Re. Shane Tarr’s very valid point re. “sex workers”, Edoardo I’ve long understood, ever since reading the anthropological study “Patpong Sister”, that bar girls are NOT considered “prostitutes” in Thai language and culture. A prostitute in Thai is a low class street hooker, who has no other place of employment, other than on the street, and has to rent a room to deliver her short-time services. Bar girls by contrast enjoy higher status, and different Thai description, by virtue of a regular place they work – and even various lucrative career pathways (eg. marry a benefactor, especially lucrative farang, or even become eventually a Mama-San). And it is ALL measured by the girl’s giving to that ULTIMATE Thai supreme reference point : I.e. the family. If a girl regularly sends substantial funds to her family, she is NOT considered a “prostitute”. Of course, in Western languages – with our Christian heritage of virtuous Mother Mary – we more literally define a “prostitute” as someone who gives sex for money. But this is not Thai.
It reminds me of Jusus, he died and went to heaven then came back to earth and is still here guiding and protecting us.
Are we seeing the birth of a new religion with Plem and Prayut as archbishops?
Not sure if you have ever been to Thailand, Shane, but sellers at Pratunam Market have been doing a roaring trade in black t-shirts, blouses and tops of all kinds which sell for anywhere from 65 to 120 baht per.
Many of the customers at Pratunam are “village-based” farmer’s sons and daughters and wives and mothers who turn around and sell these items for anywhere from 100 to 190 baht at small shops and markets, all “village-based”, all around the country. Farmers don’t go to Bangkok to buy clothes. The clothes come to them.
Are there rip-offs taking place? No doubt. But not in the part of the economy where people who usually don’t pay more than 100-300 baht for an item of clothing, black or not.
Some of the nonsense that is cropping up on this website recently reminds me of when I lived in England and my girlfriend’s family read the Daily Mirror and The Sun and garbage like that.
Instead of young women with their mammaries out, NM obviously goes for a kind of royalist gossip/panic-porn.
Violence begets violence. Yesterday – without even the 30 day mourning period anywhere near over – Patani separatists struck yet again, killing one innocent and wounding 16 others. Theorising that Thailand is a Deleuzean Black Hole, all captivating and crushing, is simply wrong. There are plenty of escape routes across Thailand’s many porous borders. And these “salim” vigilante attacks have not occurred in Lanna and Isarn, where people are widely armed along ethnic, clan, family, political, criminal, and other lines (including military). Prayut is simply another Third World style miltary dictator – increasingly revealed as self-serving, nepotistic, and grubby. A throw-back, who can n’t solve Thailand’s modern problems. Typical of a long line. From way before Deleuze.
I suppose it’s just a slight difference in spelling/pronunciation. Bodhisattva in Sanskrit and Bodhisatta in Pali. But both Theravada and Mahayana have this concept.
I get your point, but it is difficult to pinpoint which “class of people” were the late king’s “main target.” There was certainly a strong push from the palace on the “peasants,” and this was associated with counterinsurgency in the 1960s and 1970s. But at the same time, as we see in the broad yellow shirt movement, the king appealed to the middle class in Bangkok. Of course, the palace also targeted business people (as Christine Gray noted all those years ago). Then there were the military and bureaucrats. The genius of palace propaganda was in making the king a symbol of something for everyone who was willing to soak up their messages.
On dress codes: “Authorities are gearing up for huge crowds to pay their respects … in the throne hall. Access will be allowed after a 15-day merit-making ceremony is completed this Friday.
The Royal Household Bureau has also advised mourners to dress entirely in black for the occasion.
Women must wear dresses or skirts that extend below the knees and are advised to wear stockings. No denim, sleeveless or revealing outfits are allowed.
Men are asked to refrain from denim and T-shirts. Black ties are advised. No flip-flops are allowed.”
To criticise the article as always is not recommended – on any blog.
I live “in the provinces” and do not see what you see.
I see articles written about my home, by many non Thai.
What I rarely see aside from this “constructive criticism” is, suggestions on how we may move forward, break the bonds so to speak. Ideas from others, with good intentions, would be lapped up by many Thais.
We talk into the night among each other – some sickened by this state of affairs. BUT, we have to live, I go to the market with my black dress – not because of the king, but, because of social pressure, fear and all the other reasons that I cannot put into words right now. SO MANY of us do this..
