts of Southeast Asia. This is typical of the region’s food distribution system.
Take Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand, Asia’s biggest animal-feed supplier and the country’s largest conglomerate, with sales of about $5 billion. Boasting that ‘from the farmyard to the dinner table it’s Charoen Pokphand all the way’, the company, which was set up by Chinese emigrants, produces feed for and then raises and processes broiler chickens. It also handles prawns and pigs. One of its greatest assets is a network of feedmills and poultry-processing plants sprinkled across China. These and Charoen Pokphand’s fast-food joint ventures with America’s Kentucky Fried Chicken should allow it to cash in on the country’s culinary revolution. (The Economist, 1993, p. 17)
Charoen Pokphand (CP) also controls the nation’s 7-11s, numerous motorcycle and automobile manufacturing operations, and is the major shareholder of Telecom Asia. CP, being essentially a Sino-Thai conglomerate, is also one of the biggest foreign investors in China.
The expansion of the well-heeled classes and accompanying automobile culture has resulted in the proliferation of scores of large shopping centres throughout the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. These new cathedrals of commerce are expected to erode traditional retailing business and ultimately carve out 50% of market share according to a Siam Retail Development executive quoted in the above article. Since the 1980s, many mega-malls have appeared—especially on the urban periphery (Asia Magazine, 1992).
Some of these mega-malls resemble the ‘West Edmonton Mall’ phenomenon with a focus on leisure activities (Hopkins, 1991). Most have extensive and elaborate food-centres and food floors. Much of Bangkok’s retailing activity in the food-sector is clearly expanding from public places (streets and lanes) to privately owned and controlled indoor places (shopping centres and new air-conditioned restaurants) in food centres and on ‘food floors’ where ‘street food’—as well as semi-prepared food— is available for take-home consumption.
The divisions appearing within Thai society as a whole mirror the shift from public eating from truly public places to privately owned spaces. As the gap continually widens between the rich and the poor in Bangkok, we are witnessing the emergence of a dual food system resembling trends identified in neighbouring Malaysia (Salih et al., 1988). One, for the wealthy, consists of eating at home in comfortable surroundings (with food prepared by servants, catering networks, neighbourhood food shops and increasingly food centres in shopping plazas) and eating out in ‘food courts’, suburban ‘food gardens’ (large restaurants with a monolithic sala thai8 design) and upscale restaurants. The working poor staff the second system, which includes those who actually transport, sell and prepare the food. Their eating places include their humble living quarters and shops and, in some cases, cafeterias provided by their employers. Though there are layers of differentiation which cannot be enumerated here, generally speaking, the inhabitants of these two separate worlds need only come together for the purpose of a transaction between vendor and customer, maid and employer. As summarised by Askew and Paritta (1992):
The shopping centres of the outer areas symbolise the development of a newer culture based on modern convenience, shopping and transportation by private motor vehicle. At the same time, the neighbourhood markets and the cheap street-side restaurants in the soi [lanes] and more congested neighbourhoods point to the persistence of a less modernised life-style reflecting the continuing significance of public life in less formally regulated public spaces, especially for the urban poor (p. 164)
The shift in retailing structure toward the growing availability of convenience and ready-to-eat foods, as the next section will explain, has been associated with the high number of women in the workforce (Bangkok Post, 1992, p. 20).
The major contemporary impetus for buying prepared food in Thailand and Southeast Asia comes from rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and concomitant changes in family structure, affecting, in turn, the roles played by women (cf. Horton, 1995). Thailand has experienced a rise in the nuclear family—displacing extended kinship relations—and has also seen a rise in the number of single people, particularly in the cities. Changes in women’s roles are related to these demographic trends. As Suntaree Komin explains, socio-economic change has completely altered the food system:
The decline of family functions is clearly visible in Bangkok. As there is an increase of women working outside households, this trend is almost inevitable. Family functions have been taken over by various specialised organisations. For example, working mothers leave their household chores to the servants. Meals preparation [sic] are taken care of either by servants, or by subscription to the meal-catering services (Ipintol),9 or by buying those ready-made foods each day on the way home. (Suntaree, 1989, p. 86)
Suntaree is primarily describing middle-class food habits. Few people in Bangkok can afford to hire servants. The general explanation for the growth of public eating, nevertheless, is the changing roles and occupations of women.
Thailand boasts the highest female labour force participation rates (FLFPR) in Southeast Asia—a region already known for the high economic activity levels of women. Compared with other Southeast Asian countries, Thai FLFPR is consistently the highest and peaks at 87% (International Labour Organization, 1999). The Thai pattern demonstrates that women do not withdraw from the labour force during their child-bearing/rearing years (Jones, 1984, p. 28), This is characteristic of the Malay and Tai10 cultural realms where women play an important role in local commerce, as office workers and in many other professions.
