Northern Thailand Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

accepted pre-print version, in Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia (2022), edited by Wouters and Heneise

"Rong's entire output of more than 100 books and thousands of articles was tapped out on his favourite manual typewriter, even after the advent of computers. The critical acclaim of which he was most proud was his recognition as national... more

"Rong's entire output of more than 100 books and thousands of articles was tapped out on his favourite manual typewriter, even after the advent of computers. The critical acclaim of which he was most proud was his recognition as national artist in the field of literature by the National Culture Commission in 1995. He will be best remembered for his relentless exploration of the expressive potential of his own language, and as a writer who could approach topical and often unsavoury themes with a rare brand of insight, honesty and wit." (Pete Leyland, The Guardian, 29 May 2009)

In this paper I provide an interpretation of how Northern Thai Buddhists think about what happens to the dead person. I do not here address myself specifically to the question of what emotions are engendered by the particular experiences... more

In this paper I provide an interpretation of how Northern Thai Buddhists think about what happens to the dead person. I do not here address myself specifically to the question of what emotions are engendered by the particular experiences people have in confront in death. It is not that I ignore questions of affect connected with death and have given express attention to them in another paper, “The Interpretive Basis of Depression.” Rather, what I am primarily concerned in this paper is what Northern Thai draw from cultural sources available to them to make practical sense out of the death of the individual.

An essay on a series of independent art festivals held in the 1990s in northern Thailand. A case is made for these and similar festivals as the crucibles of contemporaneity in Southeast Asia, and for them to be historicised in that... more

An essay on a series of independent art festivals held in the 1990s in northern Thailand. A case is made for these and similar festivals as the crucibles of contemporaneity in Southeast Asia, and for them to be historicised in that regional context. The essay opens an edited volume (also called 'Artist-to-Artist') in Afterall's Exhibition Histories series.

A powerful myth in the Chiang Saen basin, states that the naga came and destroyed the town known as yonok after its ruler became immoral and offended this mythical creature. Despite this divine retribution, the people of the town chose to... more

A powerful myth in the Chiang Saen basin, states that the naga came and destroyed the town known as yonok after its ruler became immoral and offended this mythical creature. Despite this divine retribution, the people of the town chose to rebuild it. Many archeological sites found within the region confirm and indicate people’s resettlement. While many scholars understand that this region has always been devoted to Theravada Buddhism, and although many temple sites were constructed in the Buddhist concept, the building patterns seem to vary from location to location and illustrate what this thesis calls an unconventional pattern separate from Buddhist cosmology. In addition to the building pattern, many local written documents and practices today also appear to reflect influences of the naga myth on building construction. From both ethnographic data and archaeological evidence, this thesis argues that people not only believe in the myth, but have also applied the myth as a tool to interact with the surrounding landscapes and environment. Most significantly, the naga myth is also seen by the people as a part of the larger cosmological concept, and the ways in which they understand the changing landscapes. This process I call mythscape: the process that the naga myth is used as a communicated element by the local people to modify, construct, and create the space and their cultural landscape, i.e.settlement patterns. It is the process by which the naga myth becomes a part of their communal space and landscape.

Anthropologists have often interpreted initiation rites as functioning exclusively to transform an asexual and asocial child into a sexual adult with a gender-linked potential to assume particular social roles. When a person has passed... more

Anthropologists have often interpreted initiation rites as functioning exclusively to transform an asexual and asocial child into a sexual adult with a gender-linked potential to assume particular social roles. When a person has passed through an initiatory process, he or she gains a perspective on himself or herself as sharing some quality of maleness or femaleness that transcends their individual selves. This quality assumes a giveness, a primordiality, because it is accepted as fundamentally true. One’s identity as a sexual being and as a social actor is conditioned by one’s sense of being male or female with reference to primordial or ultimate truths.
An initiatory process might be expected to produce in a child an unambiguous gender identity, a sacralized idea of the male or female self that clearly establishes the parameters for the social roles one can play. This may well be true in those primitive and tribal societies for which most models of initiation have been developed. I will here, however, consider a different case, that of a Theravāda Buddhist society in Southeast Asia in which a man emerges from an initiatory process – the ordination of a boy into the Buddhist sangha – with a sexual-social identity that is in tension with an ideal male religious identity.
This paper is a complement to my previous paper, “Mother or Mistress but Never a Monk. Together they support my argument that males and females are conceived of in popular Buddhist thought as having different psychological natures which, in turn, leads to different ways for males and females to follow the religious teachings of the Buddha.

