"Made In Thailand":the Building Of Image By The Thai Commodity On Kunming Exhibitions

In the context of globalization,people,capital,information and so on is always on the flow.The flow of these things has brought tremendous change on the society.The economic behaviors,social interactions and cultural concepts are constantly interchanging.Mobility has been a major characteristic of modern society and has been playing a more and more important role in everyday life.The establishment of China-ASEAN Free Trade Area,the improvement of the Greater Mekong Sub-regional Economic Cooperation Program and the cooperation of the"Lancang-Mekong Cooperation" mechanism has made Kunming a platform of trans-regional corporation:a venue for exhibitions.During the course the Thai merchants have emerged as a major participator of these exhibitions and by this mean achieved their transnational mobility.The study will focus on the practice of these merchants on the exhibitions in Kunming,and by examining the transnational information network,flow of goods,transnational merchants and organized actions of transnational assistance groups,the author means to explore how the state and the merchants realized their respective interests,and how the Thai merchants,propelled by the state,are building the Thailand’s national image,and how at the same time they get more involved in the local construction of globalization.The theory and methods applied in this dissertation are mobility theories and the method of multi-sited fieldwork.By focusing on how the state and the merchants participate in the construction of mobility,the author find,that the state provided the merchants many privileges to make possible the transnational mobility and that as the agency of practice the merchants strategically uses the state power,trademarks like OTOP and nfi and Thailand’s national image to promote the images of their own products,and thus realizing their own interests.How the concerted effort of the state and the merchants has accrued to the building of the national image of "Made in Thailand."...