Murray, David A. B.2018-11-212018-11-212018-08-142018-11-21http://hdl.handle.net/10315/35551This dissertation examines Thai fire dance, a form of labour in the Thai tourist industry, as a platform through which fire dancers confront and negotiate the tensions of increasing tourism, marginalization, capitalist expansion and neoliberal ideologies. In particular, this research highlights the ways in which affective, embodied and spatialized practices in fire art communities form political interventions and group solidarities that are also intimately entangled in the reproduction and recreation of social hierarchies and unequal relations of power. While fire dance communities hold utopic potentials and moments of sharing across spectrums of social difference that allow for the reimagination of geopolitical, cultural and ethnonational boundaries, they are also spaces and practices fully implicated in the issues they seek to address. The affect born and danced into being in these communities is the nexus through which these complex negotiations are worked out through the body, and is the basis for micropolitical and messy solidarities to form in the midst of capitalist and neoliberal times and spaces.enAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.DanceElectronic Thesis or Dissertation2018-11-21ThailandDanceMovementEmbodimentSpaceTransnational studiesGlobalization of cultureSoutheast AsiaGenderSexualityMasculinitiesFemininitiesColonialismTourism and performanceCapitalismNeoliberalismArt and politicsIntercultural communicationPolitical solidaritiesAffectEmotionQueer theorySexuality and eroticsTransnational performanceMoral economiesLabourAffective labourDance labourPerformance labourTransnational labourMigrationThai and Burmese relationsTransnational dance and performanceSpatialities and labourSpace and danceThai tourism industryPerformance in Southeast AsiaDance in Southeast AsiaDance and sexualityPerformance and sexualityDance and genderPerformance and genderEthnographyEthnicity