The question therefore, goes deeper, we WANT change, we envy Singapore – after all they changed. How do we get rid of these elite’s, monarchists, et. al. and become a free people, in charge of our own destiny?
Perhaps until “someone” lights the path, we will never know. Lighting the path from within, does not seem possible. It seems we do not have a student like, for example, Jan Palach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Palach
Thank you for caring enough to write about our country Mr Taylor, without any attempt to reduce our value to that of primitives.
It all depends on where you are coming from. It’s absurd hearing it from those against wearing black or the monarchy in general. It’s all about what’s on your mind. I’ve seen many people, and not just visitors or foreigners, still wearing colours in the country and that has not caused chaos or even a problem. As long as you approach this mourning period with some sort of civility, you are fine.
“We clearly need more reporting from the provinces and regions outside Bangkok, quite obviously.”
Indeed.
The problem, of course, is that NM doesn’t do “reporting” so much as imaginative reconstructions of abstractions unvisited in reality for decades.
For some of us, the Thai people we live with and live surrounded by are just that, people. For many folks here on NM, they are an abstraction characterized by whatever gothic imagineering they can slip in under the moniker of “anthropology”.
This means that the funeral ceremonies systematically privilege a class of people that was not the main target group of HM when he was alive, right? Does this make any difference since his target group can just as well grief in their villages? Or gives this difference symbolic or tangible benefits to those who can afford travel and clothing, and does this not contradict the sufficiency economy principle?
Thai-Theravada kings represent themselves and are represented in art, architecture, mythology and cosmology as king-deities. They have both divine and human natures. This is inherently ambiguous, which is what makes it so powerful — that and beliefs about the nature of hierarchy in Thailand, whereby lesser beings lack the wisdom to see into the thoughts and intentions of more virtuous beings.
Opacity theory. His Majesty’s intentions may have been opaque to his subjects, but theirs were certainly “clear to see” to him. Note how the junta speaks to the press. “Those of ill intention…” (cetana mai di). Intention is the primary determinant of karmic outcome.
The CP is displaying his warm and dutiful “human” side through mourning rituals, while the junta is encouraging free display of signs of the late king’s deity-side and ongoing apotheosis as described by Edoardo in the above article. Edoardo used traditional anthropological methods of participant-observation, study of popular culture, etc. Really, it’s brilliant work, written as events unfold. For this he deserves much credit.
Read Ilse Hayden’s “Symbol and Privilege” about the British crown. $.01 on Amazon. Or Frank & Mani Reynolds’ translation and commentary on the “Three World According to King Ruang,” if there are any left.
It’s never either one or the other.
The essence of this type of research is sometimes noting absence: who’s missing? The cosmological paradigms that are being enacted/performed as the mourning era unfolds posit anonymous, worshipful followers attracted to the late king and his remains, including the royal regalia, by the power of his virtue. The latter acquire the quality of being sacred or saksit: having magical power. (If you really think culture doesn’t count, ask the generals if they make a move without input from their astrologers, often monk-astrologers.) The latest little spot on Thai television shows the princess/es (forgot whom) kindly offering refreshments to the crowds, setting the example of compassion and lovingkindness. These are specific Buddhist virtues (barami), meaning the funerary rites are evolving into the means by which they, too, display their great merit and virtue (in the female domain of food serving … sorry yuck.)
Sometimes the assumptions held in common are subtle, and unconscious in nature.
So who’s absent from these displays, and the royal kathin ceremony, which was kicked off by the CP today at Wat Bowonniwet? He is re-establishing the ritual center of kingdom, aligning it in harmony with the cosmos, demonstrating his great virtue, phra ratchathan, in the manner of his father.
Whether it works or not, who knows? There’s certainly a lot of scurrying going on, by means of symbolic media, like colors and music and celestial displays (like the music played when the CP enters the temple), well understood by Thai people.
Edoardo and other anthropologists are not claiming to have all of the picture. This is merely part, an important part.
For their next project, I sincerely hope the junta jail autocorrect.
I’m having a some trouble with the chronology of events in your chapters on Narin, his daughters and the monkhood. In particular, I see you to say that the prohibition articulated by the Palace/Sangka against ordaining women followed Narin’s daughters beginning to practice publicly as monks. That proclamation is dated June, 1928. You, however, describe the entire sequence of events beginning with the faux ordination as starting in July of that year, before the proclamation, implying that the palace was reacting to Narin. The proclamation date appears to be correct. And if your other dates are also correct, then Narin’s actions followed it, and the explanation is more complicated. Thanks. Hope you’re still monitoring this page.