There are several other interrelated explanations for the general emergence of public eating in Bangkok. These include: the labourand skill-intensivity of Thai cuisine; demographic change—specifically migration to the cities of large numbers of single and young people; kitchenless housing (20% of Bangkok’s housing is kitchen-less); and general ‘cultural’ preferences for eating out and entertaining outside the home. According to Walker’s Food Consumption Survey, 11% of Bangkokians never cook at all. NSO figures are given higher at 27% (National Statistical Office, 1994).
As already established, high male and female labour force participation rates in Thailand mean that neither women nor men have time to cook. The statistical profile of public eating in Bangkok has been demonstrated elsewhere (Yasmeen, 1996a, b). This section therefore simply provides an overview of the phenomenon.
Studies have shown that expenditures on prepared food consumed outside the home are mainly for lunch, with breakfast coming in second place at (Walker, 1990, 1991). Concerns about the impact of eating away from home on family life need not be exaggerated, because evenings are still reserved for eating at home with the family.
Prepared food is therefore a frequent substitute for home-cooked meals, whether or not the food is actually eaten at home or elsewhere. The following section will define and describe the various food strategies employed by Bangkokians to obtain cooked food outside the home.
A traditional strategy common throughout Southeast Asia is the subscription to neighbourhood catering networks, in which food—normally one soup, one vegetable and one dish (often a curry)—is delivered at a regular time every day in a tiffin (pinto). The tiffin-network strategy is seemingly being eclipsed by the small foodshop sector where food is available anywhere, anytime—an important attribute in a city where traffic is gridlocked during rush hours. Women can be seen stopping at a food shop in the evenings on their way home from work to pick up dinner for the family, main courses are placed in small plastic bags with rice being prepared easily at home in a rice cooker. Bangkok residents hence refer to mae baan tung plastic or ‘plastic bag housewives’ (Van Esterik, 1992; Yasmeen, 1996a).
For typically middle-class Bangkokians—particularly women who tend to be impeccably dressed—frequenting cool, comfortable establishments is the most desirable option. Their male cohorts—stereotypically government officials on Friday eve-nings—enjoy ‘slumming’ in stalls and outdoor restaurants where they can sit at long tables, eat spicy meat dishes and drink vast quantities of whiskey. Working-class men, such as tuk-tuk drivers, do the same but are limited to less expensive venues. Since ‘proper’ Thai women do not drink alcohol in public, they engage in a slightly different pattern. Their habit is to go out with a group of friends, women or mixed-company, to a suan ahaan or a restaurant in a shopping centre. The urban masses are, for the most part, of humble economic means and purchase food on the streets and soi from vendors both mobile and stationary, and small food-shops specialising in noodles, curried dishes or other fare (cf. Yasmeen, 1992).11
Bangkok is therefore one of the homes of small ubiquitous food-shops which act as a life-support system for many urbanites. Small restaurants serve a number of latent social functions in addition to providing meals. For example, children are often cared for in these environments, young people spend time and ‘help’ thereby learning skills and meeting others. Foodshops are meeting places where information can be gleaned on local affairs such as jobs.
The worst thing that could happen in the future, in my opinion, would be the disappearance of working-class street food. The street stalls and tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants that used to make noodles, won ton, pao, congee, stuffed dumplings, steamed meatballs, fried pastries, and thousands of other snack items could be at risk in the new, affluent world of the future. (Andersen, 1988, p. 300)
Anderson wrote this critique of the emerging industrial palate in 1980s Hong Kong, Bangkok’s foodscape is, to a certain extent, being threatened in similar ways due to the emerging middle-class and its tastes. To aggravate the situation, quite often, the food served in more expensive Thai restaurants and the growing number of food-centres is of much poorer quality than the comestibles in the humblest foodshop. Nevertheless, I do not believe that the types of food sold on the streets and lanes of the city are under threat per se. Rather the informal context in which the food is usually sold is apparently being eclipsed by indoor food-centres and highly commercialised restaurants. However, recent work on the impact of the economic crisis gives one hope for the survival of ‘small cats’ in Southeast Asia (Yasmeen, 1999).
What is equally alarming with respect to the ‘privatisation’ of public caring-places is the potential effects on civil society and urban culture. Bangkok’s small foodshops are instrumental in establishing contemporary Thai public life similar to the roles played by pubs and coffeehouses in industrialising Europe.
