Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

May 26

above is my photo essay on the Muay Thai Gambler, meant as a commentary on some of the gentrifying, tourism-oriented transformations that Thailand's traditional Muay Thai has been undergoing, particularly since COVID put such a dent in its tourism economy. As various Entertainment versions of the sport have adjusted the rules to favor foreign tastes - and to produce Western winners - one of the more substantive but also hidden aspects of these changes is the marginalization, if not outright removal of the Muay Thai gambler. As I've discussed elsewhere, the Muay Thai gambler arguably has been a core engine of developing traditional Muay Thai's complex and varied fighting style, and as the in-person (and this is important, because online gambling has a very different impact on the aesthetics of the sport) is sidelined if not banished in the sport, it risks shaping itself in a quite deskilling way, more and more meant for unknowledgable, uninvested consumption. To take an example from American sports. Can you imagine if 1950s baseball was redesigned not to appeal to baseball's fanatic fanbase, and instead was meant for the Japanese or Chinese tour groups? Fans, especially in-person fans, collectively shape what a sport is. How it is trained and how it is fought/performed. In sidelining the in-person gambler - this goes from ruling them out by law, to putting them in one location, in darkness, and turning the sport's face toward the unknowledgeable and uninvested, the very anchor of the sport is at risk of being lost.

In the theater of the sport, at the ring, the fighter - and the fight - is constantly emitting signs. The signs of their training, the etched hours and years at the bag, on the pads, which customarily reflect the style of the gym, its status and honor, and the individual style of the fighter as it has developed, in the language of the Muay of its time. They are radiating off of the fighter - and the fight; and, the gambler is receiving them, interpreting them, detecting them like the detective in a show, uncovering their rapidly evolving mystery, and himself then emits signs to other gamblers, in a social field of communication which makes up the state-of-the-fight, changing the "price" as it goes. This film short concentrates on the intermediate relay, how the signs of the fight, emitted, enter the gambler's body, causing the body itself to start emitting signs, as unconscious signals. Signals that we all can humanly read. It is this human layer, through which every fight pours, upon which its radiated signals land and reflect, which invigorates, stimulates and steers the fight and the sport itself. These photos, and the film, cut a very thin slice from that living fire.

I'm here to present the OTHER side of the story, as complaints about gambling in Muay Thai - by both Thais, and in echo by Westerners - with strong associations with corruption and undue power, are quite common online. These are definite problems, and political pictures of corruption are very important in Thai history, going all the way back to the 1920s when King Vajiravuhd first outlawed gambling in Bangkok, only to eventually rescind it with an exception for Muay Thai because of how damaging it's removal was to the sport. Yes, the shrunken gambling pool has given rise to very powerful gambling whales that have outsized control over fight decision outcomes, which exacerbate the small kaimuay crisis of the sport (small gyms cannot "win" dependably in Bangkok, and eventually have to surrender all their home-grown talent to mega gyms). This is only to argue that some of these trends against the in-person gambler, some of the gentrification of a sport which at root is very working class, provincial and agrarian, some of the tourism reformation, risks undercutting the very substance of who is watching the sport itself. This is what is at risk when a sport and art is made primarily for export. When you watch in-person gamblers in the provinces, ringside, you are looking at the very weave of fighting itself, as it is reflected across their impassioned and knowledgeable investment. To sever this connection, especially in the name of globalization, is to radically change the sport itself.

May 21

7 hours ago, The Bongo said:

Good Lord! There's a PHD right there waiting for someone into comparative sociology.

Can you please explain 'unfair matches for Westerners a little?' I'd be fascinated to learn more.

If you mean this: "Thai gyms themselves, will be very willing to make unfair matchups for Westerners", in the local scenes this often will be large size advantages. But, the greater sense is that in the West there is much more of a "fairness in sport" corrective to any natural desire to just have advantages, it pushes back. In Thailand this really isn't there in the same way. It is - and its more complex than this, but - natural for someone above in a hierarchy of power to push DOWN on those below. If you can bully a matchup disadvantage this is actually at least part of a version of a social "good". It's really is gambling that instead works as the corrective (though, this is ideally so). When you don't have gambling, then you are more in the realm of power-flexing.

