Uncovering Camwomen: an ethnographic study of young Thai women who portray themselves sexually explicitly in online webcam chatrooms

The thesis explores interactions of camwomen, a group of young Thai women who portray themselves sexually explicitly, on Camfrog, an online webcam chatroom program. It elucidates key motivations and significant factors relating to camwomen identity and practices. Ethnographic study in both online and offline fields was completed over a ten month period. From these data, five main motivations of the studied camwomen emerged: finance, freedom, fame, fun and friendship, which I collectively term the ‘5Fs’. The 5Fs suggest that camwomen identity formation process is compound, complex and linking to various elements. Specifically, I argue that camwomen identity is socially constructed through three main elements including the offline social field, online social field and these young women’s own autonomy. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concept of human practice, the thesis argues that young women who engage in camwomen identity and practices are strategic capital converters since they have practical sense when, where and how to capitalize their own bodies and their cultural capital (embodied knowledge and skills) with whom in order to gain other forms of capital in particular social fields. My findings echo previous studies exploring the ways that people construct their online identities in order to escape from repressive states in their offline lives. Although my findings support earlier studies that online places empower subordinate groups such as women to exercise their own agency, concurrently, it also suggests that the online environment can be a place where women are active subjects as well as being exploited. It points out two specific Thai cultural values namely pheenong friendship (‘sister-brotherhood friendship’) and krengjai-ness (a desire to be ‘self-effacing, respectful, and extremely considerate as well as the wish to avoid embarrassing others or intruding or imposing upon them’ (Fieg, 1989: 43)) which, existing among Thai camwomen in this study and affecting the (re)construction of camwomen’s practices, are unique in comparison to camwomen in western cultural context.