This paper presents the Old Mon inscriptions of Haripunjaya in northern Thailand. Numerous inscriptions were discovered and studied in the early twentieth century, and in more recent decades there have been additional inscriptions... more

This paper presents the Old Mon inscriptions of Haripunjaya in northern Thailand. Numerous inscriptions were discovered and studied in the early twentieth century, and in more recent decades there have been additional inscriptions discovered, some of which have received little or no scholarly attention. Interestingly, by a careful study of these inscriptions, numerous place names can be identified, which are arguably the ancient place names for various archaeological sites in the Chiang Mai-Lamphun Basin. Many of these place names can be easily identified by the common verbs and prepositions, as will be explained. Some place names occur in multiple inscriptions, although earlier attempts to translate these inscriptions missed this fact, as the place names appear with different spellings.

The Mla Bri Hunter gatherers have settled down since 1990 in northern Thailand. Settlement has resulted in improved health conditions in terms of malaria eradication, infant mortality, and other common indicators. However, there have... more

The Mla Bri Hunter gatherers have settled down since 1990 in northern Thailand. Settlement has resulted in improved health conditions in terms of malaria eradication, infant mortality, and other common indicators. However, there have also been suicides in a society which had apparently previously experienced none.

A Presentation—by Pim Kemasingki and Pariyakorn Prateepkoh—of the problems involved in the progressive erasing of Northern Thailand or Lan Na regional language called "Kham Mueang" with the participation of Dr. Thanet Charoenmuang, Vithi... more

A Presentation—by Pim Kemasingki and Pariyakorn Prateepkoh—of the problems involved in the progressive erasing of Northern Thailand or Lan Na regional language called "Kham Mueang" with the participation of Dr. Thanet Charoenmuang, Vithi Panichphant, and Dr. Louis Gabaude

BiblioNewsChiangMai is a monthly newsletter produced as a hobby by Louis Gabaude in partnership with the École française d'Extrême-Orient library in Chiang Mai. It aims to spread informations on old and recent publications dealing with... more

BiblioNewsChiangMai is a monthly newsletter produced as a hobby by Louis Gabaude in partnership with the École française d'Extrême-Orient library in Chiang Mai. It aims to spread informations on old and recent publications dealing with human and social sciences exploring the research domains of the EFEO (see below). These publications can be found either at the EFEO library in Chiang Mai, or at the editor's personal library, or on the Net.

Between 1967 and 1969, thousands of Hmong in northern Thailand became aligned with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) and resided in mountainous strongholds near the border with Laos in Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phetchabun, and... more

Between 1967 and 1969, thousands of Hmong in northern Thailand became aligned with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) and resided in mountainous strongholds near the border with Laos in Chiang Rai, Phayao, Nan, Phetchabun, and Phitsanulok provinces, and in Tak province near the border with Burma. They stayed in these strongholds until the early 1980s, when the CPT fell apart. During the CPT period, some important transformations in Hmong gender relations occurred, especially relative to the traditional strongly male-dominated society. We describe the most important changes, as reported by Hmong women. The legacy of the CPT period remains today. However, there has been some reversion to pre-CPT patriarchal practices. Some Hmong women feel nostalgic about the rights they enjoyed during the CPT period, although the leadership of the CPT was male dominated, and despite the fact that some progress has been made, for example, in convincing clan leaders to allow divorced women to return to their birth clans. This study applies a feminist geography and social memory theoretical framework to examine Hmong women's life stories about their time with the CPT.

BiblioNewsChiangMai is a monthly newsletter produced as a hobby by Louis Gabaude in partnership with the École française d'Extrême-Orient library in Chiang Mai. It aims to spread informations on old and recent publications dealing with... more

BiblioNewsChiangMai is a monthly newsletter produced as a hobby by Louis Gabaude in partnership with the École française d'Extrême-Orient library in Chiang Mai. It aims to spread informations on old and recent
publications dealing with human and social sciences exploring the research domains of the EFEO (Anthropology - Archaeology - Architecture - Arts - Epigraphy - Ethnography - Ethnology - History - Literatures - Philology - Sciences of religions.). These publications can be found either at the EFEO library in Chiang Mai, or at the editor's personal
library, or on the Net.