It's important to keep in mind though, advantage taking isn't exclusively a Thai cultural thing of course. I recall private messaging with a Western owner of a big Chiang Mai gym and them saying quite proudly that his gym had won 19 straight fights vs the local Thai competition. My private, to myself response was: This sounds like these aren't well generated matchups. To the guy it was just proof at how good their gym was. The next level of this though is that the Thais running the matchups (in Western owned gyms, its still often the Thais that have all the social power and decision making, Westerners rely on Thai connections) are perfectly happy to dominate the competition, in a cultural sense that is different than some Western mindsets.

May 15

There is a cultural dimension worth mentioning here because it goes against a lot of our Western sport assumptions. Because Thailand's society is still largely traditional, and because Muay Thai itself is founded on a certain kind of social capital agonism (which is to say, social standing of gym owners and such is what is actually at stake in variously gambled on fights), "fairness" is not really the goal of much match making in Thailand. That is to say, the Western, somewhat amateur-coded concepts of competition, in the abstract, don't really apply. Instead, putting your thumb on a matchup, forcing disadvantages on your opponent is a sign of your social standing, of your social power. For this reason there is a kind of tidal current in the traditional form of the sport which pushes towards uneven matchups. The disparity goes to the glory of the more powerful agent. Thais - and I don't want to be homegeneous about this, but just being quite general about it - don't really think twice about this kind of top down thumb-on-the-scale, at least not the same terms we in the West do in the light of abstract "equality". It's about hierarchy, and fighters are representing a contested hierarchy of powers. Its for this reason why a gym will be reluctant to take a weight disadvantage, for this can signify a lack of power.

Importantly, what corrects this tidal current towards unfairness is gambling itself, at least in principle. If powerful gyms push too hard on the scale, moving towards unfairness, nobody will bet on the fight. Gambling has been a corrective, pushing towards more or less "fair" in matchups. If people are willing to bet, game on. This corrective aspect of gambling though, in trad Bangkok stadia Muay Thai, has been under erosion for some time, as powerful gyms also have aligned with or are powerful gamblers, so the very odds of particular fights can be unduly swayed fight to fight (and again, this thumb on the scale is a signature of social power. It's criticized as "corruption", but it also reads as a respected ability to flex and dominate).

The complicated thing is, when dealing with big, powerful gyms in a commercial milieu, without gambling, or at least without it being dominant, in terms of a soft power tourism of Muay Thai, powerful gyms even owned by foreigners (but socially run by Thais), and Thai gyms themselves, will be very willing to make unfair matchups for Westerners. Not only does it help with the overall economy of the sport, a local tourism economy, it actually fits into the traditional hierarchy concept that domination, thumbs on the scales isn't necessarily "bad". It can be a sign of social power in a traditional way. The notion of "fairness" isn't the overriding one in many of these exchanges. This is very hard for Westerners to understand, because it goes somewhat against our framework for sport. You may be given advantages in part because this is a social power flex, if your gym is very powerful in a scene. (Local gambling very well might correct some of this.) This is one reason why Sylvie has steered clear of being represented by big gyms in match-making. What often happens is that once a fighter becomes dominant in a more traditional space, they stop fighting more or less, or fights much less frequently. They will not take on big weight disadvantages to equal match ups because this is a sign of lower social power, and gamblers won't bet on their fights. This is likely why Dieselnoi retired at such an early age, for instance. Not so much that he ran out of all opponents, but because social power displays and gambling interests no longer aligned.

The social power of foreign-focused Thai gyms is very hard to gauge. They may have great importance is local Muay Thai scenes. The equality corrective of gambling may not be in full force. It's enough to say that its a complicating aspect of Muay Thai match making.

