The Mystery of the Almost Disappearing Naga: On Urbanisation and Cosmopolitics in Bangkok

What might the precarious persistence of the naga in Bangkok’s critical zones illuminate about entangled relations of capitalist urbanisation, migration, environmental degradation, and speculative world-renewal? Drawing on ethnographic encounters with naga shrines, urban infrastructures, and Isan migrants in the city, I investigate how the naga, once deeply rooted in the water cosmologies of Thailand’s rural regions, has become an occupant of diverse critical zones within the city. Rather than as a remnant of the past or a mere symbol of animist belief, the article engages the naga as a more-than-mythic cosmopolitical figure that mediates multiple ontologies. Its spectral presence diffracts struggles of marginalised urban dwellers and the ongoing negotiation of more-than-human coexistence in the face of environmental degradation in Bangkok and its deltaic cityscape. By attending to the naga’s shifting associations, the article contributes to evolving discussions concerning the role of more-than-human entities in shaping the urban futures of Thailand.