Colonialism and Displays of Third World Dependency Among Thai Sex Workers

Abstract

Expanding upon Hoang’s (2015) theory that Vietnam’s history of colonialism or imperialism is a precondition for displays of dependency to exist among sex workers today, this paper tests the same theoretical framework in Thailand, which is the only Southeast Asian country to have retained sovereignty over its kingdom. This paper specifically parses out the three components that Hoang seems to generally describe as facets of colonialism: an actual history of Western rule, a country’s semi-peripheral status on the world stage, and the generalising effects of Orientalism. Using secondary sources such as written correspondence between sex workers and their Western clientele and interviews from other ethnographic work, it is ultimately found that acts of dependency similar to those in Vietnam are also found in Thailand. This suggests that a history of Western rule is in fact not a necessary condition for acts of dependency among sex workers today.