Slow Procession: A History of the Traffic Jam in Bangkok (Gerda Henkel Stiftung)

The traffic jam is a negative condition that can theoretically affect anyone at any given time or place. But in Bangkok, not everyone is subject to it in equal measure; some people can stop traffic and others must suffer through it. City planners, engineers, traffic police, drivers, and the royal family are brought together by traffic and struggle to control it. The traffic jam, in other words, is more than a technical issue. It is a social phenomenon that reflects and produces inequality, privilege, and power. Its management is a form of politics that determines who gets to go where, when, how fast, and how comfortably. This project traces the history of the traffic jam to analyse its social and political functions in Bangkok. The study will focus on the period between the 1950s and 1980s, when the city grew dramatically in territory and population under the influence of international technical and financial aid. The project’s significance resides in the framework it provides to understand cities in the Global South. Their dysfunction is more than a failure of modernization or poor management, it is a mode of governance that relies on things breaking down.