Because Sylvie has wanted to fight as much as possible, she moved away from this complication as much as possible. She didn't want a thumb on the scale if it could be there, and instead took increasingly extreme weight disadvantages that a Thai gym would never really take (due to how it looks). It's not an ideal solution at all, but it was the one we went with. There are all kinds of problems with it, including Sylvie having to become fairly fluent in Thai and building her own fight booking network of friendships and relationships all over the country, in a very idiosyncratic way, and of course at times taking on extreme weight disadvantages. It was our way of avoiding many of the thumb-down power structures in the sport, which can produce wins and some great opportunities but also can be quite imprisoning of opportunity as well after a stretch of success.

This relationship to power in-balances in a traditional culture and the idea of fairness we can import into Thailand (to be clear, there are also ideals of fairness as well in Thailand, they are just folded in with older forms of social power expression) makes the question of "authenticity" a very shifting one.

A very brief checklist may be:

Is social power disparity power involved?
What are the weight differences?
Is there gambling as a corrective influence?

Of course larger bodied fighters can do very little about weight differences often, as the pool is limited, but it is always a factor. They may have to take on those conditions to participate at all, that's how it is. Also, notably, weight advantages often make up for experience or skill level differences in matchups. I only note it as part of the equation.

May 15

Not your chosen location, but Pattaya has Rambaa's gym which is famous for its fairly traditional training with lots of Thai boys, and Western fighting kids being folded into it all. He's got a pretty good system developed over time, preserving both the old style gym and welcoming foreign young fighters.

Also Silk Muay Thai is a kid adapted gym with much more of a Westernized training style (and much more modern/western accommodations). They also have Thai kids developing out of the gym, and put on trad fight shows, so its a hybrid space. The owner Daniel's kids train and fight there, so the whole thing is very kid conscious, and its well connected in terms of fight opportunities.

May 15

Two previous articles on the subject:

and also previously this

May 3

This is the problem with assessing if Thai Muay Thai fighters knew how to "box". If you watch their Lumpinee fight in Muay Thai (watch it below), one might think that Dekkers had a big "boxing" advantage, Den Muang hardly really throws his hands, uses a ton of open side kicks, and basically goes back to the ropes and covers when Ramon combos forward. But clearly Den knows how to box, as he outboxes Dekkers in their boxing fight. Muangsurin gym was one of the best boxing gyms in Bangkok at the time. But Golden Age Thais show their boxing acumen in the ring in Muay Thai very differently, not necessarily by "letting their hands go" (other Muangsurin fighters like Saensak and Samransak did throw their hands a lot with power). Somrak, another great Thai boxer, often would seldom punch in the Boxing ring. This goes to the limitation of today regarding forward advancing hand combos as "boxing" in Entertainment shows. Real, deeper boxing skills come from actually training and fighting in boxing, and don't necessarily show up in how much you use your hands.

ht to Brian for sending me this fight.

at Lumpinee:

March 19

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This is the art of Muay Thai.

March 18

Yodpetch, a FOTY worthy run in 1994. Impressive opponent list:

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March 18

This is somewhat far afield, but also somewhat interesting under the notion that there are fundamentally two kinds of economies working in tension, perhaps even underpinning the logic of Western cultural development as well. It occurs that this wage vs prize difference is found in the analyzing logic of Christianity itself, in particular in Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." ( τὰ γὰρ ὀψώνια τῆς ἁμαρτίας θάνατος, τὸ δὲ χάρισμα τοῦ θεοῦ ζωὴ αἰώνιος ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ ἡμῶν.) I've never really thought about just how much this theological picture is a contrast between "wages" and "gift" (the in-surplus-of-earned prize). Opsonia is literally the payment of wages, a fee, a monetary payment. Transcending this horizon of labor and its wage, long before our modernities of capitalism, is the "gift", which is bestowed in this logic, by the Master, in a hierarchy relation. Key to the Christian logic is that one cannot "earn" heaven/salvation/eternal Life. It is only within the hierarchy, by properly of putting oneself beneath the authority of the "lord" can the gift/prize be bestowed. It perhaps explains how Christianity conceptions developed in parallel with rising Capitalist wage/labor identities, forming a strong enough tension with the material realities of labor markets and wages.

