Chinese Diasporic Heritage Houses in Bangkok: Between Recognition and Responsibility

This article introduces the concept of selective recognition to analyze a mode of heritage governance in which cultural visibility and material support are institutionally decoupled. Drawing on four privately owned Chinese heritage houses along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, it examines how heritage can be publicly celebrated through tourism promotion, city branding, and creative district development while responsibilities for maintenance, adaptation, and long-term survival remain concentrated among private owners. Through comparative case analysis, the article shows how selective recognition operates differently across ownership arrangements, adaptive reuse strategies, and configurations of authority – from sites that gain regulatory oversight through formal monument recognition without fiscal support, to those that achieve informal legitimacy through community engagement and small-scale heritage entrepreneurship. Adapting Nancy Fraser’s recognition–redistribution distinction to heritage governance and extending debates on Authorized Heritage Discourse, the article argues that heritage governance in Thailand decouples cultural recognition from material redistribution. By shifting analytical attention from heritage authorization to the negotiation and distribution of responsibilities, risks, and resources after recognition occurs, it offers a political-economic account of heritage persistence that speaks to broader questions of diaspora heritage, private stewardship, and urban heritage governance. The analysis is grounded in a single Thailand case study; implications for similar contexts in Southeast Asia and the Global South are preliminary and identified as a direction for further research.