Kyoto CSEAS Series on Asian Studies, 10. Singapore: NUS Press; Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2014. xiv, 333 pp. (Figures, tables, photos.) US$32.00, paper. ISBN 978-9971-69-782-2.
This book focuses on the informal economy of Bangkok with respect to upward mobility and management of risk, which disproportionately affects the urban poor. The central argument is that risk response is a useful lens through which to understand the life-course of individuals and class stratification in low-income communities. A reworking and translation of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation and a subsequent previous edition published in Japanese in 2011, the monograph describes and analyzes two case studies in depth but also provides copious contextual information and a theoretical framework. The first case study is of women who became self-employed after losing factory jobs in the late 1990s and the second is of a community displaced by a devastating fire, which took place during author Tamaki Endo’s doctoral studies. Fieldwork for Endo’s dissertation was completed from 2003 to 2006 and she includes a thorough literature review drawing from Japanese, English, and Thai sources. The book is organized into 10 chapters, plus an introduction and includes numerous colour photos, maps, diagrams, and statistical tables.
This work is a useful contribution to a number of fields including development economics, urban geography and sociology, urban planning, policy studies and anyone with an interest in the “informal sector.” The focus on risk analysis and management adds significant value to the literature in this area and the author makes several recommendations not only for further research but for policy makers as well. The fact that Endo draws upon literature produced in three languages is extremely useful for those who do not read Thai or Japanese and her use of multiple qualitative and quantitative data sources including statistics, maps, structured and informal interviews and surveys makes it a robust analytical resource. She has also made what is a fairly long and complex text easy to navigate by including a list of abbreviations, clarifications on Thai terminology and measurements, as well as an index.
From a theoretical perspective, the author not only has a strong grasp of the classic literature related to Asian urbanization and the informal sector but also gives due credit to the work being done in the areas of gender relations and globalization and effectively bridges high-level concepts to the vast empirical corpus she has put forward. She also brings together the often disparate approaches of focusing on the micro versus macro levels. This is difficult to do successfully.
A few sections of the book that I found particularly compelling were entitled “People I have met in the field,” where the rhetorical style becomes far more personalized and the texture of the author’s experience in Bangkok comes to life. There are four of these entries all dealing with different topics ranging from the fluidity of gender identification in Thailand in an entry entitled “Is this Person a He or a She” on page 101, through living as a community hairdresser to the aspirations of university students.
Policy analysts and policy makers will also find this book extremely useful. Not only does the author do a great job summarizing academic literature, but she also synthesizes policy-related literature from international, regional, national, and Bangkok-based organizations (for example, the United Nation’s International Labour Organisation and Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific as well as the Thai National Economic and Social Development Board and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration). In chapter 2, she summarizes the important policy moments and draws out the mismatch between policy goals and intent and what exactly emerged as a result on the ground.
My only constructive criticism is the fact that the text is somewhat dry and sometimes loses the attention of the reader. This may be related to the fact that this is a translation and English is not the author’s mother tongue. In addition, I would have appreciated more sections such as “People I have met in the field,” as described above, in order to draw in the reader. Fortunately, the case studies also provide the kind of texture needed to engage the reader in what is, at times, a very heavy and abstract text. There are also some small stylistic issues that might have drawn in the reader more effectively, such as providing false names for some of the individuals profiled in the two case studies rather than simply using initials. This would have made it easier to follow the life courses of the individuals studied as it’s hard to remember and understand someone referred to as “K.”
Overall, in terms of the quality of the literature review, theoretical and empirical analysis and presentation, I highly recommend this book and am very impressed with the breadth and depth of knowledge demonstrated by the author. Tamaki Endo is obviously deserving of the 28th Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize for the 2012 Japanese edition and 6th Iue Asia Pacific Research Prize for her Ph.D. dissertation in 2007.
Gisèle Yasmeen
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 480-482