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Speaking In Thai, Dreaming In Isan: Popular Thai Television And Emerging Identities Of Lao Isan Youth Living In Northeast Thailand, Catherine Hesse-Swain

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This is an ethnographic study of how Lao Isan youth living in the northeastern provincial capital Khon Kaen and nearby town Mahasarakham experience Thainess or khwampenthai in its most popular form – television. People who inhabit the northeast of Thailand interchangeably label themselves and are labelled by others as Isan, Thai Isan, Lao Isan, Thai or Lao, depending on the ethnic, political, social or familial nuances of any given situation. I use the term Lao Isan to refer specifically to Isan people of Lao origin or ethnicity. Lao Isan are subject to complex and often competing notions of Isanness, Laoness …