On Tuesday, 17 March 2020, the Social Policy and Development (SPD) Program of the Faculty of Social Administration, Thammasat University, will present a special film discussion event that will include the screening of excerpts from the much-discussed South Korean thriller and dark comedy about modern poverty and wealth, Parasite, that won several Academy Awards this year, including for Best Picture.

The event will be held from 5pm to 7:30pm, as the Faculty of Social Administration Facebook page notes:

This movie touches upon many of the important themes relevant to the SPD program and curriculum, including income inequality, poverty and social class structures.

Parasite is about how a family of lower class, dishonest people from South Korea find jobs working for a rich family that lives in Seoul as instructors, driver and housekeeper.

Among the ajarns leading the discussion will be Associate Professor Soravis Jayanama of the Faculty of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University.

Ajarn Soravis teaches in the Department of International Relations. He earned a master of science degree in the theory and history of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom.

His areas of expertise include United States foreign relations, empire, political theory and continental philosophy, and gender studies.

The Thammasat University Library owns a number of books coauthored, coedited, and translated by Ajarn Soravis

These include: International relations as a discipline in Thailand: theory and sub-fields; (Non) key thinkers in international relations: Foucault, Zizek, Butler, Chomsky; Powers that be: Pridi Banomyong through the rise and fall of Thai democracy by Sulak Sivaraksa;  and Thai-Lao relations in Laotian perspective.

In addition to Ajarn Soravis, also speaking at the event on 17 March will be Mr. Jorge Carrillo-Rodriguez who teaches Globalisation and International Development Paradigms in the SPD program. Ajarn Jorge’s resume explains that he is

a social anthropologist with more than 30 years of experience in urban poverty reduction, social protection and development. After graduating from the London School of Economics in 1980, he conducted research in his home country, Venezuela, before joining the United Nations in 1984. As an UN officer he worked in theMiddle East for nine years before moving to Asia in 1993. While working with the UN, he carried out policy-oriented research and conducted field projects on issues such as urban poverty and governance, community participation and development, rural-urban linkages, and social protection. Since his retirement from the UN in 2010, he has been working as an independent urban and social development advisor based in Bangkok. Topics of interest include urbanisation and governance, informality and urban livelihoods, community development, non-income poverty, social protection and inequality. His publications include

• “If Street Food Disappears — Projecting the Cost for Consumers in Bangkok” (WIEGO, May 2018)
• “The New Urban: Towards Progressive SecondaryCities (Editor, Oxfam GB, 2014);“Development Challenges of Income Support and Social Protection
• in Asia and the Pacific” (ESCAP, 2014);
• “The Future of the Social Contracts in Southeast Asia: Lessons from Latin America,” (Trendnovation Southeast, 19th issue, 2012);
• “Southeast Asia: Contemporary Multinational Nations” (Trendnovation Southeast, 11th Issue, 2011)

Since all TU students are interested in street food, they may be interested to see the abstract for Ajarn Jorge’s If Street Food Disappears — Projecting the Cost for Consumers in Bangkok:

Bangkok is renowned for its street food, but since 2014 the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has embarked in the removal of tens of thousands of street vendors, including a significant number of street food vendors. Our study focuses on the role of street food as a source of affordable and convenient meals for Bangkok residents. Two surveys were conducted: (a) a consumer survey to determine frequency of street food consumption, and (b) a price survey to determine the price differential between street food and non-street food. The results of the two surveys were combined to project the difference in food expenditure for an individual consumer in the absence of street food, according to income levels. Our findings confirm that, regardless of their income level, Bangkok residents consume street food on a regular basis and, therefore, the extra expenditure they would incur in its absence could have a detrimental impact on their expenditure and consumption pattern, particularly in the case of low-income households.

The authors conclude:

This study affirms what is already known about street food: that it plays an important role for consumption in Bangkok and that there is a high level of reliance on it to feed both white collar and blue collar workers. The study offers a unique perspective by combining data on frequency of street food purchases with a price survey to estimate the difference between street food and non-street food. Based on these two findings, it provides simple projections for additional expenditures that consumers would incur in the absence of street food. These figures – 357 THB monthly for the sample as a whole and 315 THB for the lower income bracket – are not insignificant when compared to important household expenditures in Bangkok, for instance for education and healthcare. They are clearly more important for low-income households.

Many of the participants of this study are white-collar workers whose earnings put them in the middle class. It should be noted that the consumer price index for Bangkok has risen steadily over this period, while the average wage in Bangkok has not recovered fully since its dip in 2013-2014 (author’s calculations, NSO 2016 and Ministry of Commerce 2018). Thus, an increase of 357 THB per month in personal food expenses, may, at the aggregate level, contribute to growing pressure on salary scales. Easy access to inexpensive street food is among one of the factors that allows the formal sector to maintain relatively low salaries (i.e. an entry level salary for a newly graduated professional in Thailand hovers around 16,000-18,000 THB (507-571 USD) per month (Adecco, 2018)). The clear policy recommendation emerging from this study is for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and other urban actors to consider the important role of street food in providing affordable meals, particularly for its workforce in commercial and commuter areas. Whereas most research and public commentary has focused on the role of street food for vendors’ livelihoods or international tourism, this study argues that local consumption is a critical consideration for urban management policies. As a secondary result, the study used an experimental methodology by combining a consumer and price survey. It therefore yields recommendations for replication and/or further research on street food consumption in Bangkok or elsewhere.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)