Habermas argues that... it was the growth of an urban culture—of meeting houses, concert halls, opera houses, press and publishing ventures, coffee houses, taverns and clubs, and the like—... which represents the expansion of the public sphere. (Howell, 1993, p. 310)
Small foodshops are products of urbanisation and industrialisation and concomitant social change but, at the same time, reproduce traditional social relations. As such, they represent the simultaneous modernisation and postmodernisation of Thai urban society. Foodshops and streetfoods play a crucial social and cultural function in Thai society and all efforts must be made to preserve them.
The risk associated with trying to preserve streetfoods is their potential ‘museumi-fication’. Even prior to the economic crisis, residents of Bangkok and visitors to the city began to take an interest in ‘discovering’ streetfoods in up-scale hotels and plazas rather than on the street, where they fear the possibility of food poisoning and general discomfort. ‘Streetfood festivals’ are therefore held in what appear to be controlled situations. For example, the Stable Lodge Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 8 used to hold a ‘traditional’ Thai streetfood buffet every Saturday evening, ‘but with the Stable’s special flair’ (Bangkok Post, n.d.). The Martino Coffee Lounge, located in The Mandarin Hotel, advertised its addition of ‘Authentic Thai coffee prepared from our coffee cart as you watch’ (Bangkok Post, 1992). Like the postmodern Sala Thai (traditional pavil-lion) style ‘food gardens’—or open air restaurants—the nostalgia of the Martino Coffee lounge is a simulacrum of a place that never really existed (Baudrillard, 1981). Meanwhile, few ‘traditional’ coffee carts are found on the streets of Bangkok. I recall all of one or two from years of fieldwork in the city. Ironically, as in other parts of Asia, Thai working and middle-classes increasingly consume Nescafe as a status symbol, following years of vigorous advertising. In the past five years, Starbucks has made inroads into the region, which is stimulating demand for gourmet and speciality coffees.
The interest in streetfoods is also borne out by the publication of handbooks for foreigners such as Thai Hawker Food where ‘authentic’ streetfood is the object of interest (Pranom, 1993). The guidebook contains colourful drawings of the different types of street vendors and their goods as well as Thai phrases designed to help negotiate the foreigner through Bangkok’s foodscape. This paper is yet another attempt to negotiate through the complex maze of Thai foodways in transition.
I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, the Canada-Asean Centre, the CUC-AFT partnership project and the Northwest Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies for providing funding. I would like to thank Marilyn Walker and Terry McGee for useful comments. Thanks also to the Chulalongkom University Social Research Institute, and the Asian Institute of Technology, which hosted my field research in Thailand. Most of all, my gratitude extends to the many informants who gave me their time and shared their life experience.
* Originally published 2000
1. See Simoons (1994) and Bell and Valentine (1997) for a baseline work on the geography of food.
2. Data for this paper are based primarily on fieldwork for my Ph.D. dissertation, which took place from 1992 to 1994a, supplemented by recent fieldwork pertaining to the economic crisis which tool place from 1997 to 1999. A variety of data-gathering techniques were used, including participant observation, interviews (both structured and semi-structured), questionnaires, mapping and reference to numerous secondary sources. An earlier version of this paper was published as a working paper of the Centre for Southeast Asia Research, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.
3. In Thai, khaaw means rice but also means to eat (kin khaaw, literally ‘eat rice’).
4. Recently, however, Southeast Asians and others have rediscovered ‘lost’ grains and re-incorporated them into their diets. An example is red rice. Several varieties of glutinous rice (white, red and black) are still cultivated, however, and used extensively in Northeastern food and in sweets.
5. In Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, this pounded mixture is known as sambal. Fermented fish paste has a few basic ingredients but is prepared differently by every cook.
6. I will use the term ‘food shop’ synonymously with restaurant throughout this paper Here, I am referring to establishments with a stationary location where food can be consumed on the premises.
7. The near grid-lock traffic situation in Bangkok has been identified as contributing to the success of convenience stores which are located on major routes.
8. A sala thai is a traditional pavilion in which community activities customarily take place. Roofs are sloped in the manner of Thai architecture and the entire structure is usually made of wood.
9. Pinto is the Thai expression for a ‘tiffin’, or tiered lunch kit, which is commonly used throughout Asia. It has an agricultural origin and is referred to by Hauck et al. (1958). They describe how lunch was often transported to the fields in this threeor four-tiered metal container.
10. By Tai, I am referring to the societies which share a common linguistic heritage in the Tai language family, notably Thailand, Laos, Burma and Cambodia,
11. It is difficult to ascertain how economically viable this system of ‘contracting out’ is at the household budget level. Certainly, it is clear that individuals are trading potential monetary savings for convenience and time, which can be used to earn extra income.
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