Where and when exactly is all of this “mass hysteria”? And what social forms does it actually take? It seems to me more careful description and explication is needed with regards to the ease with which “hysteria” and “mass hysteria” are tossed around as both descriptions and explanations of current behavior in Thailand.
One would be hard put, I think, to describe any of the activities around Sanam Luang and the Palace as hysteria. Collective effervescence, at times. Collective devotion, yes. But often it looks and feels like the average temple fair-cum-street fair of Thailand – folks milling around and seeing what others are doing, engaging in some personal or familial acts of worship and devotion, buying memorabilia, vendors hawking all sorts of goods, keeping an eye out for the famous, the wealthy and the potent and seeking audiences with or handouts from them them when and if possible.
The moments of collective witch-hunting seem to have occurred primarily in the South and have been fueled by social media. Is any of that a surprise? Social media is, of course, an interactive world often fueled by intense opinions expressed in communicative bubbles and aggressively – even ‘hysterically’ – directed against presumed offending strangers. And the dynamics of social media bleed into “real” social interactions and can fuel such aggressive behavior in face-to-face “real” world interactions in turn.
But having walked the streets and the mourning grounds of Bangkok since October 13th, this is not a city gripped by mass hysteria. And is anything like mass hysteria centrally defining of public behavior in the North, the Central region or the Northeast? Or even the South in general? We clearly need more reporting from the provinces and regions outside Bangkok, quite obviously.
I am gathering documents concerning communist and anarchist movements in Thailand between 1930 – 1980. You seem to have seen something that would suggest facts. Would you mind sharing links?
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
“To criticise the article as always is not recommended – on any blog.”
At least we know you’re a real Thai person and not pretending. Is it OK to criticise outside the world of Blogs? If not, you’re doomed…
Thailand’s law of the mob
“Will be” or “are”?
The return of the divine king
Re. Shane Tarr’s very valid point re. “sex workers”, Edoardo I’ve long understood, ever since reading the anthropological study “Patpong Sister”, that bar girls are NOT considered “prostitutes” in Thai language and culture. A prostitute in Thai is a low class street hooker, who has no other place of employment, other than on the street, and has to rent a room to deliver her short-time services. Bar girls by contrast enjoy higher status, and different Thai description, by virtue of a regular place they work – and even various lucrative career pathways (eg. marry a benefactor, especially lucrative farang, or even become eventually a Mama-San). And it is ALL measured by the girl’s giving to that ULTIMATE Thai supreme reference point : I.e. the family. If a girl regularly sends substantial funds to her family, she is NOT considered a “prostitute”. Of course, in Western languages – with our Christian heritage of virtuous Mother Mary – we more literally define a “prostitute” as someone who gives sex for money. But this is not Thai.
The return of the divine king
It reminds me of Jusus, he died and went to heaven then came back to earth and is still here guiding and protecting us.
Are we seeing the birth of a new religion with Plem and Prayut as archbishops?
The return of the divine king
Not sure if you have ever been to Thailand, Shane, but sellers at Pratunam Market have been doing a roaring trade in black t-shirts, blouses and tops of all kinds which sell for anywhere from 65 to 120 baht per.
Many of the customers at Pratunam are “village-based” farmer’s sons and daughters and wives and mothers who turn around and sell these items for anywhere from 100 to 190 baht at small shops and markets, all “village-based”, all around the country. Farmers don’t go to Bangkok to buy clothes. The clothes come to them.
Are there rip-offs taking place? No doubt. But not in the part of the economy where people who usually don’t pay more than 100-300 baht for an item of clothing, black or not.
Some of the nonsense that is cropping up on this website recently reminds me of when I lived in England and my girlfriend’s family read the Daily Mirror and The Sun and garbage like that.
Instead of young women with their mammaries out, NM obviously goes for a kind of royalist gossip/panic-porn.
And man is it dumb.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
Violence begets violence. Yesterday – without even the 30 day mourning period anywhere near over – Patani separatists struck yet again, killing one innocent and wounding 16 others. Theorising that Thailand is a Deleuzean Black Hole, all captivating and crushing, is simply wrong. There are plenty of escape routes across Thailand’s many porous borders. And these “salim” vigilante attacks have not occurred in Lanna and Isarn, where people are widely armed along ethnic, clan, family, political, criminal, and other lines (including military). Prayut is simply another Third World style miltary dictator – increasingly revealed as self-serving, nepotistic, and grubby. A throw-back, who can n’t solve Thailand’s modern problems. Typical of a long line. From way before Deleuze.
