Dr Daniel Whitehouse

Dr Daniel Whitehouse is an ESRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology.

His research explores how elite schools create and maintain influential political networks in contemporary democracies. His doctoral thesis considered the case of Suan Kularb Wittayalai, Thailand’s oldest state-administered school and alma mater to eight prime ministers. It analyses the complex mechanisms through which this 'network institution' encourages and consolidates intimate cliques across the military, bureaucracy, and commercial sectors.

Specifically, he shows that the dominance of elite networks in the Thai political order is not an expression of traditional patronage models. Rather, such relations have been consciously facilitated by the modern state through the gradual adoption of colonial technologies, including novel mechanisms of surveillance, invented tradition, and disciplinary practices. When integrated with local cosmological beliefs, these technologies generate life-long sentiments of fraternal obligation, which are utilized by elite networks to neutralize threats to the prevailing political order.

Daniel is currently developing a postdoctoral project focused on the role of ‘network institutions’ in post-colonial contexts. This will involve collaboration with filmmakers and civil groups campaigning to reform colonialist practices in Thai education.

Ball, H. L., Keegan, A. Whitehouse, D. 2023. ‘Multi-agency approaches to preventing Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI): A systematic review and evaluation of UK policies’, BMJ Public Health 1(1), 1-8.

Whitehouse, D. 2019. ‘Disciplinary variation in Siam’s nineteenth century temple schools’, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 27(1), 51-53.

Whitehouse, D. 2017. ‘Review: Heritage and Identity in Contemporary Thailand: Memory, Place and Power’, ASEASUK 62(1), 30-32.

Whitehouse, D. 2015. ‘Snakes Without Poison: (Re)Negotiating Hybrid Masculinities in Thailand’. Rian Thai: The International Journal of Thai Studies 8(1), 87- 122.

Daniel is interested in Thailand, Southeast Asia, Elites, Education, Institutional Ethnography, Political Networks, Colonialism, Visual Ethnography, Public Health, Political Anthropology.