Dynamic Diversity in Southern Thailand 9749575822

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DYNAMIC

DIVERSITY IN SOUTHERN THAILAND

DYNAMIC DIVERSITY IN SOUTHERN THAILAND

EDITED BY

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

PRINCE OF SONGKLA UNIVERSITY SILKWORM BOOKS

I This publication was made possible by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation. © 2005 by Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. ISBN 974-9575-82-2 First. published in 2005 by Silkworm Books 6 Sukkasem Road, T. Suthep Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand E-mail: [email protected] J Website: www.silkwormbooks.info Set in 10 pt. Janson Text by SilkType Printed by O. S. Printing House, Bangkok 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS

Preface ... ................................................................................... Map of Southern Thailand ............................................................ 1.

Islam, Nationalism, and the Thai State ... Omar Farouk Bajunid

...

2.

Southern Thai Politics: A Preliminary Overview Duncan McCargo

3.

...

vii x

...

1

. ................

21

Voices from the Grassroots: Southerners Tell Stories about Victims of Development ............................................................ Piya Kittavwrn, et al.

31

4.

Consuming Modernity in a Border Community Wattana Sugunnasil

...............

63

5.

The Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle: How the South Was Won . . . and Then Lost Again . ............. Phil King

93

6.

7.

Popular Culture and “Traditional Performance”: Conflicts and Challenges in Contemporary Nang Talung ... ... Paul Dowsey-Magog

...

The Nine Emperor Gods at the Border: Transnational Culture, Alternate Modes of Practice, and the Expansion of the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai ................................................. Jovan Maud

109

153

CONTENTS

8.

9.

Spirit Mediumship in Southern Thailand: The F enrinization of Nora Ancestral Possession ................................................. Marians Guelden

119

Southern Thai Women in Development: A Tale of Two Villages................................................................................... Jawamt Kittitomkool

213

10. Paths to a Possible South: The Dhamma Walk for SongkhlaLake . ........................................... Theodore W. Mayer

241

11. The Social Network Construction of the Baba Chinese Businesses in Phuket ... ............................................... Suleemam N. Wongsuphap

215

12. Paradise at Your Doorstep: International Border Fluidity and Cultural Construction amongst Kelantan’s Thai Community ....................................................................... Irving Chan Johnson •Contributors

...........................................................

299

331

PREFACE

This book is the product of a conference called Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,held in Pattani on June 13-15, 2002. The conference, cohosted by the Pattani campus of Prince of Songkhla University and by the Department of Anthropology of Harvard University, was made possible by the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Toyota Foundation, and the Asia Center and the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. The idea behind the conference was to focus scholars’ attention on the important but often ignored region of southern Thailand and to explore the region in its various aspects ranging from politics, economics, and religion, to the performing arts and issues of social justice. Though a highly diverse and dynamic area socially, politically, and economically, southern Thailand has received comparatively little attention from the Thai government and from academics. Despite the fact that many local southern Thai scholars, as well as a long list of foreign scholars, have conducted research on southern Thailand, there has been no forum to bring such research to intellectual attention; hence this conference. Aiming to foster dialogue among Thai and foreign scholars, the conference brought together scholars, academics, intellectuals, administrators, government and nongovernment officials and grassroots leaders in a unique forum designed to promote scholarship and awareness of the atltural, religious and political reality of southern Thailand. We selected a number of key papers from the conference to explore some of the issues in this book. Here we adopted a modest aim of seeking to present the region of southern Thailand as one where people try to make sense of, and survive in, their increasingly deterritorialized local communities and world multiplicities. The region is undoubtedly a contested territory and its social, cultural and political boundaries are increasingly indei

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PREFACE

terminate and open to social construction in the context of an ever-changing and borderless world. Against this background, the book is intended to reorient the discourse on static and stereotypical regional representations to a more dynamic engagement with, and deconstruction of, such essentialized representations and identities. Highlighted are the struggles of local people and the strategies employed in the conduct of the business of everyday living, border communities and border identities, religious and business networks, changing cultural and art forms and conflicts over access to environmental resources. i It is worth noting that the contributions gathered here were written before escalating violence in 2004 threw the South.into a deep crisis. While the issue was not examined in this book, recent events raise broader questions concerning conflicts and violence in the region. The crisis, we believe, highlights enduring issues that stretch far beyond the government’s renewed emphasis on security and development policies to include questions about how the people and communities in the region might better be understood and how they have managed to contest their deepening integration into and interactions with the increasingly globalized world. It is these questions that many papers in our book seek to address. This book with its title Dynamic Diversity in Southern Thailand, therefore, stands as a collection of diverse accounts of how the dynamics of global; national, and local changes have been experienced, understood, negotiated, managed, and resisted by people in southern Thailand. Its objective is to provide some account of recent academic and non-academic research on southern Thailand. The general goal is to develop a comparative perspective on the constellation of people’s beliefs and actions in their diverse constructions of daily life. The book does not intend to offer a new and unified conceptual framework. Rather, it presents new research findings, approaches, and local issues that can serve to guide future studies and analyses. What is promising at this junction is a new readiness to consider research across a range of topics and to question taken-for-granted assumptions. These concerns are at the forefront of many of the papers in this book The collective result, we believe, is a fruitful outcome of concerted efforts to emphasize the relevance of people’s experiences. The process of bringing this collection to press- was certainly more demanding and complicated than any of us would ever have thought. In this effort to create something of importance, we received much inspiration from Dr. Saroja Dorairajoo of National University of Singapore. Her enthusiasm, dedication, and hard work are greatly appreciated by all of us. We deeply regretted her unfortunate departure before the final publication process. We especially would like to acknowledge the financial support for the publication

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PREFACE

of this book provided by Dr. Rosalia Sciortino from the Rockefeller Foundation. Her continual support, practical advice, and helpful suggestions also deserve our special thanks. We also would like to express our appreciation to all anonymous readers for their time, valuable comments, and helpful recommendations. Like similar collective efforts, this book has been slow in coming; nonetheless, we hope it is worthwhile, given the paucity of new academic literature on southern Thailand. Pattani September 10, 2004

Wattana Sugunnasil, Narumon Kanchanathat, Chailert’Kitprasert, and Imjit Lertpongsombat

ix

MAP OF SOUTHERN THAILAND

'Prachuap

Khirikhan

Jhumphon

Ranonj

Surat Thant

Krabt

Nakhon jSithammarat

Phuketl V

I T * Trang

Phatthalung

A Ci ithiwat 9 Pulau PInang

Penang©

Kedah

1

iganu Perak

® KUalaLumpur

Johor

Singapore

X

ISLAM, NATIONALISM, THE THAI STATE

AND

OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID

No discussion on Islam, nationalism, and the Thai state is.going to be easy or conclusive. This is largely because there are many different if not competing ways of looking at Islam, just as there are various notions of nationalism. The nature of the Thai state too has been continually evolving, exhibiting and emphasizing different characteristics at different times and in different modes and forms. The nature of the traditional Thai polity is certainly not the same as that of the modem nation-state of Thailand, either in territorial or political terms. Even in the traditional period, the Sukhothai model was different from the Ayutthayan model. In the modem period, the nature of the Thai state in the preconstitutional and postconstitutional eras was also not the same. In the last few decades, the Thai state has changed form many times. This paper is a modest attempt to examine the relationship between Islam, nationalism, and the Thai state. The fundamental question that it seeks to address is whether or not Islam is compatible with Thai nationalism and the ideals of the Thai state. We need to begin by looking at Islam. Islam is more than just a religion. Basically it is a faith or a belief but it is also a religious system, a way of life, an experience, an ideology, a culture and a civilization all at once, depending on how we look at it.'There is already an ongoing debate about whether there is actually a single Islam or many Islams. Some scholars have argued that historical Islam should be distinguished from theological Islam, Shariacentered Islam from Sufi-centered Islam; High Islam from Low Islam, Islamic culture from Islamic civilization. Often ambivalent and overlapping notions have mushroomed, such as folk Islam, syncretic Islam, nominal Islam, moderate Islam, fundamentalist Islam, Wahhabi Islam, reformist Islam, radical Islam; militant Islam, regimist Islam; and oppositionist Islam. All of these are over and above the more commonly known divisions between Shia and Sunni Islam. Islam admits a variety of approaches and interpretations. It is

1

OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID

problematic to believe that these are all necessarily irreconcilable differences and schisms. Notwithstanding the legitimate criticisms made by scholars such as Edward Said and Abdel Hamid el-Zein of the dangers of trying to understand the peculiarities of Muslim societies by considering only text-based or idealized Islam (Said 1979; el-Zein 1977), it also must be recognized that Islam has irreducible and uncompromisable criteria which are defined by the Qur’an and the Sunnah, with clearly demarcated tauhidic principles or boundaries. 1 Beyond this there are allowable parameters which can be more elastic, adaptable and liberal. It is argued here that none of the so-called diverse approaches to Islam can afford to differ on tauhid or the basic principles of faith, giving them a measure of commonality that transcends whatever other differences they may have. It is therefore in the nature of Islam itself that while there must be absolute tauhidic conformity, a more pluralistic or democratic approach is also sanctioned in relation to how Muslim communities may be organized politically, culmrally, and ethnically according to the demands of their respective contexts and environments. Muslims are diverse in all kinds of horizontal orientations and this diversity is what should be described as Muslim diversity. The experience of the heterogeneous Muslims in Thailand clearly illustrates this point about how Islam can adapt to its environment without compromising its essence and its fundamental principles. It is unhelpful to imagine that Islam is irrevocably rigid, uncompromising, and exclusive. It is not. Islam in Thailand, while maintaining its essential characteristics and its distinctiveness, has also been able to acquire its own Thai characteristics, which are sanctioned by its teachings. Islam can be at home in Thailand, regardless of the size of its following or its social or political peripherality or marginality. Because of the tauhidic bonds Muslims have with other Muslims in the moral community of the ummah, they will also maintain overlapping affinities with other members of the ummah beyond the Thai national frontiers. Nationalism may be defined in any number ofways. It seems to have taken different forms in different societies. The debate on what constitutes nationalism and the significance of its variegated roles is far from resolved. At best, nationalism can be described as protean and polymorphous. The general trend is for the phenomenon of nationalism to be associated with the emergence of the modern nation with its real or imagined roots. As the modem nation is often territorially defined whether or not it emerges as a single state, nationalism is assumed to have a given territorial component. This is not, however, to suggest that nationalism is essentially defined by specific national boundaries, although in the majority of cases it is likely to be so, but rather to underline the fact that territories continue to constitute a primary focus of political sentiments which bind people together. When we talk of 2

ISLAM, NATIONALISM,

AND THE THAI STATE

Thai nationalism we are usually referring to the nationalism that is born within the territorial frontiers of modem Thailand. However, we cannot deny that Thais who live outside of Thailand, as refugees, expatriates, or ethnic minorities of other nations, are equally capable of sharing similar nationalist sentiments or aspirations. But even in the case of the latter, the territorial connection remains relevant. Nationalism always has a particularistic territorial limitation since nations are by nature spatially limited. The situation, however, is very different when it comes to universal communities whose bonds of fraternity are not necessarily defined through territory alone, although given territories which overlap significantly with existing universal bonds tend to reinforce collective perceptions of commonality and uniqueness. When Islam is viewed as an uncompromising monolith, the Muslims as an ummah or a universal community are often seen as people who have perennial problems trying to reconcile the universalistic demands of their faith with the more parochial calls of nationalism from the respective countries in which they live. Islam is invariably seen as being inherently incompatible with nationalism. Countries with a Muslim majority or those often described as Muslim countries are generally thought to have the greatest problem in trying to balance the idealistic premises of their universal faith with the practical needs of their more narrowly based nationalisms. Indeed, the whole evolution of Muslim history, across time and space, seems to be a history of the continual interaction, interplay, conflict, and accommodation between the universal and unchanging ideals of Islam and the contextual and practical realities in which Muslims live as communities. Nevertheless, the main corpus of existing academic literature on Islam, nationalism and the Muslims seems to focus primarily on the situation in the Middle East, which has for a long time been regarded as the traditional heartland of the Muslim world. This paper represents a modest effort to examine the relationship between Islam, nationalism, and the Thai state. The paper intends to show how well the Muslims in Thailand, which has a Buddhist majority, have integrated within the polity —and have even been able to identify with the various broad strands of nationalisms that have emerged in Thailand without losing their commitment to Islam or their sense of identity as Muslims, as long as these strands were not defined in an exclusively religious or ideological manner. The paper demonstrates that the Muslims in Thailand are generally a highly adaptable minority group capable of fostering their political and cultural loyalties to their respective states without undermining their own identity as Muslims or their loyalty to Islam as a religion. Thailand is a country with a Buddhist majority and a Buddhist monarchy, but Islam has always been accorded official patronage because of its deep historical roots in the Thai polity and its strength as the religion with the second largest number of adherents. Exact figures as to how many Muslims 3

OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID

really reside in Thailand are elusive, but it is probably reasonable to assume that they constitute anywhere from 5 to 8 percent of the total Thai population, which is now. estimated to be around 62 million. 2 By the most conservative estimate, there are more, than three million Muslims in, Thailand today. Ethnically and culturally, the Muslims in ■ Thailand are by no means a monolithic group, although officially they are all known as “Thai-Islam” or “Thai-Mussalim” (Omar 1988, -24), In popular parlance they are often referred, to as khaek, a pejorative label meaning “guests? or “dark-skinned visitors,” to which they strongly object (Omar 1988, 25). The Muslims- in Thailand are essentially a heterogeneous group, but for analytical purposes it may be useful to classify them into two, broad categories, Thai Muslim and Malay Muslim, bearing in mind that the boundaries between the two categories are not rigid. i The Thai Muslims, who are generally more assimilated into Thai society, are represented ,by various ethnic groups such as the Thai Malay, Thai, Ho Chinese,' Javanese, Cham, Pathan, Tamil,- Persian, Arab, Sam Sam,. Bengali, and Baweanese (Omar 1988, 5—12). The Malay Muslims, however, constitute the biggest ethnic group in the broader Muslim community in Thailand and appear to be the most resistant to assimilation into Thai society, despite the fact that in recent. years their Malay identity has undergone a substantial transformation. Even so, there are signs that although the Malay Muslims still, by and large, cherish their cultural and linguistic distinctiveness, they have at the same time .become much more integrated within Thailand. This holds true especially in the fields of language, education, commerce, and the economy. TheThai Muslims have always tended to be positive about their Thai identity. In fact,.although in many ways there .are still tangible traces of their distinctive original cultures and although they do continue to communalize, along their respective subethnic lines in certain areas, the cultural and linguistic boundaries, that formerly insulated them from the ethnic Thais have now become much more porous and elastic. In a sense, they have emerged almost as a new community, decidedly Muslim in faith but recognizably Thai in culture. Geographically, Muslims are to be found in virtually every province in Thailand,- .although their number varies from province to province. As of 1992 there were a total of 2,7-99 registered mosques spread over fifty-three of seventy-three of the kingdom’s provinces (Jhabian-Masjid 1993., 673). The, figure is much higher if unregistered and recently registered mosques are taken into consideration. In the southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat, and Satun, which lie close to>Malaysia, Muslims make up the majority population, reversing the overall national trend.' It is the Malay Muslims who predominate in these provinces rather than the Thai Muslims. There also is a growing number of converts to Islam throughout Thailand. Thai Muslims live in both rural and .urban areas of the kingdom. Occupationally, they are very diverse, although the great majority seems to

4

ISLAM, NATIONALISM,

AND THE THAI STATE

be engaged in fishing, fanning, and agriculture. The Muslims in Thailand have always been a part of the business landscape and are represented by established trading families as well as the ubiquitous vendor&on the local markets and new shopping complexes. The, Muslims maintain a virtual monopoly on the beef and cattle business in the kingdom. With the current emphasis on industrialization, many Muslims have become factory workers and managers. There are a small but growing number of Muslim bureaucrats and professionals in Thailand.1Apart from the Malay Muslims, whose Malay identity distinguishes. them from the others, Muslims in Thailand increasingly share many common cultural traits with other Thais except in matters of religion. The majority of the Muslims in Thailand are Sunnis following the Shafiee school. There are a small number of Hanafi followers, especially among the Haw Chinese and the Indians. The Shias also have a strong base in Thailand, especially in the Thonburi district of Bangkok. They established themselves in Thailand several centuries .ago and occupied a prominent role during the golden years of the Ayutthayan era. There are no serious tensions between them and the larger Muslim community, although the recent phenomenon of conversion to Shiism by younger members of the Sunni majority, especially in the Malay-Muslim-dominated areas of the extreme 5South, has created some difficult problems for the local community. Other matters, such as the tussle for leadership between the traditionalists and the fundamentalists, the competition for influence between the reformists, and the others, -and the intracommunal tensions generated by tabligb activities, constitute some of the major issues feeing the Muslim community in Thailand today. The Qaddiyani movement, based on Ahmadiya teachings, 3 which are considered deviationist by' orthodox Islam, is not tolerated in Thailand by the Muslims themselves although legally it may operate -freely within the country. Movements like al-Arqam, which has been banned, in Malaysia, -and the more informal tabligb and dakwah activities, flourish. In this respect, Muslims in Thailand appear to enjoy greater religious>freedom than those in countries where strict monitoring and control of Islamic activities are undertaken to protect the officially-sanctioned school.of Islam.

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND The history of Islam inThaiiand stretches back several centuries. The Muslims were already an established community in Sukhothai from as early as the thirteenth century a.d. This was significant, as Sukhothai was actually the first unified Thai kingdom to emerge in Thailand. It was,*however, not until the subsequent Ayutthayan era that the role of the Muslims expanded greatly. 5

OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID

The rise to prominence of Ayutthaya as a regional political power coincided with die period of Muslim dominance in trade in Southeast Asia and the spread of Islam in the region, particularly in the Malay Archipelago. The growing presence and influence of the Muslims in Ayutthaya was directly attributable to both of the above regional phenomena. From this period on, two major trends characterized the nature of the Muslim presence in Thailand: a role in the capital city and the royal court, and a role in the Malay-Muslim tributary kingdoms in the isthmus region and the northern Malay peninsula. These were kingdoms like Pattani, Kedah, Kelantan, and Irengganu, which gave their nominal political allegiance to Ayutthayan rulers while retaining considerable social, cultural, economic, religious, and political autonomy. The Muslim community in Ayutthaya was cosmopolitan, comprising Indians, Persians, Arabs, Chams, Malays, Macassarese, Acehnese, and even Siamese. The Muslims assumed enormous influence in trade and commerce. They also served in the royal military. The affinity they enjoyed with the traditional Buddhist polity was clearly illustrated by the trust placed in them by the Ayutthayan rulers who appointed them as ministers, advisers, governors, and servants of the court. 4 The state even gave royal patronage to Islam, supporting not just its religious festivities and activities but also the construction of mosques. The Shias in particular enjoyed a privileged status. Ayutthaya, through the influence ofits Muslim community, maintained cordial relations with various Muslim states of the time. Following the Ayutthaya era, the modernization of the traditional polity witnessed the progressive centralization of power, territorial consolidation, and bureaucratization of administration. This affected the established role of the Muslims in the Thonburi interregnum from a.d. 1767 to 1782 and especially in the subsequent Chakri era, although they continued to play a significant role in directing Siamese political and economic affairs at least until the first few decades of the nineteenth century. The status of Muslims as the largest single minority group in the Thai kingdom, next in importance only to the Siamese, was soon undermined as a result of the massive influx of Chinese immigrants into Thailand. Of course there were also new Muslim immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and the Dutch East Indies settling down in Thailand, but compared to the Chinese their numbers were small and their impact limited. Within Thailand, there was considerable population movement, which involved the spread of Muslims into a wider geographical area. In the post-Second World War period, a fresh wave of overland immigration from Burma and China brought Burmese Muslims as well as Chinese Muslims, the “Haw Chinese,” adding to the Muslim population in the kingdom as well as further increasing its heterogeneity.