The overall objective of this study is to investigate and challenge the understandings and attitudes towards homosexuality, bisexuality and gender non-conformity among Karen non-profit staff along the Thai-Myanmar border, as well as their... more

The overall objective of this study is to investigate and challenge the understandings and attitudes towards homosexuality, bisexuality and gender non-conformity among Karen non-profit staff along the Thai-Myanmar border, as well as their implications for the sense of safety, acceptance, and inclusion of Karen sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGIE) minorities within these organizations. I begin this exploration by establishing Karen non-profit staff’s understandings of SOGIE and their corresponding attitudes towards people who are SOGIE minorities. I proceed by portraying the experiences of SOGIE minorities within these non-profit organizations, as they pertain to their experience of inclusion/exclusion based on SOGIE. Synthesizing the above findings, I consider the challenges SOGIE minorities in Karen non-profits face in attempting to introduce changes in organizational policy and practice to facilitate greater SOGIE minority inclusion, as well as potential avenues for overcoming these challenges.

This article presents a chronology of the growth of the concept of Indigeneity in Thailand, analysing the particular ways in which the global Indigenous movement has taken root in the country. In Thailand, transnational support networks... more

This article presents a chronology of the growth of the concept of Indigeneity in Thailand, analysing the particular ways in which the global Indigenous movement has taken root in the country. In Thailand, transnational support networks and the opening of political associational space played key roles in facilitating the growth of, first, a regional, and later a national Indigenous movement during the 1980s and early 2000s, respectively. Indigenous Peoples in Thailand are asserting their identity by drawing on a new concept of Indigeneity being promoted by the United Nations and other international advocacy organisations that identifies them not only as first peoples, but crucially as colonised or oppressed peoples. Indigenous Peoples in Thailand are further asserting both their cultural distinctiveness and their compatibility with the Thai nation. The Indigenous movement in Thailand differs from movements in Australia, Canada, and the United States where Indigenous Peoples must perform their cultural distinctiveness to maintain political recognition, and in turn are accused of being not different enough when exercising their rights. In Thailand, rather, Indigenous Peoples are accused of being not Thai enough in their efforts to push for any political recognition. While the Thai government denies the relevance of the concept of Indigeneity to Thailand, it is clear that the Indigenous movement in Thailand has grown since the early 2000s. In fact, state policies between the 1950s and early 2000s contributed toward the scaling-up of a pan-Hill tribe identity among the core groups associated with the movement.

Visual arts maintain a colourful presence at Buddhist funerals in Northern Thailand. These arts are not made for mere decoration but serve an active and essential role in the ceremonies that take place after death. They echo funerary... more

Visual arts maintain a colourful presence at Buddhist funerals in Northern Thailand. These arts are not made for mere decoration but serve an active and essential role in the ceremonies that take place after death. They echo funerary themes of the impermanent nature of life and the importance of a life filled with merit. This article examines cremation structures and funeral banners of Northern Thailand and argues that these arts not only hold significance for the living and the dead, but that in giving form to abstract concepts they have the power to guide observers in their beliefs regarding the dynamics of life and death.

Opium poppy cultivation in Thailand fell from 12,112 hectares in 1961 to 281 hectares in 2015. One outlier exists: Chiang Mai Province's remote southwestern district, Omkoi. Ninety percent of the district is a national forest reserve... more

Opium poppy cultivation in Thailand fell from 12,112 hectares in 1961 to 281 hectares in 2015. One outlier exists: Chiang Mai Province's remote southwestern district, Omkoi. Ninety percent of the district is a national forest reserve where human habitation is illegal. However, an ethnic Karen population has lived there since long before the law that outlawed them was created, unconnected to the state by road, with limited or no access to health, education and other services. Omkoi's Karen increasingly rely on cash-based markets. Their lack of citizenship precludes them from land tenure that might incentivize them to grow alternative crops, and their statelessness precludes them from services and protections. Nor is the Thai state the singular Leviathan that states are often assumed to be; it is a collection of agencies and networks with divergent interests, of whom one of the most powerful, the Royal Forestry Department, has purposely made Omkoi's population illegible, and has consistently blocked the attempts of other state actors to complexify Omkoi beyond the simplicity of its forest environment. These factors make the state illegitimate to Omkoi's Karen just as Omkoi's Karen are illegitimate to the state, and make the cultivation of short-term, high-yield, high-value, imperishable opium a logical economic choice for poor Karen farmers, especially given the historical lack of law enforcement presence. However, that presence is growing, as Omkoi becomes one of the last areas of Thailand to experience the historical extension of lowland Padi state power into an ungoverned, untallied highland.