March 16

Sylvie's trained a lot with Namsaknoi over the last few months at Singmawin, and even sparred and clinched with Jongangdam a bit. It was very cool to watch Jongangdam's style in the fight, never having seen him fight. He fought with great timing, and managed distance in ways that Namsaknoi (who instructs at Singmawin) teaches, with rhythm and off-beats and lowish power accuracy, adding in teeps and jabs. It's a great fight because he's forced to adjust when Kom (red) smartly decided to refuse to fight in space where he's at a disadvantage.

I love how Jongangdam does not trade bite-down combo for combo, against the Muay Maat attack, but is constantly using his eyes. I also kinda love his slurvy left hook in the first few rounds which looks like it has both quickness and hidden weight. link timestamped to 36:21

March 16

What was happening between America and Thailand, specifically in the Northeast (Isaan) while Adul was at the World's Fair and fighting an Indian wrestler at Lumpinee...

March 16

In 1962 Muay Thai star Adul Srisothorn represented Thailand at the Seattle World Fair AND fought an enormous Indian wrestler at Lumpinee stadium, marking a Thai cultural outreach through Muay Thai.

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It stands to reason that this internationalism grew out of the United States military and economic interest in Thailand stemming from the Korean War (1950-1953) and the subsequent collaboration with Thailand in countering Communism in the region, which would culminate in the Vietnam War.

more on that strategy here:

In terms of Muay Thai itself, it seems likely that the biggest "fighting" influence that would develop out of this was the increased presence of Western Boxing in the country over the next several decades, part of the Soft Power of the United States.

March 14

from a summation of Richard Sennett's The Craftsman

1. Errors are crucial to the making process. Without error correcting the craftsman never receives any feedback as to his technique.
2. It is important to release tension and pressure. Skilled craftsman are relaxed craftsman. Don’t strain.
3. When using a tool, seek to use the minimum force in order to get the job done. Be delicate.
4. Many skills are transferable across domains but we tend to tunnel vision on the specific application. What looks like great leaps in one domain can often be recast as the application of a technique from a second domain to the first.
5. When seeking to improve our technique we will often need to unlearn bad habits. What works well at one skill level may not necessarily work well at another.
6. All practice isn’t created equally, there is good practice and bad practice. Repetition tends to reinforce what is being repeated.
7. It is better to work with a material than against it. Don’t fight battles you don’t need to and don’t try to force something to be what it isn’t.
8. Advances come from difficulties and frustrations. The worst thing for the craftsman is to have no constraints placed upon them. You must be willing to work through the frustration to solve a problem, this will spur creativity.
9. But, too much resistance and frustration will cause you to shut down. There exists an “optimal” level of frustration. I see this as analogous to flow states.
10. It is important to focus on quality for it’s own sake. In many domains no-one will know except the master that they have cut corners. As such, it’s important for the master to have their own standards of the work they’re prepared to put out into the world.
11. Repair is just as important as making. Being able to repair something implies a much fuller understanding than just making itself. There are two types of repair, static and dynamic. Static repair returns an item to its original state. Dynamic repair takes and item and turns it into something new.

all perfectly in line with Muay Thai development, especially as seen from the West, under the concept of craft. I've read the book and it became a point of inspiration, but then it was around my study of Spinoza and his philosophy. Considering reading it again.

March 12

Worked on this brainstorm concept sketch today, typing out a readable graphic, explaining why Muay Thai isn't best seen as Capitalist and defined by waged labor.

March 12

The first post of this stands as maybe a short essay, the subsequent posts more like footnotes or commentary. I post here a graphic I sketched out a little while ago posing two different "economies", the wage or labor economy and the prestige economy. You can see some of the outline of my distinguishing thoughts. The contention though is that Muay Thai work/making is largely of the Prestige Economy.

March 11

Reading now on the religious and rite history of Isaan, from Buddhism and the Spirit Cults. This passage marks 1850 and then 1935 Railroad as the eruption of change. The evolution of Muay Thai to be seen in this timescale.

March 10

Another use of the Contax 645 35mm wideview, shots up into the ceiling generate tremendous aura of movement.

March 10

The question definitely remains: What is it that Thais fight for if they don't fight for wages?