6

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AND THE THAI STATE

The culturally distinct Malay Muslims of the former Pattani kingdom, who constitute the majority population in the southernmost provinces of the new territorial frontiers of modem Thailand, resented and resisted their forcible incorporation into the Thai kingdom and the loss of their long-cherished political autonomy. The corresponding birth arid development of Thai nationalism in the twentieth century, particularly in the constitutional monarchy era, defined primarily within the Thai Buddhist frame of reference, alienated the Malay Muslims further. Relations between the Malay Muslims and the Thai state soon became characterized by a history of conflicting nationalisms, Thai at the center of the Thai state and Malay at its southern periphery. Culturally, the cosmopolitanism of the Muslim community in Thailand manifests itself in the plurality of cultures and subcultures, especially in the capital. Hence, the Muslims in Bangkok today are ethnically and culturally diverse, just as they were in the Ayutthaya period. Unlike their Malay-Muslim counterparts in the southernmost provinces, who were generally resistant to assimilation or even integration into Thai society and tried to insulate themselves culturally from the Thais, the. Muslims in Bangkok —and even those elsewhere outside the Malay-Muslim heartland —have always been positive about and receptive to Thai' cultural influences. This is basically due to two factors. The first is the extensive phenomenon of intermarriage with Thais, especially -Muslim men and Thai women. The institution of intermarriage was the most important sociocultural medium which brought the Muslims into direct contact with the Thais. The Muslim family in Thailand, outside of the Malay-Muslim cultural belt, is invariably a direct or indirect product of intermarriage with the Thais. The second factor, which has been facilitated by the first one, is that of language and culture. With Thai women constituting an important part of the Muslim family, it is not difficult to imagine the ease with which the Thai linguistic and cultural orientation of the Muslims has proceeded. Thus, paradoxically, despite the cultural differences that exist between the various Muslim groups, it is Thai culture that provides them with a common identity. The Thai language, social manners, etiquette and customs, attire, and cuisine adapted to Muslim dietary rules all bind the Muslims into a national socioreligious community. Although the cultural and ethnic pluralism of the Muslims might be reflected in Javanese Muslims living around Masjid Jama, the Baweanese around Masjid Bornean, the Chams in Ban Khrua, and the South Asians around Masjid Haroon, the primacy of the Thai language is beyond question in all of these communities. It has become the primary language of daily communication and Islamic religious literature and instruction for all of them. Ajluslims may have their Muslim names, but they invariably also adopt Thai names. In matters of attire and manners too, they

7

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The case of the Malay Muslims in the southernmost provinces of Thailand is very different, despite all kinds of systematic attempts to assimilate them. Crucial elements of their Malay culture and identity still persist even though the Thai language has, through modem education, gained greater acceptance today than ever before. The new generation of Malay Muslims may have become increasingly proficient in both Thai and Malay, but people remain overwhelmingly attached to Malay culture and identity. z THE MAINTENANCE OF RELIGIOUS IDENTITY Religious identity matters greatly to the Muslims. This is even more so when they live as minorities in preponderantly non-Muslim environments like Thailand, where other markers of identity between them and the majority community overlap or become blurred, particularly as a consequence of their assimilation or integration into the wider polity. As Islam is both a personal and a communal religion, the preservation of its identity becomes the primary task not just of the individual believer but also the community through the communal or- organized practice of Islam. For this to happen, community space is necessary, both to house religious institutions and to create a viable communal living environment that will support organized religious life. In Thailand, it is invariably the mosque, or surao, that serves as the focal point of the community life of the Muslims.' 5 If registered as well as unregistered mosques are taken into account, the number of mosque communities that exist throughout Thailand would be in the region of three thousand. The mosque is usually used for a whole range of religious activities including the conduct of daily congregational prayers, Friday prayers, prayers during the month of Ramadan, funeral services; Qur’anic classes, religious instruction, religious festivities, and marriage ceremonies. It is also common for a mosque to double as a religious school. 6 The mosque is the basic communal unit which undertakes- the constant and continual socialization function meant to promote Islamic community life and preserve the Islamic communal identity, but it is by no means the only such institution. A whole range of other Muslin institutions that exist in Thailand, like the pondok and madrasah (religious schools), Muslim societies and associations, Mosque management committees at the local, provincial, and central levels, Islamic courts, Islamic appointments like Data Yutthitham (Muslim judges), Muslim foundations, the office of the Chularatmontri or Sheikhul-Islam, Minister-Councilor for Muslim Affairs in Thailand, Muslim newspapers, and Muslim radio and TV programs and channels. All individually and collectively contribute to the projection and maintenance of the Islamic identity in Thailand. 8

ISLAM, NATIONALISM,

AND THE THAI STATE

The above basically constitute the forms in which the Islamic identity is nurtured, and preserved. The cultural and linguistic medium used in these forms, however, .is. not necessarily the same all over Thailand. Among the Chinese Muslims in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, for example, it is a Chinese language, usually Mandarin or. Yunnannese, that is used-as the main medium of. communication;. the communal Islamic identity that is promoted is invariably couched in Chinese cultural terms rather than Thai ones. In Masjid Java in Bangkok, until ten years ago or so, the language' of the Friday sermon was always Bahasa Indonesia, not Thai. The same was xme ot Masjid Indonesia in-Bangkok. Cultural pluralism, which is sanctioned andsupported by Islam, characterizes Muslim society. Within ; this broad picture of heterogeneity, there are essentially two major cultural poles which divide Muslim society in Thailand,, namely Malay and. Thai. Historically, psychologically, and politically, it is Malay culture that is widely .thought to be -the foundation of Islamic identity in Thailand, although this may not necessarily be the case. To be a Malay is to be a Muslim although the converse is not necessarily true—a Muslim.need not be a.Malay. ‘For the Malay Muslims in Thailand, the mosque is not the sole focus of their expression of communal identity. A whole range of other overlapping institutions exist within a large and well-insulated Malay- cultural territory that politically constitutesra part of Thailand. Therefore, unlike elsewhere in Thailand, where Thai is gaining momentum as the principal language of Islamic communication, Malay is still the definitive Islamic medium and the undisputed marker of Islamic identity among Muslims who. live as real minorities .in the Malay cultural heartland in Thailand and in the provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat. The preeminent role of Malay in this geographical area has been.sustained in a number of significant ways including: (1) the continued common use of the language among the Muslims in these provinces; (2) geographical contiguity, with the northern Malay states of Kedah, Perak, and Kelantan in Malaysia, which has created cultural permeability between the two regions; (3) the availability of religious literature in Malay and its constant source ‘of supply from Malaysia and Indonesia; (4) the high-concentration of religious schools which still extensively use Malay as an instructional medium; and (5) the existence of a large pool of foreigneducated!local religious scholars from established Islamic institutions of learning in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Middle East, and even the Indian subcontinent. • t • * •, > .For centuries in the traditional period, the Thai state had maintained a pragmatic political relationship with the Malay Kingdom of Pattani, which it claimed as part of its domain. However, a considerable degree of latitude was always- granted to the Malay Kingdom, which amounted to some kind of autonomy. There was.no attempt to rule the region directly or to displace 9

OMAR FAROUK BAJUNID

the local aristocracy. In fact, the Thai state worked with the local leadership to assert its indirect control. In the Bangkok period, when Thailand began to be reorganized territorially, the Malay periphery was forcibly incorporated into the modernizing Thai state and accordingly transformed in the Thai mould. The bureaucratization of the Thai state led to the direct displacement of the role of the local elites when all administrative officials became directly accountable to Bangkok. The cultural and socioreligious autonomy of the Malays in the Pattani region also became threatened as the Thai state began to embark on a policy of forced Thai cultural expansion. It was this new cultural and political confrontation that created Thai nervousness about the traditional orientation of the Malay-Muslim population towards Malay culture and identity. The Thai state feared that this would consolidate Malay-Muslim demands for autonomy or for outright secession from Thailand. The unresolved problem of Malay-Muslim irredentism and separatism continues to be a cause of grave concern for Thailand, which is mindful of its vulnerability. Within this context, the state has felt persuaded to offer Muslims a range of religious concessions in order to reorient them towards Thai culture and Thailand. Thus, the Thai-based Islamic identity has emerged to become the officially sanctioned Islamic identity in Thailand. Although, as we have seen earlier, Islam has coexisted very well with Thai culture for centuries, it is only in recent times that the Thai language has been elevated as the language of Islam in Thailand. Consequently, there is a growing corpus of Islamic religious literature in Thai. There have already been a few versions of translations of the Qur’an. Collections of Hadiths too have been translated into Thai. The expanding role of the Thai language within Thailand’s Muslim public sphere, however, has not dislodged the entrenched position of Malay as the traditional language of Islam, especially among the Malay Muslims of Thailand. Interestingly, in its effort to undertake the political socialization of the Malay Muslims, the Thai state has been helped by the Thai Muslims. As the principal and immediate beneficiaries of the religious concessions given to the Muslim community as a whole, they do not wish to see the loss of the Malay Muslims, who constitute the.most dynamic segment of Muslim society in Thailand, numerically, culturally, and politically. They therefore feel impelled to mediate in the political integration of the Malay Muslims into Thailand. In this process, they have had to develop and consolidate the role of the Thai language as the new national medium of Islam in Thailand. This, of course, has been achieved in a number of ways, including the development of Islamic literature in Thai, Thai-language Muslim newspapers and journals, Islamic media, national training programs, national Muslim associations, and a national network of mosque-based Muslim socioreligious organizations. 10

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AND-THETHAI STATE

For the Thai Muslims who live as minorities outside of the Malay-Muslim cultural belt, the establishment of organized state-sanctioned channels of communication that link them to each other in a national network of mosque bureaucracy provides a crucial socio-organizational focus. This network has emerged at a time when they are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from their Thai Buddhist counterparts linguistically, educationally, occupationally, and culturally. The Malay Muslims too, in recent years, appear to be more receptive to the idea that the national leadership of Islam in Thailand, for practical and political reasons, must be Thai-based. If they want to assume leadership roles, they too will need to adapt to the realities before them, but without necessarily forfeiting their original layer of MalayMuslim identity. The view that both the Malay-Muslim identity and the ThaiMuslim identity can be made to complement rather than to compete with each other seems to be gaining ground as democracy —which seems to be inherently supportive of cultural pluralism —consolidates itself in Thailand.

THE MUSLIMS IN NATIONAL POLITICS The high public profile of the Muslims in the late 1990s was unprecedented in the history of modem Thailand. For the first time in the modem era, a Malay Muslim from Yala, Wan Muhamad Nor Mata, became the president of the Thai National Assembly, serving from 1996 to 2001. The latest Thai Constitution, promulgated in 1997, bears his signature. In the period from 1997 to 2001, for the first time ever, the foreign minister of Thailand, Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, was also a Muslim. There are in thepresent parliament (2001— 2006) fourteen Muslim parliamentarians and severalMuslim senators. In every Thai parliament since 1932 there has been some Muslim representation, but prior to the 1990s it was always limited to a few individuals and they were never able to function as a Muslim fiction. Before 1992, Malay-Muslim representation in particular was either negligible or ineffective. In the post1992 period, Malay-Muslim representation was not only more visible but also became more credible. In the South, the Muslims dominated the provincial legislative assemblies of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. A number of the southern municipalities had Muslim mayors (Ahmad 1997, 313). The Muslims are represented in almost all political parties, although traditionally they have always been associated with the Democrat Party, one of Thailand’s oldest. Wan Muhamad Nor Mata, a former leading figure in the New Aspiration Party (NAP), has now become a senior leader of the ruling Thai Rak Thai Party, currently holding a full ministerial portfolio; Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, the former foreign minister, remains a senior member of the Democrat Party. 11

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The degree of religious and political freedom that the Muslims enjoy in Thailand today is also without precedent in the country’s recent history? They are now officially allowed to use or to revert to Muslim names. Muslim women have been granted the right to wear the hijab- in government educational institutions and in public service. Muslim prayer rooms, musalla, have been set aside in' strategic public places including the Don Muang International Airport, the Hua Lamphong Railway Station, and even the parliament building. Even universities allow Muslims to organize weekly Friday prayers on campus. It is no coincidence that all of the above developments have taken place at a time when democratic 1 development in Thailand" seems to be at its peak. There appears to be a strong correlation between democratic liberalization in Thailand and the improvement in the life of the Muslims, who are able to secure greater freedom, more rights, and better opportunities. The practice of parliamentary democracy is favorableto the Muslims because, among other reasons, they constitute the critical majority in many constituencies, especially although not exclusively in the southern provinces of Pattani, "Yala, Narathiwat, Satun, and Songkhla. Even in Bangkok there are constituencies in which Muslim votes are critical. Coalition politics in Thailand, which is essentially about bargaining between small political parties since no single party commands enough seats in parliament to form a one-party government, has also helped create avenues for Muslim members of parliament to use their collective bargaining power to vie for ministerial posts. The perception of the tangible benefits of democracy has also motivated Thai Muslims to become more democratic in thought and behavior. Arecent study by Suria Saniwa concludes that the democratization of the Thai political system has significantly contributed to the deradicalization of Malay-Muslim opposition in Thailand (Suria 1 998). In another study, Thammasat University political scientist Chaiwat Satha-Anand highlights how the Cham Muslims of Ban Klirua in Bangkok, using their Islamic symbols and identity, including their history, have been effective for almost ten years in staging a civil protest to arrest the construction of a mega-highway project which would have led to the demolition of their homes and the dislocation of their community in the heart of Bangkok (Chaiwat .2001, 95-98). The protest apparently succeeded in mobilizing the general population to be sympathetic towards their specific case as well as creating public awareness of the destructive aspect of development affecting all citizens of Thailand. In fact, Chaiwat suggests that the Cham Muslims’ peaceful but effective action has been seen by many as an exemplary model of civil society engagement in Thailand. (Chaiwat 2001, 98) In another study, Preeda Prapertchob highlights the little-kribwn fact that Muslim student leaders who were associated with the Thai Muslim Students Association had been at the forefront of Thai student activism since the late 1960s. (Preeda 2001,*106—107). 12

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Since constitutional rule was introduced in Thailand in 1932, Thai democracy has had a checkered history. In fact, for the greater part of the last six decades, Thailand was under one kind of authoritarian military rule or another, which not only constricted opportunities for meaningful Muslim political participation but also led to the harsh oppressions of the Malay Muslims in the southern provinces. It only has been during the brief democratic periods between 1945-1947, 1974-1976, and 1986-1991 and in the post-1992 era that the Muslims have been able to articulate their political grievances openly. Within this scenario of increasing political liberalization, Muslim parliamentarians in the southern provinces were able to establish an interparty political fection cAledAl-Wahdah in 1 986 to promote and safeguard the collective interests of Thai Muslims through democratic means. The aims of Al-Wahdah were to (1) unite the Muslims in Thailand, (2) safeguard the rights and interests of the Muslims in Thailand, (3) work towards the political, economic, educational, and social development of Muslims, (4) inculcate political awareness, (5) introduce Islamic systems to the Muslims, and (6) develop and promote the democratic system (Ahmad 1997, 303). The establishment efiAl-Wahdah consolidated the political position of the Muslims within parliament and enabled them to engage in effective political bargaining for greater representation in government. The number ofMuslim parliamentarians from the South progressively grew from 6 in 1979; to 7 in 1983; 7 in 1986; 7 in 1988; 13 in 1992 (both in the March and September elections); and finally to 14-in 1995.7 The quality ofMuslim representation also improved dramatically. The Muslim parliamentarians were not only better educated but were also very talented individuals. They came from the ranks of those who had benefited from Thai secular education, which had been provided to Muslims as part of the government’s affirmative action program to help integrate them into Thai society. The turning point came in October 1992, in the coalition government led by Chuan Leekpai, when two Muslim members of parliament were appointed deputy ministers and a third, deputy speaker. (Ahmad 1997, 322-323) Den lohmeena, son of the late MalayMuslim opposition leader Haji Sulong, was made deputy minister of the interior, and Dr. Surin Pitsuwan was given the portfolio of deputy foreign minister. After the 1995 elections, Wan Muhamad Nor -Mata became the first Muslim to be made a full minister in the modem Thai government. 8 The new political profile that Muslims now enjoy in Thailand is no doubt the function of a combination of factors, including their high level of political integration within Thailand, the exemplary level of tolerance and accommodation displayed by their Buddhist counterparts, and the role of enlightened political leadership. Notwithstanding the positive developments, it would be wrong to conclude that with greater opportunities for political participation and with more 13

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tangible involvement in national politics, all the pre-existing social, economic, cultural, religious, and political woes and grievances of the Muslim community simply disappeared. This is untrue, especially for the Malay-Muslimdominated areas of the southern provinces. The positive trend of greater political integration within the national democratic framework alone has not been sufficient to eliminate the grave social problems that confront the MalayMuslim community in the extreme South. The high incidence of drug addiction and drug trafficking, high unemployment rates, low educational achievements, poverty, high divorce rates, gangsterism, and crime continue to haunt Malay-Muslim society in Thailand. The threat of armed separatism, although significantly weakened has not been totally eradicated. Acts of terrorism continue to take place with alarming frequency. For example, from around December 2001 to October 2002, twenty-one police officers were shot dead in the five southernmost provinces (Nation, October 30, 2002). During this period, schools were set on fire and temples and other public buildings were bombed. According to another report, there were 70 violent incidents in 1997; 37 in 1998; 14 in 1999; and 28 in 2001 (Bangkok Post, November 1 1, 2002). There have even been allegations that international terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda andJemaah Islamiya (JI), have established footholds in Thailand. Several Thai Muslim suspects have been detained and are awaiting trial. The overwhelming majority of the Muslims in the South acknowledge that all is not well with their community, but point out that many of the problems they face are not necessarily of their own making Similarly, Muslims often argue that the above problems are by no means unique to their community or the Malay-Muslim region, but also exist among the Thai Buddhists and are prevalent elsewhere as well. But to underline their awareness of and commitment to responsible citizenship in the Thai nation, the Muslims have demanded that the root causes of these problems be investigated and that proper measures be undertaken to overcome them. The fact that Muslims are now represented in government at almost every level, unlike a few decades ago, has reassured them that their legitimate voices will not be ignored and that their input on how to resolve these problems will be taken 'into consideration. So has the existence of numerous other channels for them to articulate their grievances within the political party system, government, and civil society. It is the context within which these problems have arisen that needs to be understood, for therein lies the potential solution. It is not Islam that is the problem and therefore it should not be seen as such. On the contrary, many Muslims in Thailand would argue that Islam, faithfully observed by its followers and properly harnessed by the community and state, could serve as a formidable barrier to vice, crime, and antisocial and antinational attitudes and behavior. 14

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CONCLUSION The Muslims have always been part of the historical and political landscape of Thailand. Their role was extremely significant in the traditional period. As a religious community they were different in many ways from the majority community, yet they were easily accommodated by the traditional systems. They were able to develop .their niche within the Thai polity despite their cultural, ethnic, and religious differences. The reorganization of the traditional state introduced factors that were not present in the earlier period. But even then, relations between the Muslims and the majority Buddhists were still generally amicable. There is something in the nature of local Buddhist society that seems to make Buddhists reasonably tolerant of others who are different from them in terms of beliefs, origins, or outlooks, as long as Buddhism is not politicized. There have been few cases of interpersonal disagreements or interreligious rivalry. On the whole, the Muslims in Thailand, throughout their centuries-old association with the Thai Buddhist polity, have never experienced any mass persecution or systematic discrimination. Islam in Thailand has always been accorded the recognition and respect it deserves. The promulgation of the 1997 Constitution, which elevated Thailand into a fully democratic state, removing the status of Buddhism as a state region, was a remarkable development which was perhaps inconceivable just a decade earlier. It demonstrated the maturity of the lawmakers who realized that only when Thailand became a full democratic state could it become inclusive. A Buddhist state would-be naturally exclusive. This development is definitely a tribute to the enlightened mentality of Thailand’s elected leaders and the tolerant nature of Thai Buddhism. There is also something about the practice of Islam in Thailand that has allowed it to coexist with other religions —especially the majority Buddhist religion —and other cultures without much difficulty. The flexibility of the Muslims made it possible for Islam to achieve a very high level of coexistence with Buddhism for along time. It was the period of the modernization of the Thai polity in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries A.D. that created the most unsettling circumstances for the population, Muslim and nonMuslim alike, when the nature of the Thai state itself was in the process of being redefined. Even then, religious coexistence between Islam and Buddhism was preserved. When Thailand transformed itself into a bureaucratic polity, the Muslims readjusted their position to relate themselves, fairly successfully too, to the demands of that political system. Adaptability was the keyword. Of course, as the Muslims in Thailand are themselves characterized by heterogeneity, and cherish a strong sense of religious- and cultural identity despite their perceived and designated minority status, the practice of liberal 15

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democracy seems to be the best guarantee for their continued survival as a distinctive yet constructive community. As the Thai state has become a fully democratic state, the Muslims in Thailand will now be able to harness their potential more fully as equal and loyal citizens. The issue really is not whether Islam in Thailand is compatible with Thai nationalism, because its * compatibility is a time-tested fact. It is how best to optimize the contribution of the Muslims in Thai nation-building that seems to be a more relevant question. With liberal democracy and civil society almost in full blossom in Thailand now, the Muslims can be expected to assume an unwavering commitment to the laudable ideals of modern Thai nationhood.

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NOTES I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the help and cooperation of the InterUniversity Work-in-Progress Seminar members in Hiroshima for giving me the opportunity to discuss the paper with them in preparation for its publication. I am particularly grateful to Professors Richard Parker, Carol Rinnert, Yulia Mihailova, and Masashi Yamamoto, Dr. Hamid Nedjat, and Mr. Takafumi Sato for their meticulous reading of the first draft and detailed comments. I would also like to thank Dr. Saroja Dorairajoo and Dr. Wattana Sugunnasil for their helpful comments. My thanks are also due to the anonymous referees for their very useful suggestions. For various reasons, however, I have not been able to accommodate all their comments and suggestions, and I remain solely responsible for the outstanding weaknesses of the paper. 1. The term “tauhidic” used here is derived from the Islamic concept of “tauhid,”' which basically emphasizes the unity of God. For a clear and comprehensive discussion of the term, see Abdul Jalil Mia’s article entitled “The Concept of Tauhid” (1997, 4652). See also Tozimuddin Siddiqui’s paper entitled “Tauhid —Oneness of God” (1997, 67-76). 2. On the problem of Muslim statistics see Omar 1988, 1-2; Omar 1987, 8; and Imtiyaz 1998, 279. 1 am convinced that the Muslim population is at least 5 percent of the total population and could very well be as high as 8 percent. It is rather difficult to justify a higher estimate. 3. For more information on the Qaddiyani movement, see Ehsan Elahi Zaheer 1973. 4. For a detailed description of the role of one distinguished Persian family and its line from the Ayutthayan era through the early Chakri period, see Oudaya Bhanuwongse 1987 (b.e. 2530). 5. The surao is smaller than a mosque but undertakes most of its routine functions, especially teaching. Its most important role is to provide a meeting ground for locals to assemble for minor religious activities. Friday prayers, Idul Fitri, and lidul Adha prayers are usually only performed at the mosque because of the spatial constraints of the surao. , 6. It is now common for mosques to run kindergarten classes for the community all over Thailand. In the Malay-Muslim areas this kindergarten is called by its Malay name, tadika. 7. 1 have compiled these figures from the works of Ahmad Omar Chapakia 1997 and Suria Saniwa 1998. 8. Wan Muhamad Nor Mata was appointed speaker as well as president of the National Assembly following the change of government. that occurred in Thailand in 1997 as a result of the Asian economic crisis.

