Planes of Existence: Airline Life in Southeast Asia

Coffee, tea or anthropology? Buckle up. The cultural crossroads of Southeast
Asia have taken to the air.
In just over a century, aviation has transformed the world, both progressively and cataclysmically. While passengers might temporarily share the physical airplane, airline workers operate and anticipate multiple horizons and trajectories. From years of fine-grained ethnography with Burmese and Thai airline workers, including ground staff, customer service, tower communications, and flight crews, Jane M. Ferguson centers the experiences of Southeast Asian workers as creators of – and shepherds to – the ongoing cultural oscillation between the ground and the sky.
Airline advertising and patriotic jingoism present aviation as a triumph of rational
techno-modernity. Nevertheless, modern airline workers engage equally modern ghosts and spectral beings every day. With the savvy of their peddler ancestors, Southeast Asian airline workers find new niche markets. They take gift-giving to new heights, sparking the imagination of the Southeast Asian extended family, to channel guilt-ridden kin obligation though the arteries of the airline’s route map. Flag carriers and airports represent nations and therefore apt sites for political attacks. They are not mere tools, but workplaces. Planes of Existence narrates a hijack and an airport siege through the experiences and political agency of their airline worker participants. Beyond the body corporate and into the body, aviation logistics presents new challenges: security and emotional labor redefine, reject or accommodate ambiguous beings, beyond its skin and to its excreta.
Deftly weaving deep cultural insight into the dynamic tapestry of global
transportation, Planes of Existence explores how airline life recalibrates social relations,
revolutionizes politics and international relations, and exorcises its holy ghosts. Arm
doors, cross check. It’s time to fly to new planes of existence!

• Jane M. Ferguson, Author

  Jane M. Ferguson is associate professor of anthropology and Southeast Asian history at the Australian National University.