As far as I can tell, and speculatively suggest, what Thai's fight for, and also what they train for is better understood under the idea of a Prestige Economy, which is to say, the social capital of respect and attention in hierarchy which governs a lot of traditional social systems. I've argued before that Muay Thai is governed by an underwritten Spirituality of power relations (see below), and despite deep Capitalist veins within the country, the business of Muay Thai is probably itself best understood within these older frameworks of overlapping mandalas of power.

Within such power relations money indeed plays a very serious role, as even might greed, as it becomes signature of power and social place. The kadua that one receives, the winning bonuses and injections, these are signatures of social standing, on a ladder against which one checks oneself vs potential peers. These are closely related to one's identity and esteem.

Within the Prestige Economy motivation, in Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, is what I have experimentally called the Gaze Economy. I discuss some of this in this comment here:

Far more than wages for labor, it is within the Gaze Economy that the fighter works, under the cultural and customary form of the kaimuay. And not simply the fighter, but the padmen and krus of the gym. This is not a Capitalist, labor/wage agonism. It is a performed social struggle for standing, within which money plays a signature role.

*Some of this is quite Thai, but I also believe that these traditional "prize & gaze" dynamics underpin a lot of Western Capitalist behavior as well, and may even be particular to prize fighting in general. The "prize" in its very notion is always in surplus of the value of the work put in achieving it, carrying an aura beyond any axiomatic, which makes an interesting tension with Capitalist labor/wage structuring dynamics. What Thailand's traditional Muay Thai poses, in how it struggles within Capitalist, commodifying pressures, is a sort of critique of labor and wage itself. Attempting to reframe traditional fighting as labor and wage undercuts and hides this critique. In a certain, perhaps even ideal, primordeal sense, one should never be paid wages for fighting, turning fighting into "labor".

March 8

The question of a pursuit of authenticity in Muay Thai by adventure tourists is different than other pursuits of cultural authenticity by tourism, I believe, in the sense that the coming demand for "authentic" experiences from MT tourism isn't the same for instance as tourist seeking "authentic" Thai cuisine. There may be some overlap, but due to the nature of fighting and the deeper motivations to travel to train and fight, there is more at stake than a sort of connoisseurship, or exploratory, learning experiences of "the foreign". Fighting involves another layer of personal identity and challenges core affects which lie beyond other legitimate travel transformations.

March 8

On another level this kind of foreign influence on Thai culture is itself woven into Thai culture. A prime example is that the gendered particles that end sentences, "ka" and "crop" are a modern invention and not "traditionally" Thai, despite feeling VERY Thai. They were part of the gender edicts of the Thai dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram who was attempting to pull Thai culture into line with Western gender values, edicts which also included legislating clothing differences between men and women. So, the very idea of "Thainess" itself is quite interwoven.

March 8

Here is a very small example of altered Muay Thai culture in Thailand that I sometimes think about...some gyms have "classes", in fact a LOT of gyms are starting to have "classes" and this just isn't a thing in Thailand's trad Muay Thai, and after the class participants all get in a line and "wai" to each other in different ways, sometimes like a soccer line. This is something I'd never seen or even heard about in a gym pre-COVID (I had seen it in Western gyms, if I recall). What is interesting is that if you've traveled thousands of miles and encountered this ritual you would really feel like you've come upon an authentic, perhaps old and common Thai gym custom...and would even perhaps bring it back to your home country.

I'm not even completely sure of the recent origin of this. It seems to have come out of the new idea of "classes" in a gym. There may be antecedents of import from Westerners in gyms who have helped shape those classes, or perhaps this is something that happens in Thai schools with kids (?), or it may come from Thais increasingly going to China as trainers, training lots of non-fighters, and then returning to Thailand. There does seem to be a lot of cross-pollination going on.

