The "afterlives of development" are varied responses to a series of simultaneous transformations that undermined the teleological modernization narrative of the postwar development project (see this volume, Schwittay and Rudnckyj 2014:3-9). The apparent "end of development," as declared by Wolfgang Sachs (1992), occurred amidst a period of expansive democratization, as well as during global explosions of rapid, unequal urbanization and widespread fluctuations in the economies of socalled developing countries.1 In many parts of the world, economic growth gave way to collapse and then to structural adjustment, disrupting the linear temporal flow of the developmentalist narrative of progress (Ferguson 1999). In Thailand, the 1990s brought democratization and deepening urban growth, both of which were situated against a backdrop of economic boom. A chorus of activist calls for a new model of development accompanied this conjuncture of economic, social, environmental, and political upheaval. With the collapse of the Thai economy in 1997, these calls for a

In the wake of the costly 2011 floods, the city of Bangkok struggled to respond to the water inundating Thailand's major hub. In response, Thai leaders primarily blamed the external forces of nature and climate change. Depoliticising disasters and absolving national leaders of responsibility, these discourses about nature and climate change as the main cause of flooding led policymakers to primarily build infrastructure to block and drain water. We argue that the location and patterns of flood protection infrastructure reflect flows of power and the circulation of capital. We build upon Graham and Marvin's notion of 'splintering urbanism' to develop the concept of 'splintering disaster'. We do so to make sense of the spatially dispersed, but ideologically unified strategy of flood protection adopted in Bangkok. We argue that the splintered nature of flood infrastructures demonstrates the varied and complex factors that produce new regimes of urban water control in the wake of disasters. As we demonstrate, flood mitigation projects do not foreclose future floodwater, but instead, redistribute nature, risk and injury. The city both shapes and is shaped by this spatially fragmented response to water. We aim to use this concept to develop a conceptual vocabulary for understanding post-disaster infrastructural politics.

This paper examines the links between Bangkok's smoking skyline and the political and economic aspirations of North Eastern Thais. The author proposes that much of what was at stake during the 2009 and 2010 political upheaval was closely tied to a constricted sense of citizenship apparent in the frustrated political and economic aspirations expressed by North East Thailand's urban poor. Through an ethnographic analysis of the experiences of residents of Khon Kaen's railway communities as they participate in a new housing project, the paper explores the obstacles that poor citizens encounter when they try to ‘become right with the law’ and ‘unite’ in the name of ‘developing’ themselves, their communities, their cities and their nation. In reflecting on the politics of belonging that arise during this project, the author's analysis reveals how hard these citizens work to comply with laws and to take part in national development projects, even when many of those same laws and processes frequently work against them. The author argues that, although coups and mass mobilizations form the most public faces of the current political moment, they simply reflect more pernicious, complex forms of the everyday politics facing poor citizens. Indeed, these frustrated aspirations expose the links between Bangkok's burning shopping malls and the charred provincial government buildings of the North East (Isan). The analysis suggests that the events of 2009 and 2010 were not an uprising against the state, but rather a movement demanding recognition and the opening of the political and economic order to the poor as full citizens.

This article examines debates over architectural aesthetics between residents of Thai railway communities, state urban planners, and NGO activists. It interrogates the designs, colours, objects, and materials these groups use as they attempt to upgrade these settlements as part of a participatory urban housing project. I argue that through aesthetic practices, residents, planners, and activists propose, debate, and enact distinct political and moral orders. Houses, real and imagined, reflect these actors' provisional attempts to answer contentious questions about what constitutes a legitimate political actor and what it means to live a good life in contemporary Thailand. Aesthetic practices thus constitute a 'politics in the making' that offers a means for actors to debate lived configurations of the political while simultaneously intervening upon it.Nung 1 places a tile in wet concrete. He lines the edge up at an odd angle to its mate and smiles; the head of one koi fish printed on the tile now chases its tail on another. When the concrete is set, guests will leave their sandals on this platform before entering his newly remodelled kitchen. The Thai government's Baan Mankong (Secure House) project, which offers grants and low-interest loans to help improve housing in poor communities, partially funded the housing upgrade. 2 Before the upgrade, Nung's kitchen had bare concrete floors and grey block walls. After, mixed tiles -patterns of green, beige, blue, and pink, some printed with bright koi fish -cover the space.There are twenty-six designated settlements like Nung's that line the railway tracks running through the growing Northeastern Thai city of Khon Kaen. 3 They vary in size, density, and condition. The approximately 8,000 residents settled along both sides of the tracks live in houses that range from brightly painted concrete structures to shacks built from ageing wood, rusting metal, and found objects, like vinyl signs. Irrespective of these differences, all the residents are in conflict with the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) over their rights to live on this land. Some, like Nung and his neighbours, worked with NGO activists and signed three-year, renewable land leases. Other settlements, like the one across the tracks from Nung's, rejected alliances with their neighbours and the NGO activists to autonomously assert their political voice, but unsuccessfully negotiated with the SRT. Despite these divergences, residents in all settlements received