| Abstract: | Many leaders in Asia have competed to build public goods of superlative size. Focusing on an observation tower in Suphanburi, an agriculture-based rural province of Thailand, this paper shows that a seemingly wasteful and pretentious public project serves as the site where collective pride is forged. The tower, the tallest observation tower in provincial Thailand, has made an otherwise lacklustre and ‘backward’ Suphanburi famous throughout the country. The tower has thus become the unique symbol of Suphanburi's modernity, and many residents have come to identify with it as such. This paper highlights a ceremony held by Banharn Silpa-archa, the creator of the tower and Member of Parliament from Suphanburi, to advertise the distinctiveness of the tower and to mobilise provincial pride around it. |
