The Rise of Lue Chiang Kham: Commoditization and Consumption of an Identity

ABSTRACT The Lue (Tai Lue) have various approaches to represent their identity and each approach seems to tell of an identity. Extensive studies have investigated the Lue community in Chiang Kham District, Phayao Province, Northern Thailand, however, no study has focused on how the term Lue Chiang Kham came to exist and through what channels this identity is expressed. By drawing on data collected in April 2021, including online interviews, and by engaging with the secondary literature and employing Baudrillard’s ‘sign-value’ concept, this paper argues that the term or identity Lue Chiang Kham began consolidating in the 1990s through the annual festival “Seub San Tam Nan Tai-Lue” (Preserving Tai-Lue’s Legacy), which coincided with the rise in status and power of the elite and middle class Lue people of Chiang Kham. The festival is conceptualized by this paper as a seductive process merging diverse Lue and non-Lue groups under a collective consciousness of being or relating to Lue Chiang Kham by producing and consuming two specific textile commodities. Today it is common to hear and see these groups identify themselves as Lue Chiang Kham despite acting on the surface in accordance with Thai mainstream society. Keywords: Commodities, Lue Chiang Kham, Sign-value, Textiles