"Thai Identity, Globalisation and Advertising Culture"

Australian Journal of Social Issues, Special Issue: National and Cultural Identities, 34, 4 (November 1999): 337-52.

This article looks at the cultural resurgence that is taking place in Thailand's regions and amongst its ethnic minorities after a century of assimilationist policies carried out by the central Thai government in the interests of national integration. The article argues that the cultural resurgence is a result of three decades of economic development and a parallel process of democratisation of the political system. This has not only given different cultural groups new political rights to express their culture openly, hut has also resulted in the government no longer regarding such expressions of cultural identity as posing a threat to Thai national unity.

The study explores a changing community at the periphery of Thailand as the country moves toward globalization with the focus on local identity. This project examines the characteristics of globalization as it manifests in a local community; the changing perception of ethnic identity under the emerging globalization context; and, the responses of the local government to the challenges of globalization. Data were gathered from interviews with three different family generations and key informants, and from focus group discussions. The clearer driving force of change may be attributed to the expansion of media and telecommunication and the floating idea of internationalization. The influence of transnational social and cultural movements is fromthe promotion ofChinese language and culture, and the vibrant Islamic revivalist movement. The study finds that religion remains a strong factor of identity in comparison to traditions and languages. The choice of languages has changed meaning from keeping the mother tongue to gaining a more competitive advantage. As people connecting to cultural and religious roots inside and outside the community, social distances within local ethnic groups become widening. Finally, the local government aims to be part of a greater international community to promote economic development by using the cultural capital of Betong. The local government has constructed the Betong identity which serves as a new social cohesion and, at the same time, a mechanism to stand tall in a globalizing world. Keywords: globalization; identity; cultural politics; southern Thailand; Betong

Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences (Supplementary Issue), Mahidol University, 2013

India has had long historic relations with Asia. As a result of 2000 years of cultural exchange, South Asian influences are evident in most parts of Southeast Asia. In this paper, I am particularly interested in examining hybrid forms of Hinduism in Thailand, a place that has experienced Indic influences on arts, scriptures, and language, as well as religious practices and ceremonies. A number of papers have been written on the topic but not much has been done on the importance of Hinduism, its presence in the region and its importance in binding the two cultures together. This research aims to fill this gap and to examine how South Asian influences help to define Thai identities.

Unpublished. The opening keynote address delivered at Opening Keynote Address at the 12th International Conference of Thai Studies, University of Sydney, Australia, 22 April 2014. Need revisions and rewritten for publication.

Nations and Nationalism, 2019

In 1900, the Lao ethnonym, and thus the Lao, 'officially' disappeared from Siam. However, Lao culture and identity persisted at local, regional, and national levels. As Keyes (1967) discovered, "a Northeast Thailand-based ethno-regionalism", emerged post-World War II. This regionalism, which we re-term 'Thai Lao' and specify to the majority ethnic community, exists in a contested relationship with both 'Thai' and 'Lao' identity. The survival of the Lao ethnic community's cultural identity occurred despite the best efforts of the Royal Thai Government (RTG) to eradicate aspects of Lao culture. These aspects included Lao language, religion, and history, using the school system, the Lao Buddhist Sangha (order of monks), and the bureaucracy. Beginning in the 1990s, buoyed by a multitude of factors, the Lao ethnic community reappeared as the 'Thai Lao' or 'Lao Isan'. This reappearance was noted in the RTG's Thailand 2011 Country Report (RTG 2011) to the UN Committee responsible for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. For nearly four decades now, Laoism has recurred in Thai academia, the media, the public sphere, popular traditions, and even Lao apocalyptic millenarianism. Following Smith (1986, 1991, 1999) this paper utilizes a historical ethno-symbolist approach to this recurrence.