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REFERENCES Abdul Jalil Mia. 1997, The Concept of Tauhid. In Encyclopaedic Survey of Islamic Culture, Vol. 1, edited by Mohamed Taher, 46-52. New Delhi: Anmol Publications. Ahmad Omar Chapakia. 1997. PolitikThai Dan ReaksiMasyarakat Islam Di Selatan Thai, 1932-1994 [Thai Politics and the Reaction of the Muslim Community in South Thailand, 1932-1994; (in Malay)]. Ph.D, diss.,JabatanSejarah,Universiti Malaya. Chaiwat Satha-Anand. 2001. Defending.Community, Strengthening Civil Society: A Muslim Minority’s Contribution to Thai Civil Society. In Islam and Civil Society in SoutheastAsia, edited by Nakamura Mitsuo, Sharon Siddique, and Omar Farouk Bajunid, 91-103. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Ehsan Elahi Zaheer. 1973. Qadiyaniat: An Analytical Survey. Lahore, Pakistan: Idara Tarjuman Al-Sunnah. (1972). Imtiyaz Yusuf. 1998. Islam and Democracy in Thailand: Reforming the Office of the Chularajmontri/Shaikh al-IsIam.yowzmzZ of Islamic Studies 9 (2): 277-298. Omar Farouk Bajunid. 1984.The.Historical and Transnational Dimensions ofMalayMuslim Separatism in Southern Thailand. In Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia, edited by LimJoo-Jock and Vani S., 234—257. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ---------. 1986. The Origins and Evolution of Malay-Muslim Ethnic Nationalism in Southern Thailand. In Islam and Society in Southeast Asia, edited by Taufik Abdullah and Sharon Siddique. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ---------. 1987. The Political Integration of the Muslims in Burma and Thailand: A Cross-National Analysis. Ethnic Studies Report 5(1), -

. 1988. The Muslims of Thailand: A Survey. In The Muslims of Thailand: Historical and Cultural Studies, edited by A. Forbes. Bihar, India: Centre for Southeast Asian Studies.

---------. 1999. The Muslims in Thailand: A Review. Tonan Ajia Kenkyu (Southeast Asian Studies) 37 (2): 210-234. Oudaya Bhanuwongse. b.e. 2530 (1987). A Genealogical Narrative of Sheikh Ahmad Qomi Chao Phya Ecrwom Rajnayok The Persian.Bangkok: Phyathai Wattanapanich Press. Preeda Prapertchob. 2001. Islam and Civil Society in Thailand: The Role of NGOs. In Elam and Civil Society in Southeast Asia, edited by Nakamura Mitsuo, Sharon Siddique, and Omar Farouk Bajunid, 104—116. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Suria Saniwa bin Wan Mahmood. 1998. De-Radicalization of Minority Dissent —A Case Study of the Malay-Muslim Movement in Southern Thailand, 1980-1994. Master’s thesis, School of Social Science, Science University of Malaysia.

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ThabianMasyidNaiPrathetTbaiB.E. 2535 [Registry ofMosques in Thailandin 1992; in Thai]. 1993. Bangkok: Department of Religious Affairs. Tozimuddin Siddiqui. 1997. Tauhid —Oneness of God. In Encyclopaedic Survey of Islamic Culture, edited by Mohamed Taher. Vol. 1, 61-16. New Delhi: Anmol Publications. Zein, Abdul Hamid el-. 1977. Beyond Ideology and Theology: The Search for the Anthropology of Islam. Annual Review of Anthropology 6.

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SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS: A PRELIMINARY OVERVIEW DUNCAN McCARGO

CHARACTERIZING THE POLITICS OF THE SOUTH Prior to the fifth reign, the South of Thailand was recognized as a distinct entity. Kalahom, the Ministry of the South, was responsible for the administrative organization of this part of the kingdom, the minister acting as akind of viceroy (Vickery 1970, 865; Wilson 1967, 144)—though in practice control was rather loose. The reforms of the fifth reign reflected the beginnings of attempts to create a modern nation state in which the distinctiveness of individual regions was marginalized. Siam came under external pressure, especially from the British, to define its borders. In the mid- 1870s, commissioners were appointed to perform the roles of military commanders in the border regions, including one for the South (Pasuk and Baker 1995, 224). These commissioners usurped the roles of local notables; meanwhile, in 1892-94, King Chulalongkorn tciok control of the kalahom ministry that had previously overseen the indirect rule of the South, turning it into the Ministry of Defense. Like the European colonial powers they emulated, Siamese administrators adopted a mixture of direct and 'indirect rule; while most of the South was ruled directly from Bangkok, the seven Islamic southern states were ruled indirectly as monthon Pattani (Vickery 1970, 876), though in 1901 Pattani was incorporated into the monthon of Nakhon SiThammarat(Suhrke 1970, 537). Faced with resistance fromMalay Muslims, Siam ceded the states around Kedah to the British in 1909, while the states around Pattani continued to be ruled with a light touch. The process of integration was continued during the time of Phibun, who suppressed resistance and dissent. As Pasuk and Baker (1995, 270) note: Since assimilation into Siam at the turn of the century, the Malay Muslims of the old Pattani sultanate on the southern border had resisted assimilation into

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the Thai, Buddhist nation. Until the 1930s, Bangkok managed this dissidence by leaving them alone. As part of his nationalist upsurge, Phibun . . . started to enforce assimilation. t

The hereditary rulers of Narathiwat and Pattani retained their positions until 1940 (Vickery 1970, 87 1), but these provinces finally succumbed to full direct rule thereafter. Wilson sees Thailand as divided by social, ethnic, and occupational groups and never highlights the divisions and differences between central Thais, northerners, northeasterners, and southerners (Wilson 1967, 56-57). Following the cue of the Thai elite, he downplays regionalism in favor of a homogenized account of the country’s politics. As Jory notes, this kind of reading has been increasingly challenged in recentyears, as different regional and ethnic groups have grown more assertive about their identities (Jory 2000; on this process in Isan, see McCargo and Krisadawan 2004). In the Deep South, Malay Muslim politics clearly has a very distinctive character, manifesting itself in resistance to centralized Buddhist education through a network of Islamic pondok schools, and in the formation of the Pattani United Liberation Organization in 1968 (Pasukand Baker 1995, 273, 292-93). Insurgents on the southern border formed a strategic alliance with the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), successfully harassing the Thai state for over a decade. At the same time, the politics “distinctive” to the four chaidaen phaktai border provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Satun, and Yala was—and is—very different in character from that of the South as a whole. For many commentators, the large-looming politics of the “southern border” overshadow those of the rest of the region, obfuscating the more complex picture of a region characterized by considerable internal differentiation. Which “South” do we mean? The literature on the region is actually concerned with two overlapping but distinct subregions: the border provinces and the rest. Vickery’s discussion of the classification of provinces in Rama I’s1805 Law on Military and Provincial Ranks reveals only one southern province, Nakhon Si Thammarat, among the eight first- and second-class provinces —though Nakhon was one of only two first-class provinces. Three out of seven thirdclass provinces were in the South —Chaiya (Surat Thani), Phatthalung, and Chumphon —while the rest of the region was of fourth-class or indeterminate status (Vickery 1970, 864—65). In other words, the main political importance of the South lay in.what might be terme'd the middle South, along the Gulf of Siam — especially around Nakhon Si Thammarat, which had briefly declared independence during the reign of King Taksin before being reduced to vassaldom by Rama I. Vickery notes that “among the southern provincial rulers there appears, to have been a disproportionate incidence of success” in 22

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becoming prominent government officials long after their hereditary powers were removed, while a number were also elected to the prewar national assemblies (Vickery 1970, 878, 880-81). Charles Keyes places greater emphasis on the “majority” southern Thai mode of politics, stating; Southern Thai identity is rooted primarily in the political-religious history of the region, especially the history of the towns of Nakhon Si Thammarat and ■Chaiya. Because this history is closely linked in a positive way with the Siamese kingdoms, and because Southern Thai language and customs are not so clearly distinguishable from those of the Siamese as those of the Northern and Northeastern Thai are, Southern Thai identity has tended to be rather muted, although in recent years Southern Thai regionalism has become more evident. (Keyes 1989, 18)

For Keyes, southern- Thai regionalism is not much of a political issue, though he does note that southerners have experienced frustration and alienation at their inability to influence some government policies (Keyes 1989, 131), leading some to join communist-led insurrections. While socioeconomic changes —especially industrialization and seasonal migration — have had dramatic adverse impacts’on the quality of rural life in the Northeast and the North, southern villages typicallyhave a more diversified economy. Subsistence agriculture has often been supplemented by fishing, tin mining, and work on rubber plantations, as well as new businesses such as shrimp farming (Keyes 1989, 167-68). Still, many business activities are the preserve of Sino-Thais, and Keyes argues that ethnicity (central Thai, southern Thai, Chinese, and Malay) remains a far more salient difference in the South than in other parts of the country. Yet he also notes that the South has a tradition of “banditry” (quite distinct from communist or Malay Muslim insurgency), a tradition that testifies to: a social world in which assumptions about the basis of the social order and. z ways in which conflicts within that order can best be mediated are hot shared by at least some of its groups. (Keyes 1989, 168)

Despite attempts to deal with these issues by use of the school system and the sangha to legitimate state rule, “banditry” does persist in some forms. This notion of the South as a potentially renegade region with a propensity for disorder is a highly salient one, begging questions about the origins and nature of banditry. Is such a phenomenon truly separate from support for insurgencies (be they communist, regionalist, or religious in their underpinnings)? What instances in recent years testify to the continuing 23

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importance of banditry as a political phenomenon? Incidents such as the burning down of a controversial tantalum plant in Phuket by a 3,000-strong mob in June 1986 reinforce this notion of the South as a potential powderkeg. The Thaksin government has repeatedly claimed that violent incidents in the border provinces since 2001 are the result of banditry or conflicts of interest, rather than politically motivated terrorism. (See, for example, Bangkok Post,April 2, 2002, “Still Much To Do in the Far South.”)

THE SOUTHERN BORDER k From 70 to 80 percent of the population of the four border provinces is Malay Muslim; except in Satun, Malay is the dominant language. In 1975, it was reported that 85 percent of tambon village heads in Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat were Muslims who could not read or write in Thai (Girling 1981, 265), while the provinces were administered largely by central Thai Buddhist bureaucrats who could not speak Malay. As recently as 1947, a petition reportedly signed by half of the adult Muslim population of Yala, Narathiwat, and Pattani was submitted to the United Nations, demanding incorporation of these provinces into the new Federation of Malaya (Suhrke 1970, 537)— though in subsequent decades, joining Malaysia declined markedly as a popular demand. 'While a number of prominent political figures emerged from the region in the postwar period —some of whom entered parliament —certain of the most prominent disappeared, were arrested, or abandoned politics (Surin 1987, 87-89). Muslim politics then “shifted from parliamentary means to an unconventional path with no specific form or operational procedures — and a growing tendency to violence” (Surin 1987, 89). This violence was fueled by alienation, and by a range of grievances; socioeconomic divides between the different ethnic groups in the border provinces are much larger than in other parts of Thailand. Surin argues that in the post-1973 period, a significant “counterelite” has emerged to challenge the official elite. Members of this counterelite typically undergo a traditional-Islamic education, study abroad in Muslim countries, and then return to assume social and political leadership roles (Surin 1987, 94-95). In the Deep South, there are several hundred pondok (family-run Islamic boarding schools) offering a traditional religious education that does not always provide a strong preparation for successfill employment in wider Thai society. Education has been a central sphere of contention between the Thai state and Malay communities, each suspicious of the other’s preferred education system and the political rationale behind it. Thai administrators suspected the pondok system of fostering separatist attitudes; for many Malay Muslims, imposing Thai secular education was a means for the state to enforce 24

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assimilation and undermine their identity (Suhrke 1977, 238). The Thai government has offered financial incentives for the pondok to modify their curriculum to include Thai language study and other standard subjects, proposals which have received a mixed response. Suhrke argues that Muslims in southern Thailand may be broadly divided into two groups: loyalists who are committed to working within the Thai state, and separatists who seek to secede from it (1977). Suhrke interviewed separatists who argued for an autonomous or independent border state between Thailand and Malaysia, and who felt that parliamentarians elected from the border provinces had sold out to the Thai state (245—46). Loyalists, in contrast, insisted that the only realistic option for the subregion was to remain within Thailand. Suhrke notes the importance for the United Pattani ' Freedom Movement of young men who have been educated at universities elsewhere in the Islamic world, notably in Malaysia, Pakistan, and Egypt (1975, 199). Such men bring other perspectives to bear on the specific problems of Muslims in the Thai South, seeing this as part of a wider global struggle. She argues that the failure of separatists in the subregion to “externalize” their struggle has been crucial in neutralizing it; if the movement gains wider international support, especially from Malaysia, it could pose a much more effective challenge to the Thai state (197-5, 202-3). Although in theory the government was keen to increase the number of Muslims in the bureaucracy, in practice numerous obstacles, ranging from educational attainment to demands for social conformity, have limited such recruitment, especially to the higher grades (Suhrke 1970, 545-46; Thomas 1975, 5). Many of the Thai Buddhists sent to adminis ter the southern border provinces were unenthusiastic about postings to an alien society so far from Bangkok, and their dissatisfaction may sometimes have contributed to heightened tensions. Many Muslim villagers have generally preferred to avoid contact with officialdom wherever possible, and have shunned the police in particular. Kamnan and phuyaiban often play the role of intermediaries between their communities and theThai state (Thomas 1975, 11). Andrew Cornish is critical of much of the literature analyzing the politics of the southern border provinces. He takes other analysts to task for reflecting Thai bureaucratic views (Suhrke) or failing to examine perspectives below the elite level (Surin). He is particularly critical of Suhrke’s distinction between integrationist and separatist Muslims, arguing that he has never come across a single Malay Muslim whose worldview matched Suhrke’s “loyalist” perspective (Cornish 1997, 11 3). He sees mutual mistrust and misunderstanding as playing a central role in relations between the two main groups in the subregion. He argues that Malay Muslims in the border provinces see themselves as inhabiting a “Malay heartland” (negeri melayii) that goes unrecognized by the Thai state. His case study of two agricultural development 25

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projects suggests that whereas Thai officials saw themselves as creating economic opportunities for villagers, the villagers themselves were actually instrumental in determining the viability of projects. As Chaiwat points out, even a basic discussion of such issues is a potential minefield, since apparently simple linguistic choices such as the spelling of Pattani (or Patani), and the use of phrases such as “Thai Muslims” and “Malay Muslims,” turn out to be important markers (Chaiwat 1992, 32). Girling described the politics on the southern border as “by far the most complex, even chaotic, situation” in Thailand. There was considerable tension between the various groups, with allegations of insurgency or banditry often forming the basis of harassment or worse for Malay Muslims (Girling 1981, 266). Girling discusses three separate sources of conflict: “Malay nationalists,” divided between conservative and radical elements; supporters of the wellorganized Malaysian Communist Party, drawn from both local Malay Muslims and Sino-Thais; and the Communist Party of Thailand, whose supporters were mainly of Thai ethnicity. Much of this discussion is now of only historical interest, but it serves to illustrate the difficulty in making simple generalizations about the politics of such a complicated subregion.

BANDITRY Suhrke (1970, 539) prefeces Girling’s three groups with another category of “ordinary” bandits, or phurai: The first group —the regular bandits—are everywhere. Their standard procedure in the South is to extort money, primarily from rubber planters, -but also from small businessmen and even clerks. They are usually distinguished from terrorists by their tactics; the latter ambush the police while the bandits try to avoid the police.

Thomas discusses three main forms of “common banditry”: sea piracy; theft and robbery by small gangs; and large-scale crimes committed by more than ten (and sometimes over a hundred) gang members. He describes all of these as very common in the border provinces, citing examples such as the bombing of a Yala hotel whose owner refused to give in to extortion demands (Thomas 1975, 12—15). A foreign rail traveler in the 1970s reported that all passengers were advised to sit in one protected carriage because of thieves from Phatthalung who would try to swarm the train; the province was characterized by intermittent “banditry” on the highways (Abbey 1999). Thomas notes that many pirates were based in Nakhon Si Thammarat or Songkhla, and it seems clear that banditry per se was not a phenomenon 26

SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS

linked solely to the four border provinces. One Muslim member of parliament (MP) from Narathiwat has argued that these provinces are “the theatre of much infighting over considerable resources” among influential groups which he terms, “Southern border mafia gangs” (Senee 1987, 79). These gangs comprised “regional and provincial level government officials, wealthy and corrupt businessmen, and top local gangsters.” In other words, neither “ordinary bandits” nor political insurgents were responsible, but organized criminals orchestrated' by influential power holders. There seems to be some evidence to suggest that the South more generally has been characterized by a certain lawlessness, testifying to a different mode of life from other parts of Thailand. That lawlessness has been accentuated and sometimes politicized in the border provinces, but it is not specific to those provinces, nor does it primarily reflect particular grievances of a political nature.

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL

FACTORS?

Olli-Pekka Ruohomaki, whose work involved Muslim fishing communities in Phangnga, argues that these communities are quite different from Malay Muslim communities in the border area and have not joined insurgency movements. At the same time, these communities remain somewhat removed from Thai Buddhist society and are viewed with some suspicion by the state: “If the villagers dislike the state and its representatives, the latter feel equally insecure and dislike dealing with the villagers” (Ruohomaki 1999, 101). He notes the negative stereotypes of the South commonly held by Thai bureaucrats and others: Whether true or not, southern Thailand has a reputation as a fearsome place where rival gangs are engaged in feuds with each other. For instance, many Bangkokians with whom I had discussions about Southern Thailand would characterize Southerners are stubborn (hua khaeng) and quick to anger (do) This is an image that is often portrayed in many Bangkok newspapers. (1999, ' 98)

While suggesting that “the existence of these qualities is debatable,” Ruohomaki (1999, 99) notes that there are certain “real behavioral distinctions” between southerners and other Thais: “These distinctions are manifested in a kind of Southern regionalism, a feeling of dislike for the central government and its representatives and pride in the local dialect, culture, and history.” Overreliance on cultural explanations of political behavior clearly involves serious analytical dangers. Nevertheless, it is not 27

DUNCAN

McCARGO

possible simply to discount received ideas about “regional characteristics” as mere stereotyping, since —accurate or not —such images may serve to inform and even partly to shape the character of politics in the South. SuthivongPongpaiboon, discussing the characteristic belief systems ofthe South, has written: The inhabitants of the South made their living from lowland and highland farming, fishing, selling products of the forest, and catching land and water animals. High risk was involved in life and property, with security and certainty hard to come by. They naturally.lacked self-confidence. (1995, 232)

At the same time, he argues, “Bravery is a sign of manliness. A brave man is considered to possess a minimum for survival” (Suthivong 1995, 235). This potent combination of courage and uncertainty suggested a different set of values from the values of more secure central Thai peasants, living off some of the finest paddy land in the world. A man’s life in the South was more raw, closer to the edge; surviving could require a robust masculinity, a readiness to fight, to defend oneself, and if necessary even to steal from others. These masculine skills were linked to verbal fluency. Ekawit (1997) argues that southerners are dynamic language users, talkative and argumentative. Sarup Ritchu and Sumi Thongsai have argued that the nature of southern politics reflects a distinctive set of socioeconomic conditions with deep historical roots. Focusing particularly on the role of elephants and elephant traders, they suggest that an 1 899 law on the catching of wild elephants marked a turning point in southern history, coinciding with the domestication of communities and .the beginning of a process of transforming jungles into farmland: During this stage, elephant-owning communities and those of other types enjoyed strong affinities and often united with the original town-level communities, Buddhist as well as Muslim, to resist domination by the Thai state, resulting in a new power group of Chinese descent. (Sarup and Sumi 2000, pagejo)

,

'

In the postwar period, moves towards more intensive commercial agriculture produced a high level of competition over resources, and even sometimes violence: The traditional image of local honorable fighters . . . gradually gave way to ruffianism. From this emerged Communist terrorists, Chinese and Malay bandits as viewed by the Thai-state machinery, edging toward community disintegration. 28

' I

SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS

The core argument is that heads of elephant-owning communities were transformed from a traditional local political and economic elite into the leading figures in various insurgencies, seeing themselves as pitted in astruggle againstthe Thai state on behalf of their communities and their region. These figures assumed leadership roles in both communist and separatist armed struggles (Sarup and Sumi 2000, 205-33). The case study communities used in this book are located in Phatthalung, Surat Thani and Yala, so the arguments transcend, the divide between border provinces and the rest of the southern region. The clear implication here is that the banditry and insurgency of the border is simply a more acute manifestation of the general character of southern politics, rooted in a less settled and thus more insecure agrarian base, and in a greater divide between the haves and the have-nots. Yet Sarup and Sumi have not shown that leading politicians in the contemporary South are actually directly descended from the elephant-trading communities they have studiedi A study of southern bullfighting by Akhom Detthongkham provoked a furor when it was published in 2000 as part of the same Thailand Research Fund research project as the volume by Sarup and Sumi. Akhom argued that the “backstage matadors” who orchestrated the fights —in Thailand, fights are between two bulls, rather than contests between a bull and a matador— would stop at nothing to win, even going so far as to poison opponents’ bulls the night before a big fight (56). Akhom described southerners as gifted speakers who were not especially friendly or outgoing. Rather, they were strongheaded, frequently involved in heated arguments, straightforward, and usually spoke without consideration for the feelings of others.- He sought to present bullfighting as a metaphor for the character of southern people, a suggestion which provoked anger among Democrat politicians and their supporters; his research was assumed to suggest that southerners were totally unprincipled in the pursuit of their goals. The issue became front-page news for a few days (see Kilen Pralongchoeng, “Nak chon wua,” Thai Rath, August 7, 2000). Matichon (August 7, 2000) quoted the president of the Nakhon Si Thammarat Chamber of Commerce as saying that Akhom’s research was flawed, and would have a negative impact on southerners, who were in reality generous and caring. He suggested that Akhom might have been motivated by some sort of political disappointment or frustration. In a study of no-confidence debates in Thailand, Savitri Gadavanij has suggested that the verbal sparring of these debates has analogies to the style of nang talung, a form of southern shadow play (Savitri 2002, 236). In nang talung, a character known as Ai Theng ‘plays the role of jester, raising controversial issues and taboo topics. Savitri suggests:

29

DUNCAN McCARGO

[Southern politicians] such as Chuan Leekpai, Trairong, Suwankhiri, and Suthep Thuagsuban share certain common characteristics. They are usually skilful performers. They bear characteristics of southerners, portrayed in the character of Ai Th eng, cynical, argumentative, having excellent command of language and a witty way with words. (Savitri 2002, 237)

While Chuan is a master of subtlety and innuendo—parliament’s “honeycoated razor” —Trairong and Suthep use a distinctive southern-accented thong daeng style, “argumentative, loud, and direct” (Savitri 2002, 238). The southern contingent of MPs includes many of parliament’s best performers, reflecting a political culture that emphasizes public speaking skills and prizes a certain mode of masculinity in its leaders. At the same time, Chuan himself clearly manifested a' different mode of masculinity from either Trairong or Suthep —both ofwhom have very differentmodcs of speaking —so illustrating the limitations of culturally based generalizations. Though interesting, Savitri’s interpretations have only limited explanatory power.