Ethnopharmacological relevance: We studied traditional knowledge of medicinal plants used for women's healthcare in three Hmong villages in northern Thailand and determined how prevalent such knowledge is. We documented traditional... more

Ethnopharmacological relevance: We studied traditional knowledge of medicinal plants used for women's healthcare in three Hmong villages in northern Thailand and determined how prevalent such knowledge is. We documented traditional medical practices and determined which of the species used are culturally important among the Hmong. Materials and methods: We interviewed six key informants and 147 non-specialist informants about their traditional knowledge of medicinal plants used in Hmong women's healthcare. We selected nine species that were known in all three villages as the domain for questionnaire interviews with 181 additional and randomly selected non-specialist informants. We calculated the Cultural Importance index (CI) for each species and use category. We tested normality of the data, age correlations, and gender correlations with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney tests. Results: We documented traditional knowledge of 79 medicinal plants used in women's healthcare. Of these, three species were culturally important to the Hmong. Our questionnaire interviews revealed significant difference in traditional medicinal plant knowledge between genders and age groups. Conclusions: The Hmong people in northern Thailand possess large amounts of traditional knowledge related to women's healthcare and plants used for this purpose. However, this knowledge, even for the culturally important species, is not possessed by all Hmong and there were signs of knowledge erosion. Preservation of the Hmong intellectual heritage related to medicinal plants used in women's healthcare requires intensive traditional knowledge dissemination to the young Hmong generation.

The Mla Bri of Thailand are thought of as being recently settled hunter-gatherers. They lived in the forests of northern Thailand until the late twentieth century, but have settled into four separate communities since that time. This... more

The Mla Bri of Thailand are thought of as being recently settled hunter-gatherers. They lived in the forests of northern Thailand until the late twentieth century, but have settled into four separate communities since that time. This paper describes the demographics of one these groups since the late 1990s based on census data from 2013, and mortality records since settlement.

It is only reasonable to ask why do the northern Thai have so many proscriptions and rules and constraints about the conditions of dying? This is a culture that is obsessed with controlling the details and events surrounding death and... more

It is only reasonable to ask why do the northern Thai have so many proscriptions and rules and constraints about the conditions of dying? This is a culture that is obsessed with controlling the details and events surrounding death and dying. Why so much cultural emphasis is placed at this point in the lifecycle is worthy of continued serious investigation by students and scholars. If so much attention is given to the details of dying, how does this affect the individual and family of the dying? How does it affect the neighborhood? I believe if we can comprehend the culture of death and dying in northern Thailand we will confront this culture at its deepest level. The engine of the architecture, the symbolism, the ritual, and day dreams and yearnings of the northern Thai comes down to one concept: merit.
To understand death in this society is to understand the mechanism that makes everything work. It is the supreme generator of all events, all happenings, all successes and failures, all diseases, all lottery wins, all births and all deaths. For the Westerner I dare say it is virtually unfathomable how extensive and penetrating is this notion of Buddhist merit, tied to karma.
If merit and merit-making is the means to influence your karma then the project of accumulating merit is paramount. Death in northern Thailand invokes a massive cultural attempt to increase merit by all means possible and for the old and departing to beneficially dissolve into the great process of dying and being reborn.
Let us look at some of the proscriptions and cultural details the Northern Thai have evolved to achieve a good death.

ยศ สันตสมบัติ • อรัญญา ศิริผล รายงานวิจัยชิ้นนี้เป็นการศึกษาเปรียบเทียบสวนยางพาราขนาดใหญ่ และสวนยางรายย่อย โดยพิจารณาผลกระทบทางสังคมวัฒนธรรม เศรษฐกิจ และสภาพแวดล้อม ของการขยายตัวของยางพาราต่อชุมชนท้องถิ่น ในกัมพูชา ลาว... more