This essay offers a critical reassessment of cultural diversity in Thailand, a concept that has had different meanings at different times in the country's modern political history. From the time the country sought to modernize its political system and during the period of state-building and militarization after World War II up until the 1980s, Bangkok-centered political development reinforced hierarchical norms and promoted a nationalist ideology that both celebrated diversity and limited the ways in which the country's minorities could be members of this Thai polity. By the 1990s and early 2000s, a period of democratization set in when minorities became more vocal in representing themselves than they had been able to do in the past. The historic 1997 Constitution gave legal recognition to the demands to play a role in the management of their cultural heritage. Drawing attention to the discursive and policy interventions on the one hand and community-level strategies for dealing with the Thai state on the other, the paper profiles two minority communities which deployed the language of hierarchy as well as rights to advocate for their interests. The concluding section outlines the conservative retrenchment Thailand is undergoing as a result of protracted military rule. Throughout, the essay argues that cultural diversity has little meaning in politically repressive conditions.

Lund Studies in History of Religions, 2012

Only weeks after I returned from a three-month research trip to Thailand's northeastern city Khorat in 2003, where I had studied magical elements in contemporary Theravāda Buddhism, Thailand suddenly made headlines in the international media. Following the raid of a Narathiwat army camp on January 4 th , 2004, and the subsequent wave of arson attacks, sabotage, bombs and shootings, the long-forgotten Patani conflict had once again come to public attention, as newspaper articles and TV-reports from around the world tried, with varying degrees of success, to make sense of this resurgence of violence. Despite my many visits to Thailand and studies of Thai language, history and culture, it struck me how little I knew about this long-term and quite severe conflict. Since then, I have closely followed the developments in the Patani region, the southern frontier bordering Malaysia. Two and a half years later, after a long night out in Oslo, I switched on the television and tuned into BBC World News, only to find video images of tanks and armoured vehicles rolling into the dim streets of a city I recognized as Bangkok. At dawn on September 19 th , 2006, the Royal Thai Army was staging a coup d'état to oust the controversial, yet highly popular, Thaksin Shinawatra from office. Junta leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin, the first Muslim Commander-in-chief of the Thai army, was quick to point out the devastating deadlock in the Patani region as one motivating factor for the coup. Despite the fact that, for weeks, rumours of a coup had flourished in Bangkok due to the severe political crisis following the conflict between the Thaksin administration and the traditional Bangkok elite, including the upper echelon of the army, it still came as a shock. After all, fifteen years had gone by without such unconstitutional interference on the part of the army, a rather long period of time in the Thai context. Nonetheless, while going to bed that night I had more or less resigned myself to the situation, thinking: "Well, this is how it's done in Thailand." That thought, however, did not last very long, and the 2006 coup became the event that triggered a prolonged interest in Thai politics in general and the Patani conflict in particular. Two weeks after the coup, I submitted my Ph.D. proposal to Lund University, of which this dissertation is the result. 10 I wish to express my gratitude to a wide range of people without whose help and assistance this dissertation would never have been finalized. First of all, my profound and sincere thanks goes to my supervisor Professor Olle Qvarnström at the Department of History of Religions at Lund University, and assistant supervisor Professor Torkel Brekke at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, for safe and sound guidance from beginning to end. Without their continuous encouragement and support throughout the process, this dissertation would never have materialized. I would also like to express my deep appreciation to Lund University and the Department of History of Religions for accepting my proposal, and to

Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s model of ethnic relations is applied to the socio-political unrest of Thailand in the early 21st century. This paper argues that Pieterse’s model of global multiculture and multiethnicity complements Marxist and neo-Marxist explanations of the political unrest in a dialectical relationship. Thus, structural factors such as the economy and the political system are dialectically influenced by cultural and ethnic politics. The use by the royalist elite of state power to install and then defend a national culture (based on a civic religion) is explored in a variety of activities and spheres such as education, the media, usage of public space, economic public policy, religion, and foreign policy. Increasing efforts to defend the Thai ethnocracy are revealed to reflect its weakening vis a vis competing ethnicities and cultures seeking a place in the national culture and socio-political institutions. Finally the paper concludes that renewed calls for greater autonomy for minorities and for the renaming of the country to its old name, Siam, are signs that the country is moving to Pieterse’s third stage of ethnic relations called “ethnic competition” which explains the recent exponential increase in socio-political unrest throughout the entire country.

unpublished MA thesis, 1994

My Master's thesis submitted to the ANU (1994), and published in a revised version as The Politics of Ruins and the Business of Nostalgia (Bangkok, 2002).