Mourning and the Thai interregnum
I suppose it’s just a slight difference in spelling/pronunciation. Bodhisattva in Sanskrit and Bodhisatta in Pali. But both Theravada and Mahayana have this concept.
The return of the divine king
I get your point, but it is difficult to pinpoint which “class of people” were the late king’s “main target.” There was certainly a strong push from the palace on the “peasants,” and this was associated with counterinsurgency in the 1960s and 1970s. But at the same time, as we see in the broad yellow shirt movement, the king appealed to the middle class in Bangkok. Of course, the palace also targeted business people (as Christine Gray noted all those years ago). Then there were the military and bureaucrats. The genius of palace propaganda was in making the king a symbol of something for everyone who was willing to soak up their messages.
The return of the divine king
On dress codes: “Authorities are gearing up for huge crowds to pay their respects … in the throne hall. Access will be allowed after a 15-day merit-making ceremony is completed this Friday.
The Royal Household Bureau has also advised mourners to dress entirely in black for the occasion.
Women must wear dresses or skirts that extend below the knees and are advised to wear stockings. No denim, sleeveless or revealing outfits are allowed.
Men are asked to refrain from denim and T-shirts. Black ties are advised. No flip-flops are allowed.”
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1118397/government-to-limit-mourners-at-throne-hall
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
To criticise the article as always is not recommended – on any blog.
I live “in the provinces” and do not see what you see.
I see articles written about my home, by many non Thai.
What I rarely see aside from this “constructive criticism” is, suggestions on how we may move forward, break the bonds so to speak. Ideas from others, with good intentions, would be lapped up by many Thais.
We talk into the night among each other – some sickened by this state of affairs. BUT, we have to live, I go to the market with my black dress – not because of the king, but, because of social pressure, fear and all the other reasons that I cannot put into words right now. SO MANY of us do this..
The question therefore, goes deeper, we WANT change, we envy Singapore – after all they changed. How do we get rid of these elite’s, monarchists, et. al. and become a free people, in charge of our own destiny?
Perhaps until “someone” lights the path, we will never know. Lighting the path from within, does not seem possible. It seems we do not have a student like, for example, Jan Palach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Palach
Thank you for caring enough to write about our country Mr Taylor, without any attempt to reduce our value to that of primitives.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
It all depends on where you are coming from. It’s absurd hearing it from those against wearing black or the monarchy in general. It’s all about what’s on your mind. I’ve seen many people, and not just visitors or foreigners, still wearing colours in the country and that has not caused chaos or even a problem. As long as you approach this mourning period with some sort of civility, you are fine.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
“We clearly need more reporting from the provinces and regions outside Bangkok, quite obviously.”
Indeed.
The problem, of course, is that NM doesn’t do “reporting” so much as imaginative reconstructions of abstractions unvisited in reality for decades.
For some of us, the Thai people we live with and live surrounded by are just that, people. For many folks here on NM, they are an abstraction characterized by whatever gothic imagineering they can slip in under the moniker of “anthropology”.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
Me thinks all the hysteria is coming from New Mandala. Thailand calmly mourns the loss of its beloved King.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
350 – 600 baht? Looks like you are paying Falang price!
Here in Chiang Rai have many shops selling very high quality second hand black clothing (looks Korean).
With great cocktail dresses at 199 – 299 baht my partner is planning to stock up.
The return of the divine king
This means that the funeral ceremonies systematically privilege a class of people that was not the main target group of HM when he was alive, right? Does this make any difference since his target group can just as well grief in their villages? Or gives this difference symbolic or tangible benefits to those who can afford travel and clothing, and does this not contradict the sufficiency economy principle?
The return of the divine king
Thai-Theravada kings represent themselves and are represented in art, architecture, mythology and cosmology as king-deities. They have both divine and human natures. This is inherently ambiguous, which is what makes it so powerful — that and beliefs about the nature of hierarchy in Thailand, whereby lesser beings lack the wisdom to see into the thoughts and intentions of more virtuous beings.
Opacity theory. His Majesty’s intentions may have been opaque to his subjects, but theirs were certainly “clear to see” to him. Note how the junta speaks to the press. “Those of ill intention…” (cetana mai di). Intention is the primary determinant of karmic outcome.