TOWARDS A NEW REGIONALISM? As Surin notes, the regionalization of party support had become a pronounced trend by the early 1990s. This trend was led by the near-hegemonic dominance of the Democrat Party in the South by 1 992 , reflecting the rise of southerner Chuan Leekpai to the leadership of the party. Similar tendencies could be seen on a smaller scale in the attempts of the New Aspiration Party (NAP) to build a regional base in Isan, and in Chart Thai’s longstanding support in parts of the central region. Chuan “capitalized on the more politically conscious and stronger sense of regionalism of southerners” in his two 1'992 election campaigns, declaring in the southern dialect at an election rally in Nakhon Si Thammarat, “Wouldn’t you be proud of me if I became the 20th prime minister, the second one from the south]’? (Surin 1992, 46, quoting Bangkok Pott, September 12, 1992). The first prime minister from the South had been Prem Tinnasulanond, whose integrity and perceived incorruptibility were much admired. By placing himself in the same tradition as Prem, Chuan was laying claim to a similar set of qualities. Implicitly, these could be cited as “southern values” and a southern mode of masculinity based upon straightforwardness, decency, and lack of pretension. A strong desire for an elected southern prime minister certainly contributed to the Democrats’ success in winning 36 out of 45 southern seats in the September 1992 elections. They had gained 26 seats in the region in March 1992, compared to 13 out of 38 in 1979, 25 out of 41 in 1983, and 16 out of 43 in 1988 (Nelson 1999, 280-84); in 1995 they gained a remarkable 30

SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS

46 out of 51 available seats, and in 1996, 47 out of 52. Despite the national landslide victoiy of the Thai Rak Thai Party in the January 2001 elections, the Democrats still retained 48 of the 54 seats in the South, demonstrating the capacity of the region to buck wider political trends. These were extremely impressive results. Virtually the only southern seats not held by the Democrats from the mid-1990s were those of a group of Muslim MPs led by Wan Muhamad Nor Mata, under the NAP portfolio, all from the border provinces. Allen Hicken has demonstrated that since the 1980s, the South has had “fewer “effective parties” than other parts of Thailand (Hicken 2002, 15657). Generally, there have only been two serious parties contending for southern constituencies; this figure increased when the Democrats were split at the time of the 1988 election. Yet the records show that overwhelming Democrat support in the South is quite a recent phenomenon. In January 1975 the Democrats gained 17 southern seats; they were the largest party by far, but still gained less than half of the 36 seats in the region. In 1979, the Social Action Party actually won 17 seats in the region compared with the Democrats’ 13. The overwhelmingly dominant position of the Democrats is of relatively recent origin, and is closely associated with the rise of a strong group of southern* MPs led by Ghuan Leekpai. In some ways, this was an ironic development: despite the traditional ’“banditry” of the region, featuring southerners preying on other southerners, southern voters during the 1990s tended to vote en bloc for their “kith and kin,” the Democrats. This raises questions about when, how, and why southerners turn from robbing and abusing one another to supporting each other politically—questions which remain so for unresearched. Similarly, what does party affiliation actually mean to a typical southern voter, and to what extent do southern voters view parties differently from their counterparts in the North or the Northeast?

THE 1995 LAND REFORM SCANDAL AND RISE OF REGIONALISM The Democrats’ electoral grip on the region was greatly strengthened after the no-confidence debate of May 1995. This debate, which centered on a land reform scandal involvingleadingsouthem Democrats —especially former deputy agriculture minister Suthep Thuagsuban —came almost to resemble a regional dispute, pitting the South against the rest of the country. Democrat politicians were accused of abusing land reform provisions designed for poor farmers in order to benefit wealthy supporters and even their own relatives in Phuket and other provinces. A campaign against alleged abuses of power by southern Democrats was led by the top-selling daily newspaper Thai Rath, which “locked” the scandal onto its front page for over six months (see 31

DUNCAN

McCARGO

McCargo 2000; 15-17; Pasuk and Baker 1997, 33-35). The campaign was replete with rhetoric suggesting that the stubbornness and selfishness of southern politicians had led them to act against the national interest, illicitly channeling benefits to their own inside circle and then failing properly to address the wrongdoing. While prime minister Chuan Leekpai was never accused of personal impropriety over the land reform issue, his attempts to use his own reputation for integrity to shield less squeaky-clean colleagues had the effect of sullying his image, culminating in the downfall of his first administration in May 1995. Criticism of the southern Democrat leadership over the scandal provoked a strong reaction in some parts of the region, and contributed to the party’s landslide success there in the subsequent July 1995 general election. During the scandal, both sides sought to exploit regional tensions for their own advantage. When Suthep Thuagsuban addressed a huge crowd in his Surat Thani constituency a month before the no-confidence debate, he was totally unrepentant about his role in the scandal, calling on his southern supporters to march on Bangkok in their hundreds of thousands to defend his reputation {Siam Post, April 19, 1995). News of this speech provoked uproar in the capital, confirming the views of many Bangkoldans that Chuan’s inner circle contained some overexcitable rabble-rousers. A week earlier, a column by Thai Rath’s Chalam Khiao had accused the Chuan administration of deliberately seeking to divide the country, “inciting and fomenting friction among southern people” {Thai Rath, April 11, 1995); Suthep’s outburst appeared to support this view. Yet many southerners saw Thai Rath’s attacks as part of a plot to bring down the government: anti-Thai Rath signs were erected all over the South — some even placed on police stations —and numerous southern readers boycotted the newspaper. Thai Rath’s weekly “Sunday political analysis” column on April 9 had argued that the Democrats had now forfeited their claims to be a national party, and had become essentially a regional party under Chuan’s leadership. This was a vicious jibe, but reflected the fact that previously the Democrats —despite their parliamentary strength in the South —had been led mainly by Bangkokians. The Chuan period saw the provinces gaining the upper hand over Bangkok for the first time in the party’s history, a development reflecting wider changes in Thailand’s political economy associated with the rise of provincial business interests and the commercialization of politics. The April 2003 victory of southerner Banyat Bantadtan over his Bangkokian rival for the Democrat leadership, Abhisit Vejjajiva, illustrates the extent to which the southern faction exercises a continuing grip on the reins of power within the party. Banyat won out despite the feet that Abhisit was explicitly endorsed by Chuan himself. He also won despite the feet that 32

SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS

he had no obvious appeal to voters beyond the South, and little national credibility. Banyat’s victory apparently testified to the triumph of southern tribalism over common sense, the subordination of the party to narrow regional interests.

LESS VOTE-BUYING, FEWER CHAO PHO? Commercialization of the Thai electoral process increased rapidly from 1979 onwards, resulting in endemic vote-buying of various kinds, voter intimidation, and frequent abuses of power by electoral officials—as well as widespread “MP buying” (offering financial incentives to switch parties) (Surin and McCargo 1997). By the early 1990s, dissatisfaction with these practices had led to the creation of a “Pollwatch” monitoring organization; in 1997, the new constitution established an independent Election Commission. Votebuying is perhaps at its more virulent in the Northeast, which has seen a very considerable turnover of MPs in the past two decades (Callahan and McCargo 1996). Callahan has argued that the South, with its more unified regional identity and strong leaning towards the Democrats, is often seen as “beyond vote-buying,” yet his study details allegations of illegal practices by the Democrats in Hat Yai in 1995 (Callahan 2000, 50-51), noting thatPollwatch officials believediDemocrat vote-buying was widespread in the region. He also suggests that bureaucratic bias in favor of the Democrats was quite pervasive in the South, including Chuan’s own Trang constituency (Callahan 2000, 20, 57). While regionalist sympathies for the Democrats may have reduced the salience of electoral manipulation in the South —it might be suggested that the Democrats would largely “win anyway,” even without cheating, and that illicit benefits offered around elections were simply part of an ongoing relationship between the party and its supporters —southern sympathy for the party did not prevent the commercialization of elections in the region. Pasuk and Sungsidh argue that the rise of “godfathers” (chaopho) in the Thai provinces, especially during the 1980s, had different manifestations in different regions. Neither they nor other analysts of chao pho in one recent volume (Sombat2000; Ockey 2000) identify anymajor organized crime bosses further south than Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan. Pasuk and Sungsidh suggest that while there is a group of old style southern “godfathers” —tin mining entrepreneurs with smuggling interests known as nai hua—there were relatively few “modem” godfathers. Those that did emerge recently operate mostly on a smaller scale, mainly in Hat Yai, Phuket, Su-ngai Kolok, and Nakhon Si Thammarat (Pasuk and Sungsidh 1994, 87). Pasuk and Sungsidh suggest that the existence of well-established local elites in many southern 33

DUNCAN McCARGO

towns impeded the rise of new chao pho, while strong CPT activity in the 1960s and early 1970s “may have acted as a counterweight to the growth of new local potentates.” Whether nai hua can really be termed “godfathers” begs some questions, but Pasuk and Sungsidh’s overall argument —that strong urban elites in the South created a kind of proto-civil society, which in turn impeded the rise of bossism —is an interesting one.

SUMMARY OF POINTS RAISED

A number of themes have emerged from this preliminary discussion. These 1 include: •

There is a sense that southern Thai politics has been shaped by a distinctive history; parts of the region were until quite recently less directly subject to rule from Bangkok than other regions of Thailand. • The troubled politics of the southern border provinces have rather, overshadowed the politics of the region as a whole, at least in the imaginations of many bureaucrats and commentators. • The border region is the most studied part of the South from a political perspective, and is clearly characterized by different concepts of identity held by the various ethnic and religious groups residing there. • These contrasting identities have sometimes manifested themselves in the form of violent conflicts, including involvement with both the Malayan and Thai communist parties, and with separatist movements. • At the same time, the South more generally has a reputation for lawlessness and banditry (whether deserved or not), which is difficult to distinguish from political violence. • A number of scholars have suggested cultural-historical “explanations” for southern political behavior, stressing factors such as preferences for certain leadership styles and the role of local elites. • While unreliable and incomplete, the salience of these explanations cannot be entirely discounted. • The pre-eminence of the Democrat Party in the South has long roots, but has been especially pronounced since Chuan Leekpai led the party to form two governments in the 1990s. • Evidence that vote-buying is less important in the South is difficult to come by, but the political economy of the region is distinctive and the recent phenomenon of influential “godfathers” has variant manifestations.

34

SOUTHERN THAI POLITICS

REFERENCES Abbey, Phil. 1999. The Last Train to Haadyai, http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/ 5047/HAADYAI.html. Akhom Detthongkham. 2000. Hua Chueak Wua Chan (Backstage Matadors). Bangkok Thailand Research Fund. Callahan, William A. 2000. Pollwatching, Elections, and Civil Society in Southeast-Aria. Aidershot, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing. Callahan, William A., and Duncan McCargo. 1996. Vote Buying in Thailand’s Northeast: The July 1995 General Election. Asian Survey 36 (4): 376-92. Chaiwat Satha-Anand. 1992. Pattani in the 1980s: Academic Literature Stories. Sojourn 7 (1): 1-38.

and Political

Cornish, Andrew. 1997. Whose Place is This? Malay Rubber Producers and Thai Government Officials in Yala. Bangkok: White Lotus. Ekawit Na Thalang. 1997. Local Wisdom of the Four Regions:Ways of Life and Learning Processesof Thai Villagers (in Thai). Bangkok: Sukhothai Thammathirat University Press. Girling, John L. S. 1981 . Thailand: Society and Politics.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Hicken, Allen. 2002. From Phitsanulok to Parliament: Multiple-Parties in Pre- 1997 Thailand. In Thailand’s New Politics: KPI Yearbook 2001, edited by Michael H. Nelson. Bangkok: White Lotus. Jory, Patrick. 2000. Multiculturalism (winter): 18-22.

in Thailand?

Harvard Asia Pacific Review 4

Keyes, Charles F. 1989. Thailand: Buddhist Kingdom as Modem Nation-State. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. McCargo, Duncan. 2002. Politicsand the Pressin Thailand:MediaMachmatians.Bangkok: Garuda Press. McCargo, Duncan, and Krisadawan Hongladarom. 2004. Contesting Isan-ness: Discourses of Politics and Identity in the Northeast Thailand. Arian Ethnicity 5 (2): 219-34. Ockey, James. 2000. The Rise of Local Power in Thailand. In Money and Power in Provincial Thailand, edited by Ruth McVey, 74—96. Copenhagen: NIAS. . PasukPhongpaichit, and Chris Baker. 1995. Thailand: Economy and Politics.Singapore: Oxford University Press. ---------. 1997. Power in Transition: Thailand in the 1990s. In Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation,edited by Kevin Hewison, 20-41 . London: Routledge. Pasuk Phongpaichit, and Sungsidh Piriyarangsan. 1994. Corruption and Democracy in Thailand. Bangkok: Political Economy Center, Chulalongkorn University.

35

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McCARGO

Ruohomaki, Olli-Pekka. 1999. Fishermen No More: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Village. Bangkok: White Lotus. Sarup Ritchu, and Sumi Thongsai. 2000. Kae roi chang lae tai [Following the trail of elephants, and the South]. Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund. Savitri Gadavanij. 2002. Rethinking No-Confidence Debates. Unpublished paper, Department of Linguistics, University of Leeds, 2002.

draft

SeneeMadakakul. 1987. Situation and Problems of the Three Southernmost Provinces in Thailand. Asian Review 1: 67-82. Sombat Chantomvong. 2000. Local Godfathers in Thai Politics. In Money and Power in Provincial Thailand, edited by Ruth McVey, 53-73. Copenhagen: NIAS. Suhrke, Astri. 1970. The Thai Muslims: Some Aspects of Minority Integration. Pacific Affairs (4): 53M-7. ---------. 197 5. Irredendsm (2): 187-203.

Contained: The Thai-Muslim

Case. Comparative Politics 7

---------. 1977. Loyalists and Separatists: The Muslims in Southern Thailand. Survey 57 (3): 237-50.

Asian

Surin Maisrikrod. 1992. Thailand’s Two General Elections in 1992. Singapore: ISEAS. Surin Maisrikrod, and Duncan McCargo. 1997. Electoral Politics: Commercialization and Exclusion. In Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation,edited by Kevin Hewison, 132-48. London: Routledge. Surin Pitsuwan. 1987. Elites, Conflicts, and Violence: Conditions Border Provinces. Asian Review 1: 83-96,

in the Southern

Suthivong Pongpaiboon. 1985. Local Literature of Southern Thailand. In Thai Literary Traditions, edited by Manas Chitakasem, 218-47. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press. Thomas, M. Ladd. 197 5. PoliticalViolence in the Muslim Provincesof Southern Thailand. Singapore: ISEAS. Vickery, Michael. 1970. Thai Regional Elites and the Reforms of King Chulalongkorn. Journal of Asian Studies 29 (4): 836-81. Wilson, David A. 1967. Politics m Thailand. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

36

VOICES FROM THE GRASSROOTS: SOUTHERNERS TELL STORIES ABOUT VICTIMS OF DEVELOPMENT PIYA KITTAWORN, NUKUL RATANADAKUL AMPORN KAEWNU, LAMAI MANAKARN AND PARTICIPATING COMMUNITY NETWORKS

On June 13-15, 2002, Prince of Songkla University’s Pattani Campus organized an international meeting on issues related to the South of Thailand. The approximately 400 participants were divided into different groups according to their interests. One of the important purposes of the meeting was to consider problems and alternatives concerning different groups of villagers affected by development in the South, especially the lower South. A total of 41 cases were presented. The subject matter of the cases can be grouped into the followingareas: energy; dams and dikes; deserted rice fields; narcotic drugs; forests and cultivated land; water management; swamp management; food security; organization development; education and culture; and community scholars. Cases were compiled to highlight that what is called “development” is in fact a matter of “whose” development and “for whom.” A human being consists of small cells. Each works equally for the whole. A country is the same. It is composed of individuals and small communities. Therefore, people need to have equal duties. A minority or representatives cannot decide for the majority. In animal nature, big fish eat small fish. But people are not animals. We should not harm those who are weaker. PoChi June 14, 2002

OVERALL PICTURE

OF THE SOUTH

Southern Thailand is a part of the Malay Peninsula. It is a narrow piece of land with a length of 750 km from the north to the south. It is adjacent to the sea, with a mountain range in the middle, running from north to south between 37

PIYA KITTAWORN,

El AL

the east and west coasts. The Gulf of Thailand is on the east side, and the Andaman Sea on the west. The two coasts together are 1,690 km long. The eastern coast consists of plains adjacent to foothills. There is a large water source named Songkhla Lake, On the west coast, there are scattered narrow plains separated by small hills. Short rivers originate in the mountains in the middle of the region and flow down to the seas on both sides. The South has a ' typical tropical monsoon weather pattern with frequent rainfall and high humidity. The only two seasons are summer and the rainy season. The population in the South represents one-tenth of the national total. Seventy-nine percent of southerners reside on the eastern side along the Gulf of Thailand. The remaining 2 1 percent dwell on the Andaman Sea. The most populated province in the South is Nakhon Si Thammarat, followed by Songkhla and Surat Thani. The population of the three provinces combined represents nearly half of the people in the region. All three provinces are on the Gulf of Thailand. The South is rich with natural resources. The major occupations of the people are agriculture, fisheries, trading, and tourism. Agriculture, fisheries, and ■transformation of agricultural products account for approximately 45 percent of employment; trading, 15 percent; tourism and services, 13 percent; and all else, 2 7 percent. The communities of the South can be divided into three geographical types: hill communities, basin communities, and coastal communities. Muslims make up 2 5 percent of the population (representing 81 percent of all Muslims in Thailand), and Buddhists and followers of other religions make up 75 percent. Being a nexus of cultures since ancient times, for away from centers of power and endowed with abundant resources, this region has been able to develop its own particular culture. In the past, southern communities were characterized as being self-reliant, leading simple ways.of life, maintaining a balance with the surrounding environment, treasuring freedom, being individualistic, admiring bold people who believe in truth and honesty, being strict about sexual conduct, revering dignity, loving arid protecting their kin, and being attached to their homeland. Additionally, there are certain character traits common to Thai Muslims. Islam not only is a religion to experience on a spiritual level, but also guides people’s lives from birth to death. Every step of life must follow the path of Islam with its discipline and uniformity.

PROBLEMS

WITH

DEVELOPMENT

IN THE SOUTH

The South is facing big changes in all dimensions of development, from past till present. There is a shift away from correspondence with the local environment and satisfaction with what can efficiently be produced in the 38

VOICES FROM THE GRASSROOTS

local community. Modem agriculture requires capital and technology, both of which need to be brought from urban areas. Also, national and international market systems play an important role in shaping patterns of production and consumption. Commercialized production and consumption-driven wage labor have largely replaced traditional agriculture. Development thus results in changes to traditional agricultural communities. Highland communities have changed from mixed subsistence crop planting to mono-cropping of, for example, para-rubber trees', oil palms, and coffee plants. Basin communities now grow rice and mixed crops, but nowadays many rice fields are deserted because rapid development has so changed the ecosystem that it is no longer possible to grow rice as in the past. Some areas have become urban communities. Rural communities have turned into trading centers where people sell their services and labor. There are new industrial sites with large factories. For coastal communities, the development of modem tools and technologies made possible catches of large quantities of fish, but this resulted in a rapid depletion of marine resources. Some ecosystems have been entirely destroyed. The diversity of marine animals is much reduced. Artisanal, fishers with small boats and less complex fishing tools are at a disadvantage, and this has created severe social conflicts. The integration of production with global markets prevents farmers from determining their prices, lb increase production, chemicals and modem tools are required. As a result of their manufacture and use, ecological systems are degraded or destroyed, and biological, diversity decreases. When a resource base is destroyed, the disintegration of communities, land loss, and indebtedness follow..Communities become unequal and must free their fate. The disintegration of rural societies and migration to urban areas in search of wage-earning trade labor results in the rapid expansion of slums in proportion to the growth of cities. Different types of social problems then occur (Dejcharat and Penchom 2002).

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS: NEW QUESTION FOR SOUTHERNERS Thailand has used National Economic and Social Development Plans as guidance since 1961. National development in the first period was guided by macro-policy. Overall and sectoral directions and policies were set, for example, regarding the basic structure of industries and of agriculture. In general, industrial development was emphasized as the leader of overall national development. Since then, strategies have been changed as follows (Sombat, Dejcharat, and Studying and Fighting Group against Industrial Pollution 2002). 39

PIYA KUTAWORN,

National

Economic

Social Development

ET AL

and Plans

Nature ment

of Plan and Develop-

Industrial

Development

Direction'

(NESDP) First NESDP (1961-1966)

Develop

fundamental

Import

structures by planning

substituting

industries.

to invest

in certain projects. Second NESDP (1 967-1 971 )

Third NESDP (1972-1976)

Emphasize economic

growth

Promote

and begin sectoral planning.

import

Emphasize economic

Promote

growth

and financial stability, and

import

export industries and substituting

Industries.

export industries and substituting

industries.

begin social and population planning. Fourth NESDP (1977-1981)

Begin to give Importance social development

to

Export industries and agricultural

and

industries.

environment. Fifth NESDP (1982-1986)

Begin to use certain areas as

Spread industries to provincial

basis for making work plans, for

level by emphasizing

example,

investment

target areas of rural

poor, development

industrial

of large areas.

of city, and

certain provincial areas. Sixth NESDP {1987-1991)

Begin to lay out plans, review

Spread industries to provincial

state roles in development,

level by emphasizing

and

private

investment.

emphasize dispersion of progress to provincial level. Seventh NESDP (1992-1996)

Maintain growth,

Eighth NESDP {1997-2001)

Spread industries to provincial

rate of economic expand

level, and aim at trading

provincial

centers of progress, and begin

competitiveness

to focus o n "sustainable

investment

development"

countries.