March 8

While it has been a huge boon to Thailand's Muay Thai to have so much of the sport now directed towards Westerners and other non-Thais, and to have grown the international response after COVID hit the Thai tourist economy so hard, the shaping of the sport (its training and its fighting) towards the visitor is going to have an increased foreign demand for "authentic" Muay Thai, the sport trained and fought NOT for the Westerner. As influencer accounts grow, and gyms and promotions turn their gaze to the non-Thai, even as AI generated content starts to swarm social media feeds, the very core of what fighting is, the hard reality of training and fighting in a foreign way, in ways you cannot get at home, is ironically going to increase. If you travel 10,000 miles a significant portion of sincere students/fighters are going to want something that is not premade "for" them.

In this way I believe Thailand's Muay Thai holds a sort of very important signal against so much that is increasingly "fake" in globalizing culture, the draw to get away from everything that is simulated and algorithm-commodified, to experience things that change you in your soul, at a deep level of meaning. And, that Thailand's Muay Thai has a deeply rooted fighting culture still, a culture full of traditions and customs of fighting which have yet to be altered, positions Muay Thai in a powerful way. Yet, there is the very real possibility that it is adventure tourism pressure for the "authentic" which will bring value to that aspect, possibly altering or erasing important values within it...while still giving (government, and other) economic incentive to preserve these "non-tourism" subcultures and practices.

March 2

Really enjoyed this title fight between Jaroensook and Captainteam, a classic stand off between Muay Khao and Muay Femeu. Jaroensook is out of the Boon Lanna gym in Chiang Mai and Hill Tribe (and ethnic minority in the North) which has had some modest success in Muay Thai, and Captainteam is Kru Thailand's son, and one of the more femeu specialists in the sport now. I didn't really know Jaroensak so the first round mislead me. He looked really comfortable leading with hands and I thought he was going to be a Muay Maat fighter (Boon Lanna has had a few aggressive Muay Maat fighters), but in the second round he went straight into Muay Khao persistence hunting, never rushing, just getting positive entry positions (better than in the first round) and starting to foil TeamCaptain's excellent throw-game. I'm pretty much always going to subconsciously watch for Muay Khao vs the femeu specialist, so nothing against TeamCaptain (love Kru Thailand!), it was just great to see that classic match up and the dynamics of yore. Also the finish - which looked borderline foul-ish, but clean enough - came out of nowhere in a way that is exactly how Muay Khao style works. You just start slowly degrading the ruup of the femeu fighter, not really winning the point fighting game, not even looking like you are having an effect yet, but then suddenly a door opens, the ruup is broken and open just for a moment and your "doh" (your continuous rhythms) just take the opening almost unconsciously.

It's also kind of cool to see Jaroensak achieve some clinch position success with a variety of Long Clinch, a style of clinch somewhat perfected by Tanadet Tor Pran.49. Below is a film study I edited together of his approach:

This is an article we put out on Tanadet's Long Clinch style with video and screenshots.

Jaroensak doesn't lay out quite like Tanadet, and doesn't have full, wide manipulative base, but several times he got very strong positions in the clinch passing into Long Clinch dynamics for a few beats. Tanadet is Hill Tribe and from Chiang Mai, so I wonder if there was some influence or cross-over? He used to additionally train at the original Lanna Muay Thai, the gym Boon's gym has grown out of.

You can find Tanadet's Muay Thai Library sessions here where he teaches the Long Clinch technique and style:

#56 Tanadet Tor. Pran49 - Mastering Long Clinch (63 min) watch it here

This is one of the most interesting and, if mastered, dominant clinch positions one can use, and the entire session is devoted to it. I filmed with young Long Clinch master Tanadet, and discover all the small refinements he created that turned what for many fighters is just a transitional position, into an entire system of attack. This is a rare session, capturing a little known and used clinch system.

February 27

There can be no doubt that Thailand's culture is a hybriding culture, a synthesizing culture that has grown from the root weaving diversity from influences around the world, reaching well back to when the Ayuthaya Kingdom was the commercial hub for the entire mercantile region, major influences stretching in trade all the way to China and all the way to Europe, if not further, while - and this is important - still maintaining its own Siamese (then Thai) character, a character that was both in great sympathy towards these integrative powers, but also in tension or contest with them. This being said, I think there is a rather profound misunderstanding of the nature of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai and the meaning and value of its underpinnings in the culture, when seen from the West, and this is the (at times) assumed majority of thinking of fighting as "labor", and the rewards or marking of that labor as some kind of "wage". This is often the conceptual starting place from which Westerners think about the value and possible injustices of Thailand's Muay Thai, often boiled down to the question: Is the fighter getting a "fair wage"?

