Owners of the Map: Mobility and Mobilization among Motorcycle Taxi Drivers in Bangkok CLAUDIO SOPRANZETTI Oxford University Winner of the SUNTA 2012 Best Graduate Student Paper Prize Abstract In this article, I discuss the connection between spatial mobility and political mobili- zation among motorcycle taxi drivers during the 2010 protests in Bangkok. Through the study of their multiple roles, both as transport operators and as political mobilizers, I explore the nexus of mobility and mobilization and analyze motorcycle taxi drivers as central political actors in contemporary Thailand. In this sense, the article focuses on investigating the historical emergence of “technique of mobilization” based on modu- lation and control over mobility. I analyze acts of disruption of movement along major infrastructures as moments of time-space modulation as well as transformative strat- egies that set in motion alternative messages and configure new modalities of political mobilization. Focusing on such techniques, both in the 2010 Red Shirts protest and in other Thai political mobilizations, I explore the solidification of spaces of mobility as major political arenas for political struggles in contemporary Thailand. [Thailand, mobility, political protest, time-space compression] O n May 19 th 2010, the Royal Thai Army deployed tanks and war weapons to disperse thousands of protesters who had taken over and blocked the commercial center of Bangkok demanding the dissolution (yup sapha ¯ ) of the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, new elections, and an end to political and economic double-standards ( s maattra thaan). In the previous two months these protesters, known as “Red Shirts,” ( s a d ng ) 1 had effectively transformed a space of elite ultra-consumption and a nexus of economic, mediatic, and physical mobility into a new national political arena. On May 20 th , when the violence stopped, at least 92 dead bodies had accumulated. 7-Eleven shops, bank branches, the Stock Exchange, as well as Central World, the biggest shopping mall in Thailand, were set on fire, filling the air with a pungent smell of burned plastic and stagnant water. The motorcycle taxi driver who had been central to the occupation and had become the only form of transportation through the protest disappeared, taking advantage of their profound knowledge of the city’s shortcuts and backdoors to decamp before the military’s fist clenched down on the remaining pro- testers. A few days later, shops re-opened, traffic resumed, and the usual urban circulation was back in place (Sopranzetti 2012a). At that point I had been conducting fieldwork among motorcycle taxi drivers in Bangkok for about ten months. My research investigated the daily construction of the city through movement. I followed the City & Society, Vol. 26, Issue 1, pp. 120–143, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X. © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI:10.1111/ciso.12030.