Adjust traditional

development

NESDP (2002-2006)

and begin to emphasize

center from economy

middle-

to

and small-scale

industries.

Emphasize economic

Readjust production

structures,

stimulation

and revival by

increase production,

and

developing

fundamental

promote

economy protection.

40

Spread provincial industries,

ideas by shifting development people. Ninth

and co-

with foreign

and expanding

social

small-scale industries

and community

enterprises.

VOICES FROM THE GRASSROOTS

Provincial Plan/Provlnces Involved

International Treaty/ Countries Involved

Development

Coastal Development Project of the West: Kanchanaburi, Phetchaburl, Ratchaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, Samut Songkhram, and Chumphon

Bangladesh-India-MyanmarSri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC); Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand

Cooperation in six sectors: trade, technological Investment, transportation, energy, tourism, and fishery. Upper area: agriculture/ Industry. Middle area: tourism and developmental research.

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Strategies

Lower area: iron industry, transportation and communication linking Gulf of Thailand with Andaman Sea. Coastal Development Project of the South: Phang-nga, Phuket, Krabi, Surat Thani, and Nakhon Si Thammarat

Development of integrated transportation system serving as economic land bridge or, in the future, as gateway connecting Gulf of Thailand to the Andaman Sea. Development of deep sea harbor, marine commerce, gasoline, and petrochemical industries.

Master Plan for Development of Five Southern Border Provinces: Songkhla, Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala, and Satun.

Master and Implementation Plans for Development of Economic Zone PenangSongkhla, which benefits from natural gas: seven districts of Songkhla Province (Mueang, HatYai, Bang Klam, Chana, Na Mom, Khiong Hoi Khong, Sadao) and Mueang District of Pattani.

Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle Development Project (IMT-GT); Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

Economic link between neighbor countries to stimulate investment, border trade, and tourism. For example, exclusive economic zone of Songkhla-PenangBelawan, and special economic zone of borders Sadao-Padangbesa.

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LESSONS FROM MAP TA PHUT FOR PEOPLE IN THE SOUTH Taking the above-mentioned development directions has set off a series of chain reactions with increasingly serious results. The Map Ta Phut Industrial Park, where communities are severely affected by industrial pollution, provides an illustration of the economic, social, and environmental problems from coastal development in the East. These include air pollution and bad odors, chemical accidents, decreases in the quality and quantity of water sources, and beach erosion. All relate to the physical health, spirit, and security of community members. More important to note is the feet that the development path of the country has not been redirected, in spite of all the negative experiences in the past two decades. Insufficient attention has been given to these problems. Furthermore, there have been no lessons drawn from the failures of the national developmental plans. These plans have been the source of many different problems for which Thai society has yet to find solutions (Mullins.2002).

ECHO FROM THE GRASSROOTS BLOCKADES TO STOP ANTI-DEVELOPMENT

GROUPS

Two decades ago, police and military blockades were only used to manage terrorist groups in the wilds. But .when the government decided to move forward with the Thailand-Malaysia Pipeline Project in May 2002, it sent over 1 50 police officers and soldiers to the site where the pipeline emerged, for the purpose of building “understanding” with people. Village leaders said that helicopters were used to patrol at night. Mrs. Alisa Mudmor, a leader of the protestors, said that the government accused villagers of being communists who did not accept state development projects. This was despite the fact that what the villagers wanted was simply to live in their traditional way by fishing, growing para-rubber trees and reeds, raising zebra doves, and planting and selling watermelon (Narit 2002; Sulaiman 2002; Mullins 2002). NO MATTER HOW HIGH THE PRICE IS, WE WON’T

SELL (oUR

LIVES)

Around 1988, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) conducted a drilling exploration of five hundred and forty-five square kilometers in Saba Ybi District, Songkhla Province, and concluded that the area had lignite coal of premium national quality. The quantity was tremendous, as-much as five hundred million tons, and it could last up to twenty-five years. The plan was to build a nine-hundred-megawatt power plant there. The center of the coal source was Thung Pho Subdistrict, which included eight villages, seven of which were Muslim. There were 42

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approximately twelve thousand people residing in these villages. The giant project was so strongly opposed by the people in die area that the government delayed the project in 1993, and things quieted down for a full ten years. Some EGAT officers said that the project'had already been cancelled. But in 2001, EGAT started to push the project again, utilizing an array of public relations plans that were implemented through different channels. Over four thousand Thung Pho villagers gathered to protest and to assert that they absolutely did not want a power plant or coal mining in this area because of the negative consequences. They observed that the project would affect more than ten thousand people’s lives, as well as affecting farmland, rice fields, para-rubber plantations, one of the highest-quality fruit orchards in the southern region, fourteen mosques, numerous kubo (cemeteries), and fifteen forests. Naowae-isor Baiyepma, a village leader from Thung Pho, said that people had awakened and would no longer believe in any propaganda. No matter how high a price EGAT offered, they would not sell their land. They would fight with their lives. The leaders of the villagers said that they could see how much the villagers around the mine in Mae Mo, Lampang 'Province, suffered from this bitter experience. A participating academic argued that he went to Mae Mo and saw the area set up beautifully. He wondered whether others had really been there, as they concluded that Mae Mo was bad. Somebody in Mae Mo told him that villagers suffered from the mine. (Sagariya 2002). MIGRATING DNA OF PEOPLE IN THE BASIN

Achan Boontham Therdkiatchart is a shadow play master from Pak Phanang Basin, which covers almost two million rai of land and has nearly 700,000 inhabitants. (One rai is equivalent to 0.4 acre.) According to Achan Boontham, people from Pak Phanang Basin comprise one of the most deeply suffering groups in the South and have already migrated to different parts of the South, some going as far as Prachuap Khiri Khan. The Pak Phanang Basin has been a granary and a trading center since ancient times, but the consequences of different kinds of development have made people very willing to migrate. The projects started in approximately 1970. Roads and water gates were built in the vicinity of Khlong Bang Chak, Khlong Bang Sai, and Khlong Sukhum, causing water transportation to disappear. Rice fanners faced problems with floods because the roads blocked water drainage. Furthermore, there were problems with acidic soil, acidic water, and falling rice production, while the change to modern rice farming was responsible for higher production costs. “Traditionally, houses in the region had one gate facing the river. When there is a road, gates are added to face the road,” said Achan Boontham. 43

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After 1978, shrimp forms were started, affecting rice fields in a large area. From 1994 onward, the impact of new dams on the overall water flow system in the river has increased significantly. “Villagers said many, fish in the river became extinct. There are no more river shrimp,” said Achan Boontham, summarizing some aspects of the situation that has resulted from development. Addressing the question of why the villagers did not get together to define their own development directions, Achan Boontham said that the communities only “talk” but do not “formally discuss to search for a solution.” Also, importantly, people of the basin “have DNA that make them always ready to migrate” (Pak Phanang River Basin Community 2002; Chainarong 2002; Boontham 2002).

don’t

block

our lake

Nitat Kaewsri (2002), president of the Association of Artisanal Fishers of Songkhla Lake, said that the ecological system of Songkhla Lake has been affected by the Department of Irrigation’s blockage since 1950 of the canal , that links the lake to the Gulf of Thailand, or what is called “PakRawa.” The blockage cuts off the corridor for water species to travel between the lake and the Gulf of Thailand, causing the species in the lake to decrease rapidly. At present, there are about seven hundred species. There was a proposal to build a dam in the middle of the lake in 1988, but fishers and academics opposed the idea because of how the dam would impact fishing areas. Two public hearings were organized; the project did not pass. Although it was slowed down, it was not cancelled. The fisher association, founded in 1993, proposed that the resolution of the council of ministers be cancelled and that Pak Rawa, which had been closed for over forty years, be opened again. This would allow the lake’s ecological system to recover and an abundance of shrimp and fish to return. The fishers’ efforts to revive the lake began in 1991. Conservation zones have been established, savings groups have been organized, and community members have publicized and fought against problems. The pressure from the fishers led the government to setup a budget of over ten million baht per year for restoration activities. WE ABORTED DAMS

Ayee Awae, a leader of the villagers of Sai Buri Basin Network, told a story of protesting against the Sai Buri dam project (2002a). The protest involved villagers who did not know anything and did not dare to ask governmental officials any questions. The protest moved from one level to the next until parliament became involved and the government ended the project in 1998. According to the Forum of the Poor, they said, “We, the villagers, are like a broken electrical appliance. We took it down to the district and it cannot be 44

VOICES FROM THE GRASSROOTS

repaired. We took it down to the province and it still cannot be repaired. We had to bring it to Bangkok to repair. That’s why over one hundred problems of the Forum of the Poor landed in front of the parliament in Bangkok” People said the Sai Buri dam was not bom because people got together to “abort” it. IRRIGATION DAMAGES RICE FIELDS

Ban Klang (Ban Klang Subdistrict, Panare District) is the only Muslim village with a temple in the middle of the village. Buddhist Thais who used to live there moved to nearby villages in 1 977 but have maintained good relations like in the past. The people from Ban Klang are very good at rice farming. As the saying goes, “If they’ve hired a Thai to grow rice in Malaysia, he’s probably from Ban Klang.” The reason people from Ban Klang need to go to Malaysia to grow rice is that in 1989-1990, the Irrigation Department dug a watersupplying canal. The canal was thirty meters wide and two meters deep, with roads twenty meters wide on each side, passing the rice field of the subdistrict, which had an area of nearly ten thousand rai, in order to exit to the sea. There was a water gate at Ban Chamao Marat Subdistrict in the same district. After the project started, the rice farmers in the area found that there was a strong impact on rice growing. In the rainy season, the flood that used to stay for ten to fifteen days now stayed over thirty days, causing the rice plants to rot. In the dry season, the land became extremely dry. Highland rice fields did not have enough water because the water flowed down into the new canal. Problems with shallow water wells started. Soil became acidic. Rice growing was hampered by the dense growth of kok samliam (Cyperaceae) and krachut nu (a kind of reed). The number of water species was reduced very quickly. Growing rice in the wetlands required investing more in water pumps, new types of rice, and chemicals, making it cost-inefficient. The digging of the irrigation canal resulted in the desertion of nearly ten thousand rai of rice fields in this subdistrict. Over eight hundred households suffered. The villagers were hardly able to grow rice again, and needed to find alternatives such as keeping plantations, raising animals, making fanpalm sugar, and migrating to Malaysia for work. People have complained for over ten years, but no agency has solved the problem. Today, the rice-farming communities of this area remain devastated by the irrigation project (Chuang 2002; Sumalee 2002). FIGHTING

FOR SPACE IN THE SEA

The poor have been chased out of not only the land their livelihoods depend upon, but also the sea, where the problem is just as intense. Over ten thousand families of artisanal fishers in fourteen Pattani Bay villages have fought to eliminate push net fishing tools from the bay for over twenty years, but all 45

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efforts have been in vain. They fought until there was an announcement prohibiting the use of push nets in Pattani Province in 1998. However, there are still many push nets. The regulation does not have any meaning simply because there is no map attached to this particular ministerial order. It cannot be determined where the sea border of Pattani Province is. Officers may be sued for making arrests. Fishers and academics have fought for three years to have a map attached, but that has not happened. While the push net problem has remained' unsolved, Pattani Bay, which has an area of 46,000 rai, faced a new problem about ten years ago. The cause was a budget initiated by the Administrative Center of Southern Border Provinces (now discontinued) in 1987 to support communities willing to raise cockles (Arcagranosa) in order to increase their income. The project started with Ban Tmydnglulo, and the first phase yielded good results. People in the fishing communities indeed had higher incomes. But later, capitalists disguised themselves as members of the local community to reap the benefits. Today, the operators are no longer fishers. A leader of fishers in the lake said that in the past there were cockles as big as a fist, but today such specimens have become “antiques” because they are very difficult to find. He said that farming shells by buying their juveniles from Satun has different impacts. The villagers’ fishing areas shrink. There are conflicts between shell farmers and fishers. Villagers who oppose the shell fanning cause many problems. Some of the. shells die and settle to the bottom, causing sediment to pile up. Shell harvesting destroys the topsoil and disturbs water animals, reducing their numbers. The fishers in Pattani Bay demand that cockle farming be discontinued, but so far nobody has solved the problem (Nirat 2002; Puangrat 2002; Abdullo 2002; Mullins 2002; Sukree 2002). MONEY LAUNDERING

WITH SWAMPLAND

A swamp is a very important wetland ecological system in the southern region. Swamps function as reservoirs for water from mountains before the water flows into a river or a sea. They help prevent sudden flooding. They are a freshwater ecological system with specific characteristics and unique types of water animals and plants. They have subsystems, combining those of forest, meadow, and large marsh. Swamps serve as deposits for minerals that are in the water, resulting in natural fertility. In the past, people liked to grow rice in swamps because they could get very good yields without the use of fertilizer. There was no need for plowing. Only buffaloes were used to step on grasses or reeds before the young rice plants were put in the ground. Today, swamps all over the South have been almost completely destroyed because of ecological changes resulting from development projects such as road and dam construction, as well as from swamp filling for urbanization. Usually swamps are flooded in the rainy season, and the water flows out 46

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naturally until they almost dry up in the dry season. If a new road blocks the waterway or if a dam is built, water in the swamps will decrease, destroying the ecological system (Muelee 2002). In the lower part of the South, a large number of swamps have been destroyed rapidly in the above-mentioned ways. A swamp named Bueng Nam Sai, located in Ban Buenaebukae (Talohalo Subdistrict, Sai Buri District, Pattani Province), used to have a large area covering several hundred rat. The grassy part covers over two hundred rai, and the marsh, itself over three hundred rai, with water in it all year round. Some points are as deep as two meters. The water is so clear that the water animals at the bottom can be seen. The swamp receives water from the Bueleng mountain range and flows into Sai Buri River, entering the sea at Pattani Bay. In the past, rice growing in the swamp was very productive. Villagers had to use dugout canoes to harvest'the rice. Many cows and buffaloes were raised in the swamp, with at least ten animals per household. Water animals were abundant, as were rare fish such as pla mangkonnong. » Changes began when the public service built a road around the swamp, closing the water circulation. Some areas became dry. Others were flooded for a long time. It became difficult to grow rice and raise buffaloes. Then, water gates were built to close the water flow from the swamp into the river, making the swamp water bad. After that, there were many other development projects implemented around the swamp without consultation with villagers who were, affected. Some became monuments with no use. A leader of the villagers around the swamp said that this swamp has become a moneylaundering place for governmental agencies as well as local, and national politicians. No attention has been paid to the impacts on the ecological systems and the villagers’ lives. Another case is a swamp called Bueng Topran or Lan Khwai, which used to have an area as large as fifteen thousand rai. It consisted of approximately four thousand rai of flooded land, five thousand rai of rice fields, and six thousand rai of other land. Around the swamp, there were fourteen villages of five subdistricts of Raman District, in Yala Province, and Thung Yang Daeng District, in Pattani Province. The swamp had a big, rich forest with wild animals. Villagers were able to harvest honey from the forest. In the past two decades, there were various development projects around the swamp. The area has been severely affected by the roads around it, by water gates, by factories and communities that release waste into the swamp, and by encroachment on the swamp land. Such changes cause the swamp to be flooded for a long time, from only three months per year in the past to all year round. In addition, the water has turned bad, killing trees in over three thousand rai. Suitable areas for raising buffaloes have shrunk because food has decreased. Raising buffaloes was formerly a traditional cultural practice 47

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in a swamp area. After once having ten thousand buffaloes (one to two thousand per village), the swamp hosts only four hundred to five hundred animals'at present. This affects the life of the people around the swamp very seriously. Ayee Awae (2002a), a village leader who participated in a study of impacts of development, concluded that nowadays, the swamp Lan Khwai “is sick with cancer” that is spreading to' the eyes, the hands, and the feet, and eating up the rest of the body. He said, “A swamp is a natural reservoir. If we want to develop it, we need to do it right. If we do it wrong, the damage is what we see. People in the past were able to manage the swamp in a right way. They did not destroy it and the swamp stayed undamaged.” Along Sai Buri basin, there are six major swamps and they all suffer .the same problems. PLOWING ALL SAGO PALM FORESTS

A sago palm (Metroxylon sagus) forest is a freshwater ecological system that is found in the South. It is a habitat for various plants and land and water animals. It is an important underground water reservoir for rice farming communities. Sewed strips of the palm leaves are also an important income source for the villagers. Achan Weeroj Sriwarapan, a sago palm conservationist, together with students from Na Yong District in Trang Province, reported that a strip of sewed leaves can be sold for eight baht. Villagers are able to make six thousand to seven thousand baht per household per year. In addition, they are able to make sago flour from mature trees. Khun Ploenjai Chansano from Yadphon Association (Raindrop nongovernmental organization [NGO]), which has promoted the conservation of sago palm forests since 1994, said that one rai of sago palm forest (approximately eighty trees) can produce flour worth about 192,000 baht. Sago beetles are sold at two hundred baht per kilogram. Fish also can be found in the sago palm forest. Governmental agencies, however, do not appreciate the importance of sago palm forests. They have organized projects to dredge canals and have destroyed virtually every sago palm forest. As a result, this important source of biological diversity is almost completely gone. Adding to the damage from the government dredging projects, many sago palm forests have been cut down by rice fanners who allege that the forests provide nests for rice mice and cast shade that prevents rice from growing. Sago palm forests are also affected by the expansion of the economy, urbanization, the filling up of land, and destructive encroachment on forest areas. The new generation is not interested in protecting the forests due to a changing lifestyle; people no longer need to depend upon sago palms for their livelihood. Between the sago palm forest and the sea, the nipa palm (Nipa fruticans) forest is another coastal ecological system that provides tremendous benefits 48

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to the community, including palm sugar, nipa leaves, dessert, and roofing material. Mr. Chainarong Konggua, a member of a private development agency in Pak Phanang Basin, pointed out that one rat of approximately 1,000 trees can annually produce 1,200 strips of sewed leaves for roofing material at 4,800 baht, as well as 20 kilograms of palm sugar per day at 20 baht per kilogram. Nowadays, the nipa palm forest is being destroyed rapidly by several development projects implemented by the government and the private sector, especially shrimp farming, which requires coastal land close to seawater (Students from Prince of Songlda University 2002; Chainarong 2002; Weeroj 2002). CONSERVATION THAT EVICTS COMMUNITIES

As a consequence of the forest conservation movement, there has been a rush since 1989 to establish protected forest areas all over the country, through the establishment of both national parks and wildlife conservation areas. Such measures should be promoted. However,. the problem is that these areas have not been identified through legitimate local surveys. Instead, boundaries have been determined simply by drawing on a map. This has resulted in both old and new conservation areas being established all over the country on land where communities are already settled and people are earning a living. According to a survey done by the Forestry Department in 2001, there are at least 460,000 households in the protected forest area of 8.1 million rat. Once an area is declared a protected forest, officials have the authority to arrest people who encroach upon the land. Tree cutting and all other activities are forbidden, even though some areas are fruit orchards, para-rubber plantations, communities, or villages. Even communities that have existed for over two hundred years have been declared protected land, causing serious conflicts between forestry officials and residents. It can be said that this is one of the biggest problems between the government and villagers at present. People all over the country who suffer from this have advocated to have the problem solved through Forum of the Poor. A proposal was drafted to set up a collaborative committee on the provincial level to investigate the procedures for designating protected areas. Finally, in April 2001, the council of ministers issued a resolution to accept the proposal. At present, there are such committees, but progress has been very slow in all provinces. In the regions surrounding more than ten national parks and wildfife conservation areas in the South, most villagers are still feeing problems because they are officially forbidden to earn a living on their- own farms. The community forestry network in the South pointed out that a preliminary survey identified over 200 communities around the forests that suffer such problems. Nearly five thousand villagers from Samakkhi Subdistrict, Yala Province, were included. 49

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A simple proposal of the villagers is to set up a joint committee representing government and villagers for the purpose of surveying the land and separating cultivated and community areas from forest areas. However, this proposal was made five years ago, and has not been implemented. People need to protest constantly (Yamaruding 2002; Sintu 2002). REQUEST FOR COMMUNITY FROM THE PEOPLE

PARTICIPATION

AND ALTERNATIVES

In addition to discussing a range of experiences resulting from development, Roseedee Lerdariyapongkul (2002) brought up the topic of narcotic drugs and suggested ways of solving this problem through the use of psychology, religion, and empowerment from community participation. A network of “Friends of Women behind the Farm” (Jitra 2002) and a group of female producers of chehem tea (Husdee 2002) talked about the roles of women who participate extensively in resource management. Concerning the community of Bang Tawa in Pattani Province, social mangrove forestry was proposed as a strategy to fight for community rights and reduce conflicts (Yuso and Pattani Bay Network 2002). The community of Kalo Forest (Raman District, Yala Province) (Asae 2002) asked governmental agencies to adjust their ways of thinking, policies, and working directions to correspond with the needs of the community. The Community Forestry Network in the South (Sintu 2002) urged the issuance of community forest laws, and called for efforts to find real solutions to the problem of using land for livelihoods. At Chumphon Province’s Pathio District, villagers and the school established a mangrove forest as a community learning center at Thung Maha Bay (Sompong and Suparb 2002). Citing projects like “Schools under Shade of Trees” (Sathom 2002).and “Community Protecting Water” (Supot 2002), Po No School and Tadika School (Hayeehummud 2002) expressed the view that there are many different ways of learning. Holistic education involving the community belongs to the community, is by the community, and is for the community. People become self-reliant and do not forget their roots. A club of handicapped people from Satun, representing those with less opportunity, told the forum that they wanted to have educational support so that they are able to develop themselves on the basis of dignity and equality (Satain 2002). Farmers from Thung Khawat (Niphon 2002), funding agencies for farming villages in the basin Jinda 2002), people’s banks in Muslim communities (Somboon 2002), and residents of Karakaet Subdistrict (Chian Yai District, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province) (lawee 2002) all identified economic alternatives based on community education that emphasizes how to survive and live with dignity. 50

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In relation to alternative agriculture, villagers from Kaero (Raman District, Yala Province) and “Network of the Green Market” illustrated that home vegetables and pesticide-free farming led to the security of both food and resource bases (Madaming 2002). They called for the creation of networks capable o f giving strength to such organizations and for an efficient community learning forum. Development activities using cultural dimensions to build community strength were proposed by Achan Boontham Therdkiatchart (2002) from Hua Sai District of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. He wanted artists of the South to get together to reform ideas and the present reality of the South. Teepalee Ababu (2202), a Malay dagger maker from Raman District, Yala Province, was of the opinion that a Malay dagger factory served as a learning center and built community strength. The factory based its work on five concepts: (1) learning, (2) understanding, work, (3) understanding mind, (4) gaining real knowledge, and (5) appreciating unity. Lamai Manakam (2002), Dueramae Daramae (2002), and Ayee Awae (2002) helped draw concluding lessons from the experiences of fighting against government policies and development schemes in the Pattani and Sai' Buri basins in the last decade. These helped public organizations and networks to develop widely.

DATA FROM THE SURVEY OF THE VILLAGERS The previously mentioned impacts of development make up only a small part of the problems occurring all over the South. It could be said that a hundred problems come from the same type of development, even though different areas involve different people and agencies. The results of research conducted by the villagers yield the important insight that development results in similar consequences for communities. The frameworks describing the impact of development share many points, described in the following sections. INTRODUCED

KNOWLEDGE

»

Ways of thinking which lead to implementing the development projects that hurt communities and resources are not based on traditional community knowledge. They are all introduced from abroad. Whether related to dam construction, destructive fishing tools, breeding, or even forest management that evicts all people from the area, they are all knowledge systems copied from the West. In Thailand’s different social and cultural environment, imposing these knowledge systems can lead to problems. In other words, when the government asks or forces villagers to' accept a development scheme modeled on outside sources, this means disregarding 51

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the traditional knowledge o£ the community. Traditional knowledge is looked down upon and eventually destroyed. SACRIFICING FOR THE NATION, INDUSTRY

THE URBAN POPULATION,

AND

For all situations in which villagers disagree with the state about development projects, the state will say that the villagers need to sacrifice for the nation without defining clearly what the nation is. Are the villagers who protest against the projects a part of the nation? It is obvious that in the short run, those who benefit from various development projects are politicians and business people. In the long run, those who benefit are people in the industrial sector and city residents. Rural people are the last to receive the benefits. As an example, villages on the border of a power-generating dam do not have any electricity. It is very obvious that energy and water supply projects respond to the people in the city and to the industrial factories. Nevertheless, there has always been a request for villagers to “sacrifice.” THE RIGHT TO LIVE THE WAY YOU USED TO

The state affirms that every state project is a development project. At the same time, the villagers report that the project destroys the community and resources. Many villagers say that they want to live the way they used to. They do not want “development” of the type that the state imposes upon them. However, the state does not agree and insists that the community develop in the ways determined by the state. Whoever objects is considered an opponent of development. This all implies that the villagers have no right to live the way they used to. They are not allowed to raise turtle doves, go out fishing by boat, grow rice in a swamp forest, or weave reeds as they once did. But it is the state that continuously violates the right to follow the traditional ways of the community. Contemporary society thinks that the state has the legitimate power to violate this right.

« DESTROYING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMMUNITIES

WITH UNSUSTAINABLE

The different development projects not only impact the community in several ways, but also destroy all aspects of sustainable community life. Shrimp farming destroys rice fields, nipa palm forests, freshwater canals, wells, mangrove forests, and fishing sites. Dam construction destroys rice fields in swamp forests, water sources, ecological systems, lakes and seas. Coal mining projects and dams can destroy a hundred-year-old mixed planting culture and communities that are several hundred years old. Development in the past resulted in the destruction of community assets and the weakening of the community. When villagers or environmental 52

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conservation groups fight the government, this not only shows that they do not want a particular project, but also represents a’conflict between sustainable development and unsustainable development. The message from the villagers to the government is not just that they object to the dam, the reservoir, or the gas pipeline. In fact, they are also saying that the state’s present “way of thinking” about development is deficient and abnormal, because the more development there is, the more damage there is. UNILATERAL DEVELOPMENT

At present, various state development projects have a single critical element in common: they are unilateral. They may come out of the proposals of an individual politician, a single governmental agency, or the government sector as a whole. The villagers are not involved. They can join when the governmental agency allows them to do so, but only because the agency needs confirmation. Otherwise, villagers are simply ordered to participate. To listen to the opinions of different agencies is only to listen to the thinking carried on within a single framework and to be driven toward an outcome that the agencies have already chosen. No matter how good it is in principle, a unilateral development project cannot become sustainable. WHERE IS THE POWER?

In all cases, the villagers have the same conclusion: no matter how big a project is, if the villagers do not endorse it, and join together to express their opinions, there will be an impact. Some projects cannot be stopped, but the agencies in charge of the projects can work carefully to keep from repeating the same mistakes elsewhere. Nevertheless, the power of the people is difficult to consolidate. This is the result of many factors. In general, villagers tend not to oppose the state. Those who do are considered to be unorthodox, and to be opponents of the development. In some areas, the people have been under the influence of community leaders and politicians for so long that they are not able to stand up to protect themselves. If they do stand up, they need a politician to lead. In the end, they are most often drawn into greater difficulty because politicians tend to lead in the direction that benefits them personally. Experiences from different places tell us that strong organizations of the people remain the key to changing the development path of the country. Politicians and government officials do not like strong organizations because they often bring trouble to powerful parties. Strong organizations do not allow politicians or government officials to set the agenda, and insist upon being involved until the very end. No powerful people would want a participatory working style. 53

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Villagers’ leaders mention that an important tool is “informing the villagers.” This can mean telling people about news, information, and rights. It works because when the villagers know, “they will fight and fight nonstop.”

THE DESTROYING HANDS ALL BELONG TO THE SAME OWNER(S) Fishers say that owners of large push-net boats, which destroy water animals, are their enemy since these also destroy them. Rice farmers say that owners of shrimp farms are the ones destroying them. People around a dam say that the industrial sector is responsible for the dam’s construction. This or that agency is the enemy of the villagers. It seems that the villagers have various enemies. However, in actuality, the very same people or the same groups are found behind a great many development initiatives. Many shrimp farm owners have factories that release wastewater into the sea. Capitalists who blast rock next to residential areas have wood-processing factories that illegally take wood from national parks. They work with officials from the Forestry ■Department, taking profits from one place to increase the capacity for destroying another place. They maintain links to the government by providing financial and voter support (from the people working in their factories and on their para-rubber and palm plantations). The owner of the largest pushnet business, who makes a lot of trouble in the Pattani Bay area, has the same •last name as a politician who has served at the ministerial level in some governments. In the last phase of the people’s forum in Pattani, it was asked what the forum wanted to propose to the government. The leaders of a people’s organization to protect Sai Buri Basin had only one proposal: the government should stop all development projects currently underway so that the communities will improve. Almost all the meeting participants agreed with the proposal. Some participants said that hardly anybody, comes to their villages for development purposes and that the villagers have a good life. However, the government may think that they are joking. Stopping development is development. Ayee Awae June 15, 2002

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CONCLUSIONS The meeting participants came up with the following conclusions: 1. The improper use of state authority results in the violation of rights, competition for resources, imbalanced and unsustainable development, the limiting of benefits to particular groups, and negative impacts on local people. 2. The cause of the above is the centralization of power within government agencies. Decision-making lies in the hands of small groups of people, such as governmental officials and politicians who do not have sufficient understanding of the local situation. 3. Important consequences of development are conflicts within the community, conflicts between villagers and the government, and weakened communities. Concrete examples include deserted rice fields, the spread of narcotic drugs, and multiple problems related to energy, forest land, and dams. These problems extend to national and international levels and are likely to increase and become more severe. 4. Wisdom and knowledge already exist in the local communities. Villagers understand their problems and needs, and choose to live in keeping with diverse cultural traditions and resource bases. 5. People are able to analyze their problems. They can find solutions up to a certain point. Then they need the support of governmental policies, especially to protect the communities’ right to deal with their own problems. In particular, they need their resource base to be protected, as this is crucial for quality of life, food security, health, and livelihoods. 6. The government must accept its duty to protect the rights of people and communities to solve their own problems according to the provisions of the constitution. 7. The government needs to have a serious’ presence at the local level in order to learn and understand people’s problems in different areas, and to provide proper support and help.

0 PROPOSALS OF THE PEOPLE TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITIES PUBLIC SECTOR SOLUTIONS

1. Do not follow investment paths that focus on benefits to particular groups such as politicians and foreign capitalists. 2. Let communities fence in their own resource and cultural bases. 3. Spiritual development needs to be given priority. 4. Local politics and NGO roles need to be reviewed. 55

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THE PHILOSOPHY

OF PUBLIC SECTOR DEVELOPMENT

Singular perspectives cannot make a society complete. Being little or much is not an indicator of perfection. Interdependence in the society requires a holistic way of thinking. WORK STRATEGIES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

1 . Have a firm grip on resource and cultural bases. Do not follow the flow nainstream development. 2 . Use the knowledge and diversity of cultural and resource bases to power development activities. Work with wisdom. Work together as a community. 3 . Analyze and decide in a.holistic way. 4. Involve people in the development process. 5. Use networks of people to advance policies. POLICY-RELATED SUGGESTIONS

1. Discontinue development projects. 2. Ask people to participate diligently in the policy planning process. 3. Revise government roles to support the people and formulate alternative policies to solve the bottleneck problem. 4. In terms of education, religious principles and community culture must be integrated into the curriculum. The philosophy of “Po No (Pondok) School” should be studied and integrated into the curriculum. 5. Restore and preserve Po No (Pondok) 6. Restore and preserve Tadika and develop alternative educational opportunities. MEASURE-RELATED

SUGGESTIONS

1. The more development the state initiates, the more loss occurs. The state must stop development projects that are imbalanced and cause separations among the local people. 2 . The fundamental rights of the people and community must be protected.

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REFERENCES Abdullo Samae. 2002. Cockle Breeding in Pattani Bay and Community Rights in Resource Management. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Asae Ibuhama. 2002. Community Forestry Kalo. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. < Ayee Awae. 2002a. Lan Khwai Swamp: A Lesson from Development. Searching for Paths for the Community, and Participatory Sustainable Management. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social 'Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. ---------. 2002b. Lessons from Fighting against Sai Buri Dam. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. BoonthamTherdfciatchart. 2002. Cultural Dimensions ofthe South. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Chaiharong Konggua. 2002. The Relationship between the Use of Local Plants according to Villagers’ Knowledge and Natural Resource Management: The Case of Nipa Palm Trees and Local Plants'. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13—15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Chuang Chanwanna. 2002. Deserted Rice Fields in Ban Klang. Paper presented at Firstlnter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Decharut Sukkumnoed and Penchom lang. 2002. Health Impact Assessment of Eastern Seaboard Development Programs: A Case Study of Map Ta Phut Industrial Estates. Paper presented at HLA Stream at International Association of Impact Assessment, June 16-21. The Hague. Dueramae Daramae. 2002. An Autobiography of Mr. Dueramae. Paper presented at Firstlnter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 1-3-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Gamrab Panthong. 2002. Research on Development Paths by Green Market Network, Southern Thailand. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on

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Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Hayeehummud Adam. 2002. Po No School and ’ladika School: Education for SelfReliant Community. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Exppriencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Husdee Dahama. 2002, Vocational Training Project of Women Producing Chehem Tea. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from Peopled Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Jinda Boonchan. 2002. Village Fund for Sustainable Resource Management. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from Peopled Perspectives, "June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Jitra Buasuwan. 2002. Network of Friends of Women behind the River Basin Farm. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Lamai Manakam. 2002. First Inter-Dialogue Thailand: Current 13-15, C. S. Hotel,

Wetland Study and Research Project. Paper presented at Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June Pattani.

Madaming Areeyu. 2002. Local Vegetables Strengthen Community in Kaero Subdistrict, Raman District. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 1 3-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Muelee Jaelong. 2002. Knowledge of Swamp Forest Management. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Mullins, May. 2002a. The Political Ecology of the Thai-Malaysian Pipeline Project in a Fishing Village in Songkhla, Southern Thailand. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern , Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. ---------. 2002b. Political Ecology of Fishing Villages in Thailand and Indonesia: A Comparison between Two Countries. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Narit Duansuwan. 2002. Thailand-Malaysia Pipeline Project. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13—15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. 58

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Niphon Rakjaroeng. 2002. Farmer Group of ThungKhawat. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13—15, C, S. Hotel, Pattani. Nirat Awae. 2002. Conservation Group of Pattani Bay. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Nitat Kaewsri. 2002. Association of. Artisanal, Fishers of Songkhla Lake. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives, ’’June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Pak Phanang River Basin Community. 2002. The Case of the Pak Phanang Development Project. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. PuangratKongprasert 2002. Cockle Breeding. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Roseedee Lerdariyapongkul. 2002. Problems of Narcotic Drug Spread in Southern Bordering Provinces. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sagariya Baiyapma. 2002. Lignite Problem at Thung Pho. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sathom Sompong. 2002. Schools under Shade of Trees Project. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Satian Prombarirak. 2002. Handicapped Club of Satun Province. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sintu Kaewsin. 2002. Community Forestry Network of the South: The Case of Rights to Use the Traditional Land of the Community. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sombat Sae.Hae, Dejcharat Sukgamnerd, and Studying and Fighting Group against Industrial Pollution. 2002. Provincial Plans and the Health of the Thai People

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Today. Paper distributed by Health System Reform at National Health Conference. August 8-9. Public Health System Research Institute, Nonthaburi, Thailand. Somboon Bualuang. 2002. People’s Banks inMuslim Communities: Lessons, Success, and Failure. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sompong Intarasuwan, and Suparb Srisab. 2002. Mangrove Forest Resource Management: Thung Maha Bay, Pathio District. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on SouthemThailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S . Hotel, Pattani. Students from Prince of Songkla University. 2002. Mixed Garden, Sago PalmForests, and Rice Fields. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sukree Hajisamae, Thumronk Amomsakul, Anchalee Klamphet, and Hulwani Saref. 2002. Traditional Fisherman: Can They Survive under the Current Situation? Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference oh Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sulaiman Mudyuso. 2002. Thailand-Malaysia Gas Pipeline Project. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Sumalee Kunpitak. 2002. Growing Rice during Off-Season to Solve Problem of Deserted Rice Fields. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Supot Saengchan. 2002. Water Conservation Community. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Tawee Soisirisunthom. 2002 . Demonstrative and Developmental Center of Learning. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing SouthemThailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. TeepaleeAtabu. 2002. The Conservation and Promotion of the Art of Making Malay Dagger. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Weeroj Sriwarapan. 2002. Sustainable Management of Sago Eprest Resources. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand,

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“Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Yamaruding Loma. 2002. The Problems of Forest and Land Use: The Case of Seven Districts in the Budo-Sungai Padi Mountain Range. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on' Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Yuso Hayeeyuso, and Pattani Bay Network 2002. Mangrove Forest of Pattani Bay Communities: Lessons and Experiences of Participatory Local Resource Management in the Case of Mangrove Forests at Ban Dato and Ban Bang 'lawa. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social 'Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani.

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INTRODUCTION There have long been rural Buddhist communities scattered along the border between Malaysia and Thailand, in an area generally dominated by the Islamic religion. The unique language and culture of this local population has great significance in Thailand’s history of nation-building and political stability. Nevertheless, knowledge about the life and sociocultural conditions of the Buddhist communities in the border provinces is very scarce. This is true even for .areas with a large number of Buddhist communities, like Tak Bai District in Narathiwat Province. Geographically, these communities are far away .from the center of sociopolitical power and prosperity. However, their geographically peripheral and marginal status has made the issue of adaptation and change within these communities significant in many ways. Assimilating local Thai people who, in the past, tended to have more contact and closer ties with their kin communities just across the border (Golomb 1978, 25) to become an integral part of the Thai nation, socially and culturally, has undoubtedly been important for security officials of the Thai state. Changing the traditional rustic lifestyle of local people to a more convenient modem consumer lifestyle not only means’ profits for traders and businessmen, but also a proud achievement for local development officials and national development planners. Even among development academics, some might arguably have been satisfied with the local people’s acceptance of modernity in these remote areas. However, until recent years, most of the perspectives employed in the study of community changes in Thailand, intentionally or not, tended to focus on or give priority to external pressures or processes such as market expansion, modernization, and westernization. This has been the case to such 63

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an extent that the importance of the local people and their communities, as well as their capacity to adjust to and make sense of these processes, have been unjustly neglected (Wattana 1998). No one can deny the fact that these outside pressures and the development ethos have penetrated virtually every community. But there are also key questions about what happens within the community. How can people adapt to and negotiate with these external processes and the resulting changes? How have rural people’s lives and communities changed? Under what conditions have the traditional ways of living of these people been integrated or blended with the new trends permeating their communities? During the past few decades, development processes and market expansion in Thailand have been delivering modernity to a large number of people formerly far removed from meaningful participation in global flows of capital, images, information, and consumer goods. People in rural communities thereby have become directly and indirectly involved in national and global markets. For many rural families, increased exposure to a more diversified economy and modem lifestyle has brought about changes in consumption patterns. Indeed, the expansion of mass-produced goods such as modem consumer items has often been seen as indicative of a free flow of goods and images on the one hand, and the decline of local culture and emergence of global and cultural homogeneity on the other. However, while global mass culture and consumerism have been intruding into the everyday fives of even people in remote communities, there’appears to be a complementary trend: interpreting modem goods and practices according to local conditions (Appadurai 1990). As increasing acknowledgment is given to the interplay between global flows and local responses, it becomes increasingly clear that lifestyles and consumption patterns cannot be understood as stable and static elements. People are constantly balancing global forces and local conditions. From this perspective, an interpretation of the signs of modernity, often associated with consumer goods and modem lifestyles, as something superior cannot be left undisputed. The point of departure here is that people are not passive consumers, but are actively and constantly engaged in practices related to choosing, interpreting, and appropriating modem consumer goods and lifestyles (Bourdieu 1984; Featherstone 1987, 1992; Longhurstand Savage 1997). As consumers, people are integrated into national and global markets, and as human beings they are part of a world of social networks. They not only are buyers and sellers, but they also belong to households and communities: they have families, relatives, neighbors, and friends. Rather than taking modernity for granted, they appropriate and incorporate its components into their own private daily lives, their local systems of meaning, and their social relations. In other words, consumers will bring their own cultural dispositions 64

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to bear on modem goods and lifestyles, interpreting them according to their own reality. In the consumption process, modernity has a tendency to be localized. It is interpreted, translated, and appropriated according to the local conditions of consumers. While this can certainly be observed in the context of urban life, comparable cases can also be seen in peripheral rural communities (Weyland 1993; Thomas 1998). It is the latter scenario which is the main focus of this' article. As part of a research project intended to explore the everyday lives and livelihoods of rural Buddhist villagers along the Thai-Malaysian border, this article specifically discusses the consumption practices of rural people at the periphery of both national and global economies. In examining consumption practices in a rural border community, the article intends to consider the ways in which global flows of consumer goods are located within the life experience of rural residents, making up their world of everyday activities, concerns, anxieties, fears, hopes, and expectations. The importance of examining national and global sociocultural processes as shaping and being shaped by local people cannot be overemphasized. The debates on the f significance of global forces and modernity must not only acknowledge the need for microlevel analysis, where the blending of global flows with local lifestyles becomes visible, but must also engage in detailed empirical investigation. In sum, what this article intends to examine in a specific rural context is how modernity is reproduced, negotiated, and appropriated through ' local consumption. The research site for this study was the village of “Sue Ring” (a fictitious name), a rural Buddhist community that is located on a low-lying plain near a’large wetland along the Thai-Malaysian border of Narathiwat Province. The case study approach was adopted here in light of the main focus of the study, which was the villagers’ everyday life, social networks, livelihoods, and lifestyles in relation to the interaction between global flows and the local community. Sue Ring is approximately twelve kilometers north of Tak Bai District. Approximately twenty Idlometers to the south is Su-ngai Kolok, a thriving commercial and trading border town. The village is not too far away from the town and the marketplace, and traveling to and from this area is relatively convenient. There are eighty-two households clustered together in Sue Ring, making it reasonably easy for an outside researcher to get acquainted with local, residents. There are a large number of Buddhist communities in Tak Bai District, especially in the rural areas. Sue Ring is not different from other nearby Buddhist communities in that it is surrounded by Muslim communities, and most residents grow rice and raise animals as their means of living. Working as off-farm wage laborers, especially in residential construction activities in nearby urban centers, is also an important source of income for many villagers. 65

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The field data for this study were collected from January 1998 to September 1999. The researcher periodically went to the village and spent two to three days there talking to local residents, asking questions, observing daily life, and participating in some local rituals and other activities. Part of the data used in the analysis come from the information collected in a household survey of the community. This quantitative data helped the researcher to obtain an overall picture of the community’s occupational structure, the production system and production relations, villagers’ consumption patterns, and general perceptions of change. Another set of data comes from interviews with key informants and in-depth interviews with male*and female villagers about their personal life histories, work, opinions, and experiences concerning the use and consumption of goods and services. In analyzing the data from this research, it is assumed that a villager’s personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences concerning any situation, activity, or issue’ of interest can be considered as a space where he/she can create, define, express, maintain and reproduce, compromise, adapt, and change the norms, cultural meaning, and values that have been passed down to Him/her. Furthermore, an analysis of villagers’ life stories, everyday lives, and personal experiences can also be seen as a microreflection of the sociabstructure as well as the dynamic and sociocultural process at the macro level.

THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF BORDER COMMUNITY LIFE The state development policy and plans focusing on improving economic conditions in the southern border area began in the late 1950s (Nantawan 1976). To a large extent, these efforts reflected a strategy adopted by the government to improve rather backward living conditions among Muslim communities in the border areas, and to lessen historically deep-rooted political conflicts and mistrust between the Muslim population and Thai government officials. A substantial budget and investment capital allocated by the government and financial and technical support from foreign countries facilitated road construction and road improvements, especially the construction of important highways in southern border provinces. In Narathiwat, in addition to government-sponsored development activities, other development projects having direct and indirect impacts on the livelihoods of local residents have been the royal initiative development projects, which after 1967 began making significant inroads into rural parts of Tak Bai District. These royal development projects, especially the water resource and irrigation development projects, became sustained employment opportunity and income source for a large number of villagers in the area.

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Dirt roads .built as dams to stop overruns and dirt roads along the canals covered an area of hundreds of thousands of rai (one rai equals 0.4 acre), and were turned into a dense network of roads which were widely used for travel by villagers. Along with development projects and .infrastructure improvements, the state power and government agencies expanded much further into rural communities in the area. Meetings and other forms of contact between villagers, local leaders, and officials occurred more often, while new laws, rules, regulations, and practices increasingly became part of daily life in this border area. In the early 1970s, Su-ngai Kolok, formerly a small and quiet railroad junction on the Thai-Malaysian border, was transformed into a busy trading and service center. It became a gateway for transporting cheap agricultural and industrial products from Thailand to Malaysian markets, as well as a workplace for northern Thai prostitutes selling sex services to tourists flooding in from Malaysia (Golomb 1978, 25). The dirt road connecting Tak Bai District to Su-ngai Kolok was replaced by a new asphalt road in 1978. This made traveling by motorcycle and car more convenient and popular. Su-ngai Kolok therefore has become an increasingly important urban center for NarathiwatProvince, and undoubtedly for many residents of Tak Bai District. At the national level, infrastructure development, investment activity, and modernization in agriculture and industry have spurred Thailand’s tremendous economic growth since the late 1950s. The country’s economic and social structures have become more diverse. Infrastructure development and the modernization of agriculture, which became a growth engine for national industrialization and the economy as a whole, increasingly’ incorporated more farmers and other rural; people into the market-based economy. Agricultural goods are produced both for domestic consumption and for export to world markets. In rural areas,-new production techniques, methods, and inputs, as well as a variety of modem goods, have been widely adopted by increased numbers of fanners and other residents. Economic expansion, greater connections between rural communities and urban centers, and changes in agricultural production in the last few decades have increasingly created and diversified job opportunities in rural and urban areas alike. Villagers therefore have more income-generating possibilities, especially outside of the agriculture sector. The expansion of rural electricity, the growth of mass media, and improvements in communication and transportation systems have facilitated the transfer of agricultural goods from rural areas to hew markets. These changes have also stimulated new expectations and needs among rural residents and have given rise to an increasingly dense distribution network carrying modem goods, necesSary or otherwise, to almost every rural shop. For many rural residents, connections

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with the outside market and economy have certainly increased the number of ways to earn an income, while also creatingnew needs and, inevitably, as we will discuss later, new problems. In Narathiwat Province, most socioeconomic change was the result of the interplay between the top-down national development plans and the available resources and opportunities of the border areas. Betweenl971 and 1993, the gross provincial product level (GPP) for Narathiwat Province rose from 850 million baht (one baht was equivalent to U.S. $0.04-0.05 during the period) to 13,121 million baht, an increase of fifteen fold (table 1). However, the contribution from its traditional economic base, agriculture, had steadily declined over the years. Even though the production value of agriculture in 1971, which was 400 million baht, had increased to almost 4,500 million baht in 1993, it had decreased from 47.2 percent to 34.2 percent of the GPP. During the same period, the service sector GPP increased from only 74 million baht to more than 3,200 million baht, an increase from 8.7 percent to 24.6 percent of the total GPP. Wholesale and retail sector value also increased, from 100 million baht to 2,200 million baht, or from 11.7 percent to 18 percent of the GPP. Evidently, the service and trading sectors of Narathiwat Province grew at a high rate between 1971 and 1993. The total value of products from wholesale, retail, and service in 1993 was more than 5,400 million baht, which was higher than that of agriculture in the same year. Undoubtedly, the economic and infrastructure development projects in the border provinces in recent decades have made the trading and service sectors in this area an important growth engine of Narathiwat Province, as has the lucrative multibillion baht illegal smuggling trade (Asian Development Bank 1994, 13-15). These developments also suggest that the labor market, occupational structure, and job opportunities within the agricultural field, as well as the pattern of local residents’ consumption in Narathiwat Province, had been undergoing considerable change. On the one hand, agricultural modernization and market expansion stimulated local villagers to. turn to producing cash crops to meet the local and external market demand. More modem technology and inputs were used. On the other hand, as the socioeconomic bases became more diversified, many villagers in the border areas, both male and female, became keenly •interested in seeking off-farm employment in an expanding urban labor market, especially those prepared to do low-skill building and construction jobs and services. Along with this came changes in fifestyles and consumption patterns for many people. Table 2 shows that between 1970 and 1990, there was an increase in the number of Narathiwat Province residents possessing household appliances and other durable consumer goods. Electricity, which after 1977 was made 68

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available to rural communities nationwide, certainly boosted the number of electrical appliances used by the rural population. In 1976, only 22 percent of rural villages had electricity. This was increased to 67 percent in 1 985 and to 93 percent in 1990. Only 5 percent of villages in Narathiwat Province were reportedly without electricity (Takashi 1993, 2). The number of consumer items in rural households, including radios, tape players, television sets, rice cookers, irons, fans, gas stoves, and motorcycles, also increased. There were a few households which had expensive and extravagant products such as vacuum cleaners, washing machines, air-conditioners, and cars. For the most part, places where local people can shop for such modem goods and related services are clustered in urban areas, especially in some district towns and markets and in downtown Su-ngai Kolok, which is considered the largest center for business, trading, and services in the southern border area. It is worth noting that trading and service activities, which were expanding rapidly near the border (particularly after 1987, when the country’s economy had the highest growth), enabled Su-ngai Kolok to become the largest and most ostentatious center for shopping and entertainment in the area. For a lot of people from near and far, this city has also become one of the largest labor markets on the southern border. As far as consumption is concerned, local people have increasingly used modem goods and services, which have been made more widely available and easier to purchase than ever before. This development, as mentioned earlier, has resulted from a combination of factors, including the expansion of the border economy, the growth of the market economy, the establishment of more shopping and service centers, opportunities for off-farm income in both the public and private sectors, the spread of mass media in rural areas, and communication and transportation improvements. Table 3 shows that the daily life of Sue Ring residents is tightly connected to outside markets. Household goods such as electric rice cookers, gas stoves, fans, refrigerators, and televisions have become necessary items possessed by most villagers, almost irrespective of their socioeconomic status. Motorcycles are also commonly bought and used for transporting people and things. Watching television with relatives and neighbors during the day, while relaxing or taking breaks from work, is common. The sound of music and entertainment programs on television can be heard coming from almost every household in the evening. Some people who do not have televisions may go to a relative’s home or may visit friends or neighbors, together watching news, soap operas, commercials, game shows, live music concerts, and other programs. Sue Ring villagers receive information about what is happening around the country and the world as other people do elsewhere nationwide. Gradually, electricity, television, and radio have incorporated Sue Ring into the mainstream social and cultural life of the country, and increasingly 69

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connected people to an ever-expanding modem world outside their parochial home. As for farming techniques, villagers’ use of small two-wheeled tractors in the rice field, formerly ploughed by cattle, is rather common. Even though not every household owns a tractor, every farming household has access to one, since they can borrow their relatives’. Some of these small tractors have been a co-investment among relatives. Few people own bicycles or radios, indicating that they may have*become increasingly outdated or replaced by other more useful products. Some expensive modem items, such as-washing machines, video players, and pickup tracks, are desired by many but can only be afforded by a few better-off families. It should be emphasized that table 3 does not indicate the number, price, or quality of the appliances and other goods each family owns. Some may have two or three old television sets, while others may only have an expensive new one that is a well-known brand. Also, some families have two or three motorcycles. Table 3 does not list many different types of toiletries commonly used by villagers, e.g. soap, shampoo, toothpaste, talcum powder, cosmetics, and deodorant, which can be conveniently purchased from two local grocery stores. Also, teenagers and many other villagers wearing jeans and T-shirts with pictures, logos, and alien symbols are not such an uncommon sight in Sue.Ring. In acquiring household appliances and other possessions with foreign brand names, villagers have incorporated many new words into their daily conversations. Such practices only indicate the degree to which the outside world has been spreading its influence in this small border community, changing villagers’ consumption practices and lifestyles. Certainly, local residents are not equal in their purchasing power. Many of the expensive modem consumer goods and consumption patterns are therefore still a significant symbol, more or less, of socioeconomic status. Families with medium to large land holdings usually own more than one motorcycle, or they own an expensive one. They may have a car or a pickup truck, several television sets, and usually a washing machine. Poor or landless families may not have a motorcycle, or if they do, it may be a cheap old used one. They may have an old television or one that is out of order and has been awaiting repairs for quite some time. These varying patterns of consumption indicate differences in opportunities and constraints among differentiated social groups in Sue Ring. Nevertheless, the overall consumption pattern of the Sue Ring community still indicates the influence of the mass-production economy, which has made a huge quantity of new consumer goods and services widely available to many people, including many rural residents in this remote border area. Sue Ring today is very different from what it was in the past. However, when asked for their opinions on changes in Tak Bai and in their own 70

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community, almost every villager talked in positive terms. They mentioned the increasing khwam charoen (prosperity) and khivam saduak sabai (conveniences). Many emphasized that Sue Ring is still a klai chit sanit sanom (tightly knit) community with a strong tradition of chuai luea kan lae kan (mutual help and support), even though there have been some changes. It is worth noting that villagers expressed these attitudes and opinions as Sue Ring community has become increasingly more differentiated in terms of occupational structure and lifestyles. Not - surprisingly, there were some villagers who complained that they now have to struggle to solve problems on their own because modem equipment, appliances, and technology make them less and less dependent on each other. Some elders lamented the dayto-day loneliness that has resulted from children moving to work and raise their families elsewhere. Also, people talked about how their tiring and timeconsuming off-farm jobs in Su-ngai Kolok reduce their social time with friends and neighbors. Nevertheless, off-farm employment has remained a key source of income for many Sue Ring residents. National economic growth, infrastructure development, and changes in the economy near the border, as mentioned earlier, have diversified the structure of the border labor market. This has opened opportunities for many people in Sue Ring, both male and female, to be employed in various low-skilled wage-earning jobs (tables 4 and 5). The emergence of rural wage labor here, like elsewhere, can also be attributed in part to the adverse impact of the government’s cheap food policy and the industry-biased measures implemented since the'early 1960s. These have a tendency to keep the price of many agricultural products comparatively low, thus making it impossible for most rural farmers to survive on agricultural work alone. However, villagers cannot solely depend on off-farm employment because the work is not steady. Not many people have secure, permanent, well-paying jobs; their availability is always limited. Given the uncertainty about limited and low-paying off-farm employment, it is not surprising that farming, i.e. growing rice and raising cattle, an increasing difficult and time-consuming task for many, remains an important and stable source of food and income for most wage labor families, This is particularly true during economic downturns, when the labor market shrinks and off-farm jobs are harder to -find. The local labor market has always been affected by the ups and downs of the national and global economies, and residents of Sue Ring understand very well the situation upon which their livelihoods are so dependent. However, in the context of economic uncertainties and the lack of growth in agriculture, off-farm employment is still an important and viable source of income for villagers. Moreover, a strong incentive for villagers to be on the 71

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look-out for jobs is their expectation that they will have a more comfortable living standard, which requires more money for daily expenses, and for a variety of household articles for themselves and family members. Some villagers who were quite successful in that regard have set an example that many want to emulate. Nevertheless, for the majority of villagers, maintaining control over agricultural production activities remains critical in running the household as a successful production and consumption unit. These rural families, to a certain degree, remain autonomous, since they can still use their own labor to produce agricultural goods for domestic consumption or for sale as needed. In times of uncertainty, this autonomy provides a sort of local safety net that many can rely upon, particularly unemployed off-farm wage laborers. They can always turn to growing rice and raising animals to make their living and care for their families. When asked to compare their plight to that of urban counterparts, some Sue Ring residents proudly said that in times of crisis they have never been out of work or homeless, nor have they had to wait for help from the government or outside charity agencies. Academic debates on wage labor and off-farm employment in rural areas usually focus on the negative effects of the macroeconomic processes on the rural communities. The emergence of rural wage labor is commonly regarded as an ominous sign indicating the eventual dissolution of the family farm and traditional rural villages. However, evidence from this study has shown that the increase in wage labor and off-farm employment in this rural community has not led to the dissolution of family farms as formerly understood. Certainly, over the past decades the agricultural sector and rural life of the country have changed rapidly and tremendously, and the process of resource transfer from the countryside in various forms has remained undisturbed. However, despite decades of agricultural modernization and commodification, production for domestic consumption and subsistence, in Sue Ring and elsewhere, continues. In feet, most Sue Ring villagers do not spend the money they earn from off-ferm jobs exclusively on consumption. They carefully determine how much to allocate for agricultural investment and maintenance, thus protecting the agricultural production base that is crucial to families in this small rural community, fri other words, the off-ferm wage labor market in the border areas, although largely a result of the changes in the macroeconomic structure, has become an important opportunity for villagers. They see off-farm wage labor as a means not only to survive as family production and consumption units, but also to increase their likelihood of having access to new consumer goods, improving their living standard, and participating in the modem lifestyle.

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CONSUMING MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY In considering the general consumption patterns of Sue Ring residents in the last section, it is clear that everyday life has become closely connected to the ever-expanding national and global market economy, and to the greater local consumption of modem goods, including agricultural technology, personal articles, electrical appliances, vehicles, and other consumer goods. This has resulted partly from the increasing purchasing power of villagers who have benefited from national economic expansion, the growth of trading, business, and services centers in the border areas, and increased opportunities for employment inside and outside of the agricultural sector. Also, the diffusion of mass media, especially television, into almost every corner of the countryside, the expansion of government agencies, and the improved infrastructure in rural areas have significantly helped the rural population become aware of and well adapted to new technology and the modem lifestyle. These conditions, at the same time, have provided opportunities to conveniently purchase modern consumer goods, which are extensively available in most local markets and stores. To a large extent, these changes have resulted in a more widely and evenly diffused pattern of consumption as the modem consumer goods have no longer been exclusively enjoyed by urban people and a few rich rural elites. The focus of our concern here, however, is how local villagers make sense of, negotiate with, and adapt themselves to these changes and how the new ways of life have made an impact upon the folksy and traditional fabric of rural life. The perspective adopted in this study, as mentioned earlier, emphasizes the ways local people use, consume, and accept modem goods and services — and their signification of modernity —by incorporating them into everyday livelihood strategies. The possession of modem consumer goods and access to new services may give them pride and something to boast to neighbors and friends about, but villagers also are keen to make use of diem to the benefit of their livelihoods. No matter what they wear (a sarong and a lace blouse, or a pair of old worn-out shorts with pba khao ma—a countty-style piece of loincloth —wrapped around the waist, or a T-shirt, a jacket, and a pair of brand-name jeans like their urban counterparts), no matter whether their houses are made of concrete or wood, no matter whether they own a new or used motorcycle, all of these have cultural meanings and signify cultural . differences. They do not dress, or build their houses, or buy motorcycles only to meet their needs and expectations. Clothes, houses, and vehicles, like many other things, are also indicative of their lifestyles and serve as status markers. In a situation in which the material and cultural flows from the world market have penetrated deeply into rural areas, ,the villagers, though with 73

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different personal interests and socioeconomic statuses, have all become part of the cultural space whereby everybody is participating in the discourse about defining and redefining, interpreting, and negotiating symbols and signs of modernity. Even residents of a remote border community such as Sue.Ring have not been excluded from this discursive cultural space. Modem goods and services and cultural flows from the outside world have been infiltrating the community for decades. Through consumption, all local villagers have participated not only in the adjustment to modem ways of living, but also in efforts to make sense of the' modem symbols and signs around them. The consumption of goods to indicate status and the desire to participate in a modem lifestyle have been closely associated with the ways in which villagers’ household expenditures have been determined. It is particularly interesting when money has been spent on household gadgets or equipment that an observer may regard as wasteful. The focus on the noneconomic concerns of villagers is therefore important as this will reorient us to the fact that the villagers’ decisions about household expenditures have not been solely dictated by the market economy — or- primarily driven by economic considerations, for that matter. In fact, villagers have always been working hard to achieve their own personal goals and to attain a better life. As human beings, they are capable of acting on these interests, and, in many instances, of negotiating and transforming the imposing social structures and conditions to their own benefit. This is the thrust of the argument underlying the following discussion on the consumption practices of Sue.Ring residents. Durable consumer goods were the most common items bought and owned by most villagers. Among them, motorcycles and television sets were particularly important; 8 7 percent and 85 percent of households owned at least one motorcycle and one TV, respectively (Wattana 1998). These also appeared to be the goods most talked about and most closely connected with villagers’ everyday lives. It is therefore quite appropriate to focus our discussion on these two items. Villagers, began buying motorcycles widely as the local network of roads was being substantially improved and extended. Bicycles, the more popular means of transportation in the past, have become less and less common. At the time of this study, there were only fourteen households that still owned them. The reason for prefering motorcycles was readily apparent. Many people recalled the difficulties they formerly endured traveling near and far, when long journeys were made on foot and wading through swamps was sometimes necessary. The introduction of boat engines into the area made traveling via waterways possible, but this was very slow. Since the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the construction and improvement of local roads and highways have made public transport more convenient. Nevertheless, local residents still had to walk to the main road and spend a fair amount of time 74

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waiting for the buses to their destinations. As working away from the village has increasingly become the norm, along with extended social networks and modem conveniences, motorcycles have rapidly become essential acquisitions for most villagers. Expanding job opportunities inside and outside of agriculture allowed many people to save up and purchase any brand of motorcycle they wanted. However, not everyone could buy a new one. Some less well-off residents with limited savings or other urgent priorities would need to opt for a cheaper second-hand motorcycle, while poor families with little or no savings would need to get by without one. Motorcycles, all Japanese brands, have quickly become part of everyday life in the Sue Ring community. The strange but catchy names of various models have been constantly advertised through television and radio, and also, local residents have over the years developed local names for different motorcycles. They could be dubbed khrop khrua (family type), krathoei (ladylike), phu chai (manly), or Japanese khun pham (after a "Thai Casanova famous in literature). The last term refers to a large, expensive motorbike with a high-power engine, flashy colors, and racing-design contours whose owner, a target of both admiration and envy, is believed to have an advantage getting girls. Certainly, local teenagers always wish that they could own one of these Japanese khun phaen but many have had to settle for the khrop khrua instead. As one villager put it, “I didn’t have enough money, and there are needs for a vehicle for the family of three —grandma, mother, and me.” For most villagers, these needs usually encompass a variety of personal and social activities, including getting to work and to local markets, going places to inquire about job prospects, transporting rice hull, fertilizer, and cattle-feeding hay, visiting friends and relatives, and taking part in seasonal celebrations, religious festivities, and ordinations in nearby villages. In a small community with rather close relationships and frequent social activities, motorcycles, which are presumably privately owned, seem to have become common property among many people. Villagers who own motorcycles usually take along their neighbors or relatives to work. Some can be observed to have two passengers riding with them for a distance of forty kilometers to get to work and back home. Those who do not have a motorcycle but wish to learn how to drive one or need to go somewhere can ask favors of people they know. One villager remarked, “I have never seen anyone who bought a motorbike first and then later learned how to ride it. Most of the time, theyjustrideithome. Borrowings motorcycle from friends, relatives, and neighbors has been a common practice around here. Whenever they park motorbikes they usually leave the key in the ignition. But we’ve never had any one of them stolen. When [a person] wants to borrow a motorbike, they just tell the owner.”