I do think there are strong and important wage oriented justice scales that can be applied, but mostly these are best done in the contemporary circumstances of Thailand's new commodification of Muay Thai itself...that is to say, to turn traditional commitments and performances INTO labor, that is to say, to capitalize it. It is then that the question of labor and wage holds the best ground. But, the question of wage or payment fairness really is doing another operation, often without intent, which is by reframing traditional Muay Thai in terms of labor and wage, along with the strong normative, Capitalist sense that such labor should exist freely in a labor market of some kind, one is already deforming traditional Muay Thai itself, and in a certain sense perhaps...adding to its colonization, or at least its transmutation into a globalized, commodified humanity, something I would suggest the core values of traditional Muay Thai (values that actually draw so many Western adventure-tourists to its homeland), stand in anchored opposition to.

To be sure, Capitalism is deeply interwoven into the fabric of Thai culture, and has been for much of the 20th century, but this weave is perhaps best understood in terms of how Siam/Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is of the threads of greatest resistance to Capitalism itself (along with its atomizing, individualizing, labor/wage concept of human beings). When we think of the values that not only motivate fighters, but also structure and give meaning to their fighting, at least across the board of the Muay Thai subculture, we really are not in the realm of individualizied workers who sell their labor within a labor market. (This mischaracterization is perhaps most egregious when discussing Child and Youth fighting from a Western perspective, where it is very commonly repictured as "child labor" - ignoring the degree to which such terminology completely recasts the entire question of the meaning and value of fighting itself, within Thai culture). We are instead within a realm of traditional pre-Capitalist values (which themselves have morphed in tension with Capitalizing forces), a world of craft (not "work"), composed of strong social hierarchies that are in constant agonism with each other, where fighting is probably best understood as struggle over Symbolic Capital (with some modification of Bourdieu's concept). The traditional Muay Thai world is primarily not a world of labor and wage - anymore than, to use an even more traditional example, novice monks should be considered to be doing "labor" in wats and monasteries, for the (some would regard as illusionary) "wage" of spiritual merit. Instead, the meaning and value of such commitments and performances are embedded within the traditional frame itself (a frame which can be examined or challenged for ethical failures, to be sure), and to extract them from that embedded value system and its attendant, inculcating motivations, is to subvert the very nature of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai.

It doesn't mean that Thai Muay Thai fighters don't fight "for" money, or that monies paid or won do not matter, in fact in a gambling-driven sport - gambling-driven at its very first roots, both in terms of history and in terms of apprenticeship - money amounted indeed matters a great deal. It's just that the labor / wage framework is a significantly inadequate, and in fact destructively transformative in its inaccuracy (even when well-motivated by those outside the culture).

This conceptual misunderstanding from the West is even made more complicated in that today's traditional Muay Thai is fast adapting to new "labor" style economic pressures, in the manner that fighters are increasingly "working" more, in a hybrid sense of work, in the tourism economy, both in gyms where they have to train and partner Westerners - from holding pads for clients, clinching up & teaching techniques, to taking heavy head blows in the new Western style sparring training - and in the ring where they have to fight in a transformed aggressive style in Entertainment tourism vs Western tourists: tourists who may be viewed as both customers purchasing Thai services and also as discounted laborers. All of this with the economic view that the Western visitor holds a certain degree of economic priority. Traditional Thais are pressed now in towards becoming something more like laborers, while still maintaining many if not most of the customary motivations and the embedded values of traditional Muay Thai, kaimuay subculture, leaving analysis perhaps best to a case by case basis, because craft/labor hybridization examples are so eclectic.

February 18

I'll try to get Sylvie to answer this, she knows where he is and we're planning to visit and film with him again. It may be a difficult situation as he does not speak any English, but if adventuresome it could be a great experience.

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