Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand

Citizen Designs is a fascinating and detailed ethnographic account of the citizenship struggles and political engagements of residents living alongside the main state railway running through the city of Khon Kaen, in the Isan region of Northeast Thailand. While most scholarship on urban evictions and dispossession tends to portray land struggles as a kind of Manichean battle between good (the residents) and evil (the dispossessors), Elinoff shows how every group of people itself contains multiple subgroups, all coming at the matter with different agendas, ideas, and political sympathies. Erik Harms, Yale University

The value of Elinoff’s work is that it opens up and enables a better understanding of the far more complex questions about citizenship and a city as a potential space of democracy. Although Khon Kaen City is a brilliant case for studying urbanisation and its challenges in transforming cities, including democratic transitions, it could not fully represent all cities confronted with different contexts. However, his analysis should be required reading to comprehend the current issues in Thai urbanised transformations and reconsider the socio-political changes within the city and across the country related to the sense of political life. Suthikarn Meechan, Mahasarakham University, Thailand, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 23:2 (December 2021)

Through his detailed ethnographic account and insightful analysis, Elinoff makes a valuable contribution to the scholarship on urbanisation, politics, and democracy in Southeast Asia.By delving into the complex dynamics between citizens, activists, state planners, and city officials in the northeastern Thai city of Khon Kaen, Citizen Designs provides a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and aspirations of those seeking political equality and democratic participation. The book challenges simplistic portrayals of land struggles, highlights the complexities and tensions within and between groups of people, and sheds light on the broader political transformations taking place in Thailand. Thanapat Chatinakrob, LSE Review of Books