ยศ สันตสมบัติ • อรัญญา ศิริผล
รายงานวิจัยชิ้นนี้เป็นการศึกษาเปรียบเทียบสวนยางพาราขนาดใหญ่
และสวนยางรายย่อย โดยพิจารณาผลกระทบทางสังคมวัฒนธรรม เศรษฐกิจ
และสภาพแวดล้อม ของการขยายตัวของยางพาราต่อชุมชนท้องถิ่น
ในกัมพูชา ลาว และภาคเหนือของไทย รายงานนี้เสนอว่าไตรภาคีแห่งพลัง
การปิดล้อมข้ามชาติ อันประกอบไปด้วยรัฐ เสรีนิยมใหม่ และทุนนิยม
ชายขอบ สนธิกำลังกันเพื่อปิดล้อมทรัพยากรธรรมชาติในลุ่มน้ำโขง
พื้นที่ป่าอันอุดมสมบูรณ์ถูกโค่นเพื่อขยายพื้นที่ปลูกยางพารา ส่งผลให้เกิด
ปัญหาหน้าดินพังทลาย การลดลงของพื้นที่ป่ายังทำให้ความหลากหลาย
ทางชีวภาพและความมั่นคงทางอาหารของเกษตรกรรายย่อยตกต่ำลง ราคา
ยางพาราที่ยังอยู่ในระดับสูงอย่างต่อเนื่องอาจให้ผลดีต่อเกษตรกรที่มี
ฐานะดี มีหลักทรัพย์และเข้าถึงสินเชื่อสำหรับการลงทุนได้ แต่ในทาง
กลับกัน เราพบว่าเกษตรกรรายย่อยซึ่งเข้าสู่เศรษฐกิจยางพารา ผ่านระบบ
เกษตรพันธสัญญา กำลังเผชิญหน้ากับความเสี่ยงในการสูญเสียที่ดิน
และกลายเป็นแรงงานไร้ที่ดินเพิ่มขึ้น
The research is a comparative study of large-scale and small-scale rubber plantation and its socio-cultural, economic and
environmental impacts on local communities in Cambodia, Northern Laos and Northern Thailand. It is proposed that the triadic forces of transnational enclosure, namely the state, neo-liberalism and frontier capitalism, are at work in the Mekong region. Forest land are cleared to pave way for rubber plantation. In addition to increasing threat of landslide, rapid forestland clearance leads to decreasing biodiversity and food security for small farmers. High price of rubber could be beneficial to rich and well-to-do farmers with credits and assets ready to make investment. Conversely, poor farmers who are ushered into rubber economy through contract farming system are at risk of losing the land and become landless wage laborer.

Beginning in the early 1960s-and especially by the end of the decade-a large number of the ethnic Hmong people in Thailand aligned themselves with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). By the 1970s, most of the CPT's "liberated areas"... more

Beginning in the early 1960s-and especially by the end of the decade-a large number of the ethnic Hmong people in Thailand aligned themselves with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). By the 1970s, most of the CPT's "liberated areas" were located in remote, mountainous areas populated by Hmong people. In this paper, I situate Hmong involvement in CPT through the literature related to the multi-ethnic connections being made through the organisation of armed groups and argue that Hmong involvement with the CPT was transnational, transcultural and gender-relations-transforming. The first Hmong Thai to join the CPT was recruited in neighbouring Laos. Other Hmong in Thailand heard about the CPT through radio broadcasts from Laos in Hmong language. Furthermore, many of the early CPT recruits travelled from their homes in Thailand for political and military instruction at a basic training centre called A-30, which was located somewhere in northern Laos near the border with China. There, most Hmong CPT recruits learned to speak, read and write central Thai language. Hmong CPT also started to meaningfully interact with other Thais, including those from northeastern and southern Thailand and Chinese Thais from Bangkok. Later, those deemed to have particular potential were sent to study in China or in Vietnam for specific military training. Some Hmong sent their children to study with the CPT; others went on their own. The Hmong also interacted with people from other communist movements in Southeast Asia.

One new and one already known species of parasitic nematodes are described from the intestine of freshwater fishes in Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand: Spinitectus thaiensis sp. nov. (Cystidicolidae) from the catfish Pseudomystus... more

One new and one already known species of parasitic nematodes are described from the intestine of freshwater fishes in Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand: Spinitectus thaiensis sp. nov. (Cystidicolidae) from the catfish Pseudomystus siamensis (Regan) (Bagridae, Siluriformes) in the Fang Brook, a tributary of the Kok River (the Mekong River basin), Fang District and Oceanicucullanus chitwoodae Le-Van-Hoa et Pham-Ngoc-Khue, 1971 (Cucullanidae) from the cyprinid Mystacoleucus marginatus (Valenciennes) (Cyprinidae, Cypriniformes) in the Ping River (the Chao Phraya River basin), Muang District. The new species, S. thaiensis, is very similar to S. petrowi Belous, 1965, differing from it, in addition to some biometrical differences, mainly in having simple cuticular spines (instead of transversely oriented peg-like spines with rounded ends) on the ventral surface of the female tail; the spicules are 156–171 and 66–72 μm long, the vulva is situated at 74% of female body length, and the e...