The materiality of air pollution: Urban political ecologies of tourism in Thailand

Abstract

Between February and April of each year, air pollution blankets much of northern Thailand and severely impacts the livelihoods of tourism practitioners and farmers in the region. Environmental narratives among lowland, urban residents attribute haze to biomass burning among highland farmers. Highland farmers, however, contend that environmental governance regimes have lengthened and exacerbated what is now regarded as the annually recurring haze crisis. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among urban tourism practitioners, rural farmers, and natural scientists, I demonstrate how, as a physical and symbolic entity, air pollution circulates between urban and rural spaces in ways that reshape tourism and urban-rural social relations. In doing so, I bring emerging work at the intersection of urban political ecology and new materialism to bear on tourism to reveal the more-than-human sociality of air pollution in northern Thailand.

摘要

在每年的2月到4月间, 空气污染覆盖了泰国北部的大部分地区, 影响着旅游业和农业约60%人口的生计。低地和城市居民的环境叙事将雾霾归因于高原地区农民的生物质燃烧。然而, 高原地区的农民认为, 环境治理制度已经拖延甚至加剧了现在被视为每年反复出现的雾霾危机。利用城市旅游从业者、乡村农民和自然科学家的民族志田野调查, 我论证了空气污染作为一个物理和象征实体, 如何在城市和农村空间之间循环, 从而重塑旅游业和城乡社会关系。在此过程中, 我将城市政治生态学和新唯物主义交叉领域的新兴研究引入到旅游领域, 以揭示泰国北部空气污染的超越人类的社会性。

Keywords:

• Air pollution
• tourism
• urban political ecology
• new materialism
• environmental narratives
• Thailand

关键词:

• 空气污染
• 旅游
• 城市政治生态学
• 新唯物主义
• 环境叙事
• 泰国

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Mostafanezhad

Mary Mostafanezhad is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Through her work, she brings critical geopolitics and political ecology perspectives to bear on tourism, development, and socio-ecological change in the Asia-Pacific region. She is the author of Volunteer Tourism: Popular Humanitarianism in Neoliberal Times (2014) and co-editor of numerous volumes, including, among others, Tourism Geopolitics: Assemblages of Infrastructure, Affect, and Imagination (2021). She is also an editor for the Critical Green Engagements Series of the University of Arizona Press.