Thesis ID: CBB001567615

Bodies Politic: Civil Law & Forensic Medicine in Colonial Era Bangkok (2014)

unapi

Pearson, Quentin A. , III (Author)


Locs, Thomas
Cornell University


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Locs, Thomas.
Physical Details: 323 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation argues that the physical bodies of the dead and injured were an overlooked grounds of political contestation in the era of high imperialism. When Siamese (Thai) subjects were injured or killed under accidental or unnatural circumstances, their bodies became concrete demonstrations of both the disadvantaged status of Siamese subjects under extraterritorial law, and the nature of the state's constrained sovereignty. Officials in the Siamese state appealed to and appropriated new forms of medical and legal expertise in response to these events. In contrast to state-centric historical narratives of medicalization or the adoption of western forms of legal cultural and institutions, however, I argue that the actions of Siamese officials were overwhelmingly pragmatic and ad hoc. Moreover, I argue that law and medicine were themselves agentive, responding to and altering the sociohistorical conditions of life in fin de siècle Bangkok. To that end, I introduce a host of previously overlooked social actors and forms of agency that helped to transform the dead and injured into politicized bodies. These actors include the practitioners and advocates of these new forms of medico-legal expertise, including lawyers, physicians, and the semi-subaltern bureaucrats in the Siamese state who helped to mediate foreign forms of expertise, as well as new forms of urban mobility such as streetcars, which inflicted injury and death on the uninitiated. Finally, I argue that the dead and injured were themselves agents in this transitional period, though in the end the authoritative forms of medico-legal knowledge that spoke on their behalf favored authoritarian and absolutist trends in Thai political life.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 76/04(E), Oct 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1630030617.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567615/

Similar Citations

Book Trais Pearson; (2020)
Sovereign Necropolis: The Politics of Death in Semi-Colonial Siam (/isis/citation/CBB099369294/)

Article Lorente Carpena, Amalio; (2010)
Violación y transgresión. Medicina forense y moral sexual en la España del siglo XIX (/isis/citation/CBB001020963/)

Book Rosamaria Alibrandi; (2022)
Medicina Forense e criminalistica nel crinale del moderno (sec. XVI-XIX) (/isis/citation/CBB291215487/)

Article Giuseppe Di Cesare; Lucia Parlato; (2017)
The Role of DNA as Scientific Evidence (/isis/citation/CBB884519186/)

Book Francesco Paolo de Ceglia; (2020)
The Body of Evidence: Corpses and Proofs in Early Modern European Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB516817724/)

Chapter Lucia De Frenza; Caterina Tisci; (2020)
Frightening Whirlpools: Drowning in France in the 18th Century (/isis/citation/CBB304540926/)

Chapter Tommaso Duranti; (2020)
Reading the Corpse in the Late Middle Ages (Bologna, Mid-13th Century–Early 16th Century) (/isis/citation/CBB629097396/)

Article Christen, Arden G.; Christen, Joan A.; (2003)
The 1850 Webster/Parkman Trial: Dr. Keep's Forensic Evidence (/isis/citation/CBB000932356/)

Chapter Carmel Ferragud; (2020)
Unfamiliar Faces: The Identification of Corpses in Late Medieval Valencia (/isis/citation/CBB207748185/)

Chapter Allen Shotwell; (2020)
Dissection Techniques, Forensics and Anatomy in the 16th Century (/isis/citation/CBB490300332/)

Chapter Massimo Galtarossa; (2020)
Knowledge from Bodies and Resistance to Anatomical Discourse (Padua, 16th–18th Centuries) (/isis/citation/CBB574584350/)

Chapter Francesco Paolo de Ceglia; (2020)
Corpses, Evidence and Medical Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age (/isis/citation/CBB767610903/)

Thesis Jentzen, Jeffrey M.; (2007)
Death Investigation in America: Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuitof Medical Certainty (/isis/citation/CBB001560986/)

Chapter Francesco Paolo de Ceglia; (2020)
Saving the Phenomenon: Why Corpses Bled in the Presence of Their Murderer in Early Modern Science (/isis/citation/CBB340756814/)

Authors & Contributors
De Ceglia, Francesco Paolo
Alibrandi, Rosamaria
Di Cesare, Giuseppe
Pearson, Quentin (Trais)
Tisci, Caterina
Parlato, Lucia
Concepts
Medicine and law
Forensic medicine
Medicine
Death
Anatomy
Autopsy
Time Periods
19th century
Medieval
18th century
17th century
Renaissance
16th century
Places
Italy
France
United States
Spain
Europe
Padua (Italy)
Institutions
Harvard University
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment