Actor-Networks and Everyday Practice of Urban Flooding in Khon Kaen, Thailand

Abstract Book of the 12th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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Actor-Networks and Everyday Practice of Urban Flooding in Khon Kaen, Thailand

Rukchanok Chumnanmak, Panu Suppatkul

ABSTRACT:

Urban flooding has become a persistent challenge in many cities, shaped by climate change and rapid urbanization. In Khon Kaen, Northeastern Thailand, flooding is not merely a technical or natural event but a socio-material phenomenon produced through everyday practices, infrastructures, technologies, and discourses. Despite extensive policy and engineering responses, the social meanings and lived experiences of flooding remain insufficiently examined. This study employs Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to conceptualize urban flooding as a socio-material assemblage in which human and non-human actors—residents, local authorities, water, drainage systems, media, and digital technologies—co-constitute flood realities. Based on a systematic review of 52 academic studies, media reports, and social media materials, the analysis focuses on material conditions, discursive framings, and everyday practices. The findings identify two coexisting yet competing discourses: community-based management, emphasizing local knowledge and collective agency, and vulnerability-oriented state patronage, framing communities as dependent recipients of top-down intervention. Their interaction generates hybrid forms of everyday resilience. The study argues that urban flood resilience emerges from dynamic socio-material relations rather than isolated technical solutions, offering sociological insights into glocal urban environmental governance.

Keywords: Actor-Network Theory; Community Resilience; Everyday Practice; Urban Flooding