The CP is displaying his warm and dutiful “human” side through mourning rituals, while the junta is encouraging free display of signs of the late king’s deity-side and ongoing apotheosis as described by Edoardo in the above article. Edoardo used traditional anthropological methods of participant-observation, study of popular culture, etc. Really, it’s brilliant work, written as events unfold. For this he deserves much credit.
Read Ilse Hayden’s “Symbol and Privilege” about the British crown. $.01 on Amazon. Or Frank & Mani Reynolds’ translation and commentary on the “Three World According to King Ruang,” if there are any left.
It’s never either one or the other.
The essence of this type of research is sometimes noting absence: who’s missing? The cosmological paradigms that are being enacted/performed as the mourning era unfolds posit anonymous, worshipful followers attracted to the late king and his remains, including the royal regalia, by the power of his virtue. The latter acquire the quality of being sacred or saksit: having magical power. (If you really think culture doesn’t count, ask the generals if they make a move without input from their astrologers, often monk-astrologers.) The latest little spot on Thai television shows the princess/es (forgot whom) kindly offering refreshments to the crowds, setting the example of compassion and lovingkindness. These are specific Buddhist virtues (barami), meaning the funerary rites are evolving into the means by which they, too, display their great merit and virtue (in the female domain of food serving … sorry yuck.)
Sometimes the assumptions held in common are subtle, and unconscious in nature.
So who’s absent from these displays, and the royal kathin ceremony, which was kicked off by the CP today at Wat Bowonniwet? He is re-establishing the ritual center of kingdom, aligning it in harmony with the cosmos, demonstrating his great virtue, phra ratchathan, in the manner of his father.
Whether it works or not, who knows? There’s certainly a lot of scurrying going on, by means of symbolic media, like colors and music and celestial displays (like the music played when the CP enters the temple), well understood by Thai people.
Edoardo and other anthropologists are not claiming to have all of the picture. This is merely part, an important part.
For their next project, I sincerely hope the junta jail autocorrect.
Review of Man who accused king
I’m having a some trouble with the chronology of events in your chapters on Narin, his daughters and the monkhood. In particular, I see you to say that the prohibition articulated by the Palace/Sangka against ordaining women followed Narin’s daughters beginning to practice publicly as monks. That proclamation is dated June, 1928. You, however, describe the entire sequence of events beginning with the faux ordination as starting in July of that year, before the proclamation, implying that the palace was reacting to Narin. The proclamation date appears to be correct. And if your other dates are also correct, then Narin’s actions followed it, and the explanation is more complicated. Thanks. Hope you’re still monitoring this page.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
Where and when exactly is all of this “mass hysteria”? And what social forms does it actually take? It seems to me more careful description and explication is needed with regards to the ease with which “hysteria” and “mass hysteria” are tossed around as both descriptions and explanations of current behavior in Thailand.
One would be hard put, I think, to describe any of the activities around Sanam Luang and the Palace as hysteria. Collective effervescence, at times. Collective devotion, yes. But often it looks and feels like the average temple fair-cum-street fair of Thailand – folks milling around and seeing what others are doing, engaging in some personal or familial acts of worship and devotion, buying memorabilia, vendors hawking all sorts of goods, keeping an eye out for the famous, the wealthy and the potent and seeking audiences with or handouts from them them when and if possible.
The moments of collective witch-hunting seem to have occurred primarily in the South and have been fueled by social media. Is any of that a surprise? Social media is, of course, an interactive world often fueled by intense opinions expressed in communicative bubbles and aggressively – even ‘hysterically’ – directed against presumed offending strangers. And the dynamics of social media bleed into “real” social interactions and can fuel such aggressive behavior in face-to-face “real” world interactions in turn.
But having walked the streets and the mourning grounds of Bangkok since October 13th, this is not a city gripped by mass hysteria. And is anything like mass hysteria centrally defining of public behavior in the North, the Central region or the Northeast? Or even the South in general? We clearly need more reporting from the provinces and regions outside Bangkok, quite obviously.
Thailand’s black hole: a Deleuzian take
Nice work. Good to hear from anthropologists 🙂
The return of the divine king
I am gathering documents concerning communist and anarchist movements in Thailand between 1930 – 1980. You seem to have seen something that would suggest facts. Would you mind sharing links?