To recognise diversity in masculinity is not enough. We must also recognise the relations between the different kinds o f masculinity: relations of alliance, dominance and subordination. These relationships are constructed dirough practices that exclude and include, that intimidate and exploit, and so on. There is a gender politics within masculinity (Connell, 1995: 37, cited in McDowell 2002, emphasis in original).
T he key theoretical interest o f this chapter lies in exploring relations between different form s o f masculinity. M uch recent scholarship w ithin h u m an geography has focused on m asculine identities in various contexts, including representations o f masculine identities for working-class youth (M cDowell, 2002), m asculine vulnerability in b ath ro o m spaces (Longhurst, 2001), m asculine identities as expressed through m agazine readership (Stevenson, Jackson and B rooks, 2000) and masculine identities at car-boot sales (G regson and Crewe, 1998), to nam e a few. W hile these studies have bro u ght the everyday practices through which m asculinity is enacted into focus, there has been little research that explores situations and sites w here there is overt contestation for hegem onic status betw een different com peting masculine identities. C ross-cultural masculine encounters are one such site w here hegem onic masculine identities are contested (see: Connell, 1995, G ilm ore, 1990, M argold, 1995). This chapter extends the current literature on cross-cultural negotiations o f masculinity by exploring negotiations o f m asculinity betw een Thai bar and bungalow workers and particular (White) tourist m en in the bars and bungalow s o f K o h Pha-ngan. These encounters provide a context through which the com plexity and instability o f b oth hegem onic and subordinated masculinity can be explored (McDowell, 2002). In
particular, attention to b o th the contextually and culturally specific nature o f the delineation o f hegem onic and subordinated m asculinities is crucial to the presentation o f a nuanced account o f masculine contestation.
O n e research them e that has been particularly useful to theorists exploring contestation over masculine identities is the role that corporeality plays in negotiations o f gendered identity (McDowell, 1995). H ere CresswelTs (1999: 190) conceptualisation o f the inscription o f the body is a useful starting p o in t for the analysis o f these T h a i/to u rist m asculine encounters:
The inscription of the body is never a completed task, but one that needs revision and reinscription in order to bring disruptive influences back into the fold of intelligibility.
W ithin the tourism literature, the co ncept o f em bodim ent and the roles that em bodim ent plays in encounters betw een tourists and hosts has only recently began to be addressed (Crouch and D esforges, 2003). M uch o f this new research is focused on the em bodied practices o f tourism and has included w ork on the tactile knowledges o f tourist cavers (Cant, 2003); the role o f em bodied activities such as cross-country skiing in re-inscribing national identities (Nielson, 2003) and the relationship betw een tourist bodies and the technologies o f tourism (for exam ple, photographic technology) (Crang, 1997).
Bodies are central to the negotiation o f m asculinity betw een T hai and tourist m en in conflicts over sexual access to tourist w om en. T here are three key m om ents in which bodies play a central role in the negotiation o f m asculinity in such contexts. First, the conflicts them selves are about conceptualisations o f ‘rightful’ sexual practices, about the coupling o f som e bodies and n o t others. Second, w hen these ‘rightful’ sexual practices are seen to be contravened, verbal references to body size, colour a n d /o r shape are often central in confrontations over access to tourist w o m en ’s bodies. In verbal altercations, racialised identity labels are often wielded by tourist m en as a strategy for bringing w hat is, for som e, the ‘disruptive influence’ o f cross-cultural sexual encounters back into ‘the fold o f intelligibility’ (Cresswell, 1999: 190). T hird, it is through the visceral, em bodied experience o f physical violence that tourist and T hai m en seek to resolve conflict which arises o u t o f disjunctives in expected and experienced masculine hierarchies. By exploring the corporeality o f each o f these key m om ents where a binary fram ing o f masculinity7 (W estern m asculinity/T hai masculinity)
is asserted and contested I extend current understandings o f gendered tourism experiences.
