Judicialization of Emotion: the Legal Regime of Annoyance among Thai Middle Class

Abstract

The legal system is a component of an emotional regime that has legal authority over people's emotions. In historical circumstances, the regulation of emotion by legislation is organized in numerous ways related to economic and political circumstances, such as establishing emotionology filtering emotive, and fostering concealed emotional refuge. Thus, the Law is not only the set of rules that regulate human acts, but it is also the set of norms that regulate people's emotions. The study of the history of emotion in Supreme Court of Justice and Supreme Administrative Court of Thailand decisions relating to civil, criminal, and administrative cases from the 1900s to the 2000s reveals the emotional downfall of the Thai middle class, which occupies petit property in urban areas. The Thai middle class evolved in the 1950s, amid disputes and nuisance complaints between neighbors over their occupations. Following that, in the 1970s, disagreements among the Thai middle class spread to everyday life in the neighborhood, to the annoyance of the lower class. In terms of the emotional regime, the formation of the Thai Administrative Court in the 2000s was a failure since the court became a site of conflict between state officials and the middle class. Even the actual conflicts were between members of the middle class. The middle class becomes distrustful of the officer as a result of the improper confrontation. Everyday life in the Thai middle class is bound with irritation and aggravation, which sharpens them into loneliness because they distrust the state, are anxious about lowering class, and bother each other.