2014, "Keynote: Conceptualizing Thai-self under Royalist Provincialism" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Negotiating Thainess : Religious and National Identities in Thailand's Southern Conflict
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
Recent political events in Thailand have shed light on a long neglected and dangerous corner of 'Thai' history. An oceanic shift in Thai politics, only beginning to be tracked, now threatens the 'Thai race nationalist model', the foundations of which date back to the early twentieth century. Made near complete under military dictatorship after 1958, and perfected after the bloody crackdown of 1976, this model has enjoyed apparent rejuvenation since the 2006 coup, now with the monarchy at its centre. This paper focuses on the question of Lao ethnicity and the North East of Thailand, or Isan. It shows how a combination of linguistics, a pseudo-science of race and ethnicity and historical revisionism have created the appearance of an ethnically and culturally homogenized 'Thailand'. The paper argues that an ethnic history from the periphery has run parallel to the history of the Thai centre, and its broad contours become ever sharper. 'Thailand', as a nationalist construct, now faces competing 'ethnic' narratives.
Contesting the Master-Narratives of Thai Historiography
Explorations, 2014
Accounts of modern Thai history have traditionally often been influenced by two highly influential normative viewpoints, which are that the Thai monarchy (especially since the mid-nineteenth century) has been singularly responsible for guiding the course of Thailand's successful transformation into a modern nation-state, and that Thai Buddhism is something that can be wholly separated from socio-political life and any departure from this model represents a novel corruption. This essay serves as a critical examination of these two pervasive narratives within Thai historiography, with a particular emphasis on exploring the underlying discursive trends that led to the rise of these two dominant paradigms. Furthermore, the following discussion highlights attempts by a more recent generation of scholars to offer a critical re-assessment of these " master-narratives, " thereby challenging the conclusions to which they lead.
"Republicanism in Thai History", presented at The 12th International Conference on Thai Studies
The modern academic discipline of Thai history has developed more or less in step with the establishment of the political and cultural hegemony that the monarchy now enjoys in Thailand. As a result, the monarchy’s central position within the Thai political system has until recently rarely been questioned by historians. This has changed following the coup of 19 September 2006. As political opposition to the monarchy has grown, some scholars are re-examining the past to highlight the origins of democratic and even republican ideas in Thailand. This paper will seek to trace the history of republicanism in Thailand.