W ithin the nascent literature on tourism and em bo dim en t there are a num ber o f researchers w ho have sought to critically engage w ith fem inist literature on em bodim ent in order to explore an em bodied politics o f tourism , linking em bodied tourist practices with wider discourses o f identity, pow er and place (Johnston, 2001). T he focus o f these researchers (see for example: Crouch, 1999, Jo h n sto n , 2001, Veijola and Jokinen, 1994) has been on the processes through w hich bodily encounters help to articulate identities. This chapter builds upon research on the politics o f tourism by theorising m om ents o f contestation over m asculine identities, arguing that bodies are im p ortan t sites in struggles over m eaning and identity.
While som e researchers have begun to explore to u ris t/h o s t encounters through the lexicon o f em bodied experience, little has been w ritten ab ou t conflict and contestation betw een tourists and hosts in tourist sites. Y et conflict betw een tourists and hosts can occur in m ultiple ways, for example, in instances w here tourists are drugged and robbed, or w hen a group o f male backpackers physically intim idate a cab driver in order to dem and a lower fare, o r w hen disagreem ents betw een tourists and hosts (of either gender) exceed verbal confro n tatio n and spill over into physical violence. V iolent and confrontational encounters are often experienced by m en and w om en in very different ways. Johnston (2001) has argued that tourism research has frequently left the differences betw een w o m en ’s and m en ’s experiences as tourists unexam ined. This chapter brings together a num ber o f theoretical threads by exploring specifically gendered experiences o f conflict betw een T hai and tourist m en, namely, conflicts that arise o u t o f contestation over access to tourist w o m e n ’s bodies.
This chapter is structured in three sections. In the first section I explore som e o f the discourses o f ‘rightful’ sexual practices which regard the couplings o f particular kinds o f bodies as incongruous, abject a n d /o r dangerous.1 Specifically, I critically analyse the
1 The term ‘abject’ has been used extensively in the work of Knsteva (1986) to signify the horror that accompanies the casting out of aspects of identity which are perceived as polluting the purity of Self. It is a term which is imbued with a sense of the clear delineation of boundaries between Self and Other through a process of vehement rejection of particular aspects of identity and/or behavior.
ways in w hich Asian masculinity has been represented in colonial discourses with relation to W hite masculinity and femininity. This section provides the context for the rem aining parts o f the chapter by outlining the discourses that are draw n u pon in b oth verbal and physical conflicts betw een Thai and tourist m en in Thailand.
In the second section o f the chapter I revisit the bar scene, detailing the types o f pow er relations that are played out in the bar betw een T hai bar and bungalow workers and tourist m en. I argue that masculine contestation over the right to assert a dom inant form o f masculinity betw een tourist and T hai m en arises o ut o f tensions betw een the differing cultural understandings o f masculinity. In the bar, T hai m en, w ho in the view o f som e tourist m en and w om en, lack an equivalent masculinity to tourist m en because o f their corporeality assert a form o f T hai m asculinity associated w ith the identity label
nak-leng.2 As discussed in C hapter Five, nak-leng is a hyper-m asculine subjectivity that is signified m ore by behaviours than by corporeality. T he essence o f nak-leng is found in personality traits and behaviours such as bravery, w om anising and skill in using w eapons (Ockey, 1998). A nak-leng identity is n o t prim arily contingent on a particular physique, as is hyper-m asculine subjectivity in m any W estern framings o f gendered identity. O ne aspect o f nak-leng masculinity involves being able to dom inate o ther m en through force and intim idation (Keyes, 1986). W h en these differential understandings o f w ho has the m andate to dom inate the bar space com e into contact, the perceived incongruities in corporeality and behaviours o ften result in verbal and physical altercations.
In the final section o f the chapter I describe som e o f the physical altercations that occurred betw een Thai and tourist m en during the tim e that I was in K o h Pha-ngan doing fieldwork and critically analyse the significance o f these altercations for the negotiation o f masculinities in tourist spaces. I reflect on the outcom es o f these altercations in term s o f the discourses outlined in the first section o f the chapter. In examining the outcom es o f these encounters, I pose the following questions: are tensions over masculinity resolved through violent altercations? D o these violent
2 I use the term corporeality rather than the more simple ‘body’ because I wish to denote a whole set of signifiers of masculinity: body shape, amount of hairiness, musculature, the way that bodies move and the kinds of activities that bodies undertake.
encounters serve to uncouple Western masculinity/Thai masculinity dualisms— or do they reinscribe bodies and identities in other, no less essentialised ways?