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A motorcycle is certainly a social marker indicating the owner’s standard of living and level of participation in modem life, but in this small community its ownership and function have apparently been adapted to local norms and traditions involving trust, mutual assistance, and social networks. This process of redefinition is not restricted only to motorbikes but also applies to other vehicles like cars and pickup trucks, though owned by only a few better-off people. At least two pickup truck owners have volunteered to drive sick persons to the hospital in cases of emergency. Moreover, villagers, no matter how late it is at night, never hesitate to ask any car or truck owner to take a sick person to the hospital, and there has never been any refusal either. Some villagers, after riding with a certain neighbor to visit a sick relative at hospital in Su-ngai Kolok, talked with admiration of the neighbor, who is the richest resident and the owner of a large, luxurious imported car. A common sight in this community and elsewhere in the area was pickups carrying large groups ofvillagers to shop for the items needed for special occasions or celebrations. During religious festivities, these trucks could be seen traveling around, taking villagers to visit friends and relatives and join in social events in other communities near and far. Regarding televisions, it is interesting to note that in the early 1970s, the local provincial census reported that only thirty-five rural households owned them. Twenty years later, the figure has increased to about sixty thousand. Changes in the lifestyles of Sue Ring residents have contributed to this increase —this village with only two black-and-white televisions in the mid1 960s reported sixty-nine households owning them, or more than 80 percent of all households, in 1999. There are many factors contributing to the popularity of televisions in rural border communities. The state, for both economic and security purposes, has expanded television networks along the border so that local people would be drawn into watching more Thai television programs rather than those from Malaysia. Electricity has been extended further into rural areas and the signal relaying systems are better. The quality of programs also has been improved and has become more varied, withnews, movies, dramas, documentaries, sports, comedies, game shows, and music shows; television thus is more interesting and offers more choices to rural viewers. The decrease in price and the availability of cheaper television sets smuggled from Malaysia have also been important factors. The obvious impact of television for most villagers has been their community’s opening up to the outside world, with events and images from elsewhere increasingly drawn into the orbit of their everyday lives. There are two factors that add greatly to the importance of this development. First, villagers’ travel was usually restricted to nearby. Only a few people would have the opportunity and resources to travel far. Secondly, national newspapers and other widely circulated publications have found limited audiences in the 76

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rural border areas. For many, television has therefore become an important medium through which they can learn about people and places far away, while at the same time being able to share experiences, information, and feelings with an increasing number of people in an ever-expanding world. By the-early 1990s, the impact of television on southern border communities had already become very widespread (Takashi 1993). TV programs from Bangkok have constantly offered villagers glimpses of the country’s ultramodern, glittering, extravagant lifestyles and of distant exotic places. Through television, they could get to know how urban people live and experience virtual travel all over the country and to some extent the wider world. Scenes from political, economic, social, and cultural events in Bangkok and elsewhere have been transported into rural households daily. Experiences, images, ideas, and information traditionally restricted to urban people have become widely perceived and shared by a large number of people in the rural periphery. With the opportunity to make comparisons, these images enabled residents of Sue Ring to form some understanding and perspective regarding the lifestyles of people in places they have never visited. To many, the people in big cities like Bangkok seemed to have a very comfortable life with many amenities, whereas deprivation had always made their own lives difficult. For male villagers, like elsewhere, sports programs have always been their favorite, no matter whether these were regular programs or live broadcasts of boxing matches or important football games, domestic or international, like the last World Cup series. Men and schoolboys, like others in the country and around the world, talked about staying up late to watch and cheer the teams and famous players during the World Cup. The faces and the names of players were still in their minds until everyday chores and work in the fields during the planting season gradually erased the sense of excitement. Special live concert broadcasts and music programs, especially those featuring phleng luk thung (country music), were something everybody, male and female alike, loved to watch. Game shows, comedies, and news programs have also been watched regularly. Some people, although not regular viewers of news programs,- somehow managed to keep themselves updated and usually knew about important events. Not surprisingly, most villagers, when asked, knew something about the country’s economic crisis in 1997 and understood that the floating of the baht had a direct impact on their lives and families—less opportunities to get jobs, rising prices for goods and services, and more hardship. Distant news from the wider world increasingly has become part of the fabric of everyday rural life. The trust, hopes, worries, dreams, and rhythm of life of Sue Ring villagers increasingly have been dictated by situations beyond their control. The small world of many residents has' expanded to cover a wider physical, social, and cultural space, so wide that there at times seem to be no boundaries of time or place. 77

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Sources of information, ideas, images, and stories, all traditionally under government control, have become more diverse. This has occurred despite the feet that television, in many ways, has been used as a powerful means for the state to create a sense of unity whereby different social groups within the national territory would feel like members of one big imagined community. However, television has also brought new and strange concepts into villages all over the country. It has been suggested that the opportunities to experience something different have become a basis for the rural villagers to develop their own viewpoints and interpretations, which at times can be very critical and in opposition to those of the government (Hamilton 1991). The role of television in the decline of the state hegemony over rural villagers in southern border communities has also been described (Takashi 1993). In observing villagers’ daily life, it is interesting to note that the role of television in the fabric of this community had some other social and cultural dimensions. Most villagers turned on and listened to a television while they were doing other household chores in and outside of their houses, and watched it while talking with friends and relatives or resting after a meal. Children brought friends to play on weekends, and they would watch television while other family members were lying asleep in front of it. In many ways, watching television has become a habit, a form of companionship, a form of leisure, and importantly, a forum for exchanging and sharing stories, ideas, and feelings with friends, neighbors, and relatives. These various functions and meanings indicate how important the medium of television has become in everyday life in this rural border community. Other modem consumer goods that local villagers bought, such as gas burners, rice cookers, electric fens, and other appliances, were also usually for everyday use. Different brand names and prices aside, these goods certainly are status symbols, and they serve as evidence of how intensively villagers have been incorporated into the modem consumer society. It is tempting also to see them as evidence that rural residents have helplessly fallen victim to the powerful and relentless commercial advertisements and to a.strong desire to emulate the lifestyle of their urban counterparts. However, for those who have seen the burden of daily chores and responsibilities carried out by most villagers, especially by women or by families whose husband and wife both work in and outside of the agricultural sector, it is easy to understand that purchasing gas burners, rice cookers, electric fans, or even washing machines (in the case of only five households), is not in the least bit a mindless or wasteful form of consumption. Nevertheless, modem goods, services, and lifestyles can bring problems and contradictions. Many couples who have growing children voiced their concerns about the content of television advertisements and drama series, which have become more sexually explicit. Many also complained about one 78

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local grocery shop, which sells too many tempting but useless toys and candies for children. Another important and widely talked about local concern was the motorcycle. Though useful and much wanted, motorcycles have caused a lot of trouble and annoyance for villagers as a result of fast driving, loud exhaust pipes, and frequent accidents. Commercial advertisements usually highlight the speed and power of motorcycles, which means that fascinated teenagers in Sue Ring and elsewhere are their most loyal and enthusiastic audience. Some local teenagers have spent a fortune to modify their motorcycles to increase the speed, and simultaneously, the level of noise. Some proudly showed off their vehicles by blasting through the only road, which cut through the middle of the community, in the evening or on weekends, passing onlookers who often covered their ears. As this activity has turned into a daring feat for some teenagers, the safety of small children has become a major concern. On various occasions, people have needed to hurriedly snatch children out of the road, and some people finally decided to put up fences so their children could not easily wander out. When asked about the problem, villagers complained they could not do much, insisting that those teenagers are mat rufang (stubborn) because when warned, they would behave for a while and then revert to their previous behavior. There have always been cases of minor accidents. However, a very serious accident occurred just before this study was concluded. The accident, another resulting from reckless high-speed driving by a local teenager, caused the deaths of two villagers in the road through Sue Ring late one evening. The first terrible and tragic deaths of this nature have quickly become a sub ject that is much discussed among villagers, as if they want to remember the event for a long time. There is a lingering sense of anger and loss among close relatives and friends. Somehow during this period, the motorcycle, which formerly was highly regarded as a symbol of status, comfort, and the modem conveniences that most villagers longed for, appears to have taken on some other meanings, particularly related to the danger of recklessness. The blasting motorcycle noises suddenly stopped after the fatal accident. Many villagers expressed hope that this experience would make everybody more aware of the dangers of the vehicles they would need to live with and rely upon for a long time to come. Changes in this community, therefore, are not always symbols of convenience or models for mindless imitation. Besides inducing the adaptation of what many villagers still teal! their folksy and traditional way of living to these changes, new consumption in many cases also brings in new practices and problems, some of which obviously strain the system of local norms, conformity, and morality. In this respect, it is noteworthy that two residents, though affluent and owning beautiful and well-decorated modem houses, have become targets of contempt and ridicule. One is known as a crook, and 79

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the other is reported to be abusive to his wife and children, and on various occasions has physically threatened friends and neighbors. Both have been living in isolation and almost never join in any local rituals, celebrations, or religious festivities. By contrast, there are some villagers, formerly poor and striving for a long time until they could establish quite comfortable lives, who have been praised for their kindness, honesty, modesty, and commitment to working hard. Topics like these can be seen as part of the lively everyday cultural discourse of people attempting to make sense of modernity. To be sure, one’s attainment of modem comforts and higher status can make others envious. However, a new life for some also means a constant struggle to acquire more, .using any means and at any cost —incurring debt, cheating, lying, engaging in dubious business practices, and cutting off local social networks. In response, many villagers sent out signals of disapproval by not joining these people in any activities, not socializing with them, and not talking about them unless necessary. This indicates the villagers’ rejection of a lifestyle some of them termed longlai nai ivatthu (too materialistic), chai chai kocn tua (overindulgent), and khat kbwam pho di (lacking moderation). In many ways, this behavior is alien to a community where many still strongly believe in the folksy and traditional lifestyle, and where changes have been gradual and smooth, social networks are still close, and people are caring for and helping one another, and also regularly joining in the community’s rituals and celebrations. On the other hand, villagers admire their neighbors who strive to better themselves financially and still maintain social networks and respect local norms. One of the latter, however, has become a subject of daily conversation as he had been cheated by a relative and forced to carry a huge debt. His twostory concrete house has yet to be finished, and given the burden of his debt, it would take many years to get it into good shape. Yet his case has become a much discussed example of tolerance and perseverance, and a symbol' of community members who exhibit, as one villager put it, chai di (kindness), sue sat (honesty), and samatha (modesty), and who are khayan (hard working). This narrative is similar to the stories of some poor young male workers who, instead of buying motorcycles as they originally intended, gave their hard-earned savings to their parents for house repairs. Another good example discussed by many villagers is the head of the richest family in the village, a man who runs his lucrative business in downtown areas and has not mingled with the villagers that often. However, he is regarded as generous and helpful to relatives, friends, and other members of the village. He also has regularly participated in the village’s important events by, for example, donating a large sum of money for kathin (a religious offering to Buddhist temples and monks before Lent), giving money to elders at festivities and other special occasions, and always throwing parties for villagers on special occasions. 80

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Over the years, Sue Ring has become more open. Many of its in-laws, both male and female, have come from increasingly distant places. Many local residents met their future spouses while they were working in Su-ngai Kolok, and some of those people came from other regions. A few of these new residents formerly worked as prostitutes in Su-ngai Kolok The status of these former sex workers in Sue Ring, to a certain extent, reflects villagers’ relationships with and attitudes toward outside urban society, which is represented by the thriving commercial border town of Su-ngai Kolok It is an urban business community with a typical stark contradiction: it is the center of development, entertainment, job opportunities, and modernity, as well as being a center for illegal gambling and smuggling, and is one of the largest working places for prostitutes, or phuyingmai di (those bad women), as some villagers call them. This perception, couched in the discourse of differences between the rural and urban life, has been reinforced by experiences villagers had when they visited and worked in urban centers, and by the stories they heard from their favorite country songs, television shows, and other media. The theme is a familiar one. Urban areas, the center of prosperity and progress, are places where people are well dressed and live comfortably, but are full of crooks and other selfish and untrustworthy people. The more they are developed materially, the less developed the people become morally. Rural people, on the other hand, live in marginal, backward, and materially deprived communities, but they, though naive and easily tricked, are close, helpful to one another, and considerate. Within the local world of moral beliefs, Sue Ring has become a place where a couple of women from distant rural communities, once told by their brothel owners that “nobody will take you as a bride because you sell your body for money,” could settle down and raise families. They received help from neighbors for work in the rice fields. Some villagers gave them clothing; others gave or loaned money; and some bought thatches for roofing. These women from far away, deeply wounded emotionally and psychologically, seemed to be able to count on this small border community to give them the opportunity for a new future based in a quiet, peaceful family life. The above discussion on the local consumption of goods and services, villagers’ adaptations to modem life, and the local narratives and discourses indicates that the residents of Sue Ring have been actively engaged in an effort to understand and make sense of the changes. Modem goods, services, and lifestyles bring in not only comfort and convenience, but also some negative social consequences. Nevertheless, life in Sue Ring, many villagers believe, is still basically rural, traditional, and harmonious, and its people are generous and helpful to one another. Butin the local cultural discourse, this definition of community seems to be flexible and shifting. Sometimes the picture of a remote rural community with people working in the rice fields, 81

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wading in mud, raising animals, and struggling to survive day by day is viewed by local residents as backward, uncivilized, poor, and dirty. At other times, this marginal community has somehow become a strong moral bastion and a symbol of pride in local solidarity and traditions of mutual assistance and trust, which residents hoped could sustain them and protect them against negative forces from the outside world. Under circumstances whereby change has become more rapid and extensive, job opportunities increasingly uncertain, and local life progressively more differentiated and diversified, villagers seem to have become more aware of the mutual benefits of their efforts to preserve a sense of togetherness, traditions of mutual assistance, and other social rituals which help sustain the morality of the community. Even those who are well off, earning their living mostly from trade and business, still have land to lease and need support from other villagers to maintain their status, reputation, and social networks. Being rich, owning a luxury car, and having a large modem home does not cut someone off from the local tradition of mutual assistance. Well-off people may need to spend much more giving parties, helping out other villagers, making generous donations for religious rituals, and participating in the community’s social festivities. They may even need to work harder, playing the role of protector and keeper of local norms and morality, because villagers expect more from them. For villagers in general, the rituals, celebrations, and festivities provide an important opportunity for them to come together and thus emphasize their relationships as neighbors, friends, and members of social networks, evoking feelings of close ties and of being part of the same moral world. In many ways, these relationships are closely related to their everyday livelihoods, particularly with regard to the rights and opportunities to lease land from land-owning relatives and neighbors, to get help when needed, to find work building or renovating someone’s house, and to be informed about job openings. In many respects, the poor families whose community participation has always been limited by their meager resources seem to benefit particularly from this traditional system of mutual assistance, especially in times of crisis. This tradition includes distributing land for lease among the poor, taking care of one another when sick, helping neighbors move their houses, helping build new houses to replace burned-down ones, buying building materials for newlyweds, and asking other people to be part of the teamwork. By participating in joint efforts relating to social and religious activities, villagers have become beneficial members of the system of local nonns and beliefs in social responsibility and mutual help. These local forms of social and cultural production and reproduction have occurred amid strong pressures from the outside world, whose impact was not always real and immediate, but still had to be dealt with constantly. Given the situation, these efforts can 82

CONSUMING MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY

also be seen to some 'extent as part of the local process of constructing, reconstructing, and sustaining one’s own imagined rural community as a close, warm, and caring one. In sustaining production and reproduction of social and cultural activities, consumption of food in different forms has become an essential component of rituals, celebrations, and religious festivities. In this context, food consumption can be seen as a form of group activity supported by local participation and social networks. Consumption in the form of having meals together or joining in other activities during rituals, celebrations, or religious festivities in the Sue Ring community has been facilitated by the efforts and participation of a large group of people. These include donations of money, never-ending preparation for cooking for a large number of guests, sleepless nights spent cleaning and getting the local monastery ready for receptions, buying food and cooking special meals for the monks, listening to the monks chanting, taking care of guests from other communities, sharing meals, drinking with relatives and friends, getting drunk, having fun, traveling home or going to other communities to join in the. same festivities or in other special occasions. In these social activities, food and related consumer goods have been prepared, designed, and modified to serve different functions and provide different meanings specifically for each occasion. There are certain things to be used for certain rituals such as ching pret (welcoming ancestors), songpret (sending Off ancestors), and bang khun bua (blessing the stupa containing ashes of deceased ancestors). Food prepared for suat na (blessing rituals at the beginning of the rice transplanting season) is different from food for monks in the celebration ofkathin. Even the clothes to wear on regular days and on special occasions are different. For most villagers, participation in and responsibility for these activities imply incurring expenses and spending time preparing food (both main dishes and sweets) to bring to the festivities, spending money to help neighbors hosting parties on social occasions, and needing to take a few days off from a busy work schedule to join in the activities. It also means allocating duties among family members by sending women to help other people while men hurry to finish plowing the rice fields. Preparing the venue for the activities, preparing the community’s kitchen, cooking for relatives and friends from other villages who come to join the kathin, taking turns cooking for the monks during Lent, and providing drinks for relatives and friends are also part of the experience. These complicated and tiring efforts might appear insignificant and difficult to understand if we tend to focus on the consumption and possession of goods only at a personal level and overlook the consumption which in many instances occurs as a group or community activity. It is at times a social and communal consumption which requires an active 83

;

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

cooperation in terms of time, money, and other resources from all, so people can mingle for pleasure, to reaffirm their cultural beliefs, traditions, and group identity, and, not least of all, to promote a sense of solidarity. In an era of rapid change and increasing uncertainty, social consumption and participation in local rituals and celebrations seem to have become more significant than ever. These are a critical part of the process of building and maintaining close relationships and trust at both personal and group levels, and increasing the community’s sense of solidarity and its connections with others. These are also important means for people to adjust the balance between selfishness and altruism. Certainly, as elsewhere, in a situation in which community life has increasingly become more complex and lifestyles more diverse, attempts to maintain the community’s traditions of mutual assistance have always been a delicate and difficult task. But the social consumption in the form of rituals, celebrations, and religious festivities in the Sue Ring community continues, though just like other local activities, different from the practices of the past.

CONCLUSION Residents of Sue Ring, like people elsewhere, want to acquire, use, and consume modem goods and services to sustain their livelihoods and to enjoy the comforts and conveniences of a modem lifestyle. This process, however, is not without some problems. For villagers, possession of household goods, utilization of public and private services, and adoption of modem fifestyles and patterns of consumption have been constantly defined, negotiated, and adjusted to suit their socioeconomic status, social networks and close-knit life. However, the combined cultural meanings and social implications of these consumption practices and modern lifestyles are somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, troubles and negative consequences resulting from modern consumption and lifestyles requires villagers to evaluate, criticize, adjust, and refuse some of the consumption patterns and practices which they deem dangerous to their local norms and traditions. On the other hand, the alluring new comforts and conveniences, the need for a lifeline to connect their parochial existence with the outside world, and the yearning to be a part of that exciting world are having a strong impact. The result is an attitude toward modem consumption and lifestyles that is inevitably mixed and constandy tom between competing worries and desires. In this remote rural community, peripheral and marginal to the political and economic powers of the capital city, an intense discourse about cultural differences between what the villagers called the deprived.traditional way of life and the modem way of fife in towns or big cities still continues. In fact, 84

CONSUMING

MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY

both can be easily observed in the world of the villagers: different types and styles of houses and different ways in which residential spaces are arranged and utilized, the use of modern inputs and technology in agricultural production for domestic consumption and for sale, possession of household goods and other consumer durables, wage labor, riding motorcycles and driving cars and pickups, and efforts by the better-off, landowning villagers and their poorer neighbors to produce and reproduce their community’s unity, system of mutual, assistance, and local morality. However, a constant comparison between the rural and urban life remains a critical part of the lived cultural space of villagers’ everyday life, whereby the discourse about differences is ongoing. Villagers wear, use, and own some consumer goods as a sign indicating that they want to be part of the modem world which is becoming more open, diverse, and accessible. Villagers dress in some ways only for some occasions, to show that they know what the modem lifestyle is like and what is proper. Each household routinely displays its consumer goods to show economic status and taste. The new way of living and patterns of consumption are constantly used as status markers in a competition in this new cultural field of modernity. The competition here does not lead to open confrontation or conflicts, though villagers criticize acts of arrogance, selfishness, and overly conspicuous consumption on the part of some fellow residents. In the context of the Sue Ring community, consumption of modem goods and lifestyles do not only imply comforts, conveniences, and the attainment of desires. This would need to be defined, redefined, and negotiated within the frame of local norms and morality, particularly in relation to being proper, kind, generous, honest, hardworking, and persevering. More often than not, this small community with its increasingly differentiated lifestyles is referred to by villagers as one in which people are always united, caring, and helpful to one another. In the face of a strong sense of uncertainty and the pervasive currents of global flows, rural communities are often depicted as or expected to be the cornerstone of traditional cultures, representatives of the long history of a place and the true guardians of its customs. Rural villagers, however, are not mindless puppets or clay figures ready to be made into anything. They are human beings capable of thinking, acting, and interpreting modem goods and services in accordance with their existing opportunities and constraints. Sue Ring residents, as active consumers of modernity, are all to different degrees taking part in the construction and reconstruction of images and cultural meanings in their everyday lives. Their community is definitely not being left out of the national and global processes of development and modernization.

85

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

Villagers’ livelihoods and lifestyles, patterns of production and consumption, and the Sue Ring community itself are now all part of the modem world —a world which is becoming increasingly interconnected, everchanging and borderless, with global flows of people, goods, information, symbols, meanings, and images more freely and widely circulated and dispersed than ever. Their lives, their moral world, and their imagined community are products of the complex and sustained interaction between this multitude of global flows and their attempts to interpret, choose, modify, negotiate, make sense of, make use of, and appropriate these flows. This is a process clearly indicating an active, dynamic, and problematic aspect of villagers’ consumption of modernity in their everyday lives, both at personal and social levels. In this small rural community at the border of southern Thailand, like elsewhere, adjusting to new ways of life is a longstanding challenge that apparently will continue in the context of everincreasing interactions between changes at the local, national, and global levels.

86

CONSUMING MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY

Table 1 gross provincial products (GPP), 1971 and 1993.

Value of Narathiwat's Productive

Agriculture Mine and quarry Industry Construction Public utilities Communication

and transportation

Wholesale a n d retail Banking, insurance, and real estate Housing Administration

1971

Sectors

and defense

Service Total GPP Note: 1 unit equals 1,000,000

1993

Value

%

Value

%

401.40

47.2

4,482.17

34.2

4.00

0.5

21.24

1.6

113.50

13.3

574.49

4.4

29.50

3.5

594.08

4.5

2.90

0.4

153.48

1.2

57.60

6.8

603.93

4.6

99.80

11.7

’ 11.40

1.3

2,204.25 288.39

16.8 2.2

21.00

2.5

453.32

3.5

35.30

4.2

521.06

3.9

74.30

8.7

3,224.91

24.6

849.70

100.00

13,121.31

100.0

baht

Source: National Statistical Office. Narathiwat's

Statistical Report

Various Issues.

87

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

Table 2 Number of households containing domestic goods and other durables, comparing urban and rural areas, 1970 and 1990. Items

Urban 1970

Radio Color TV

Rural 1990

1970

3,840

15,488

467

12,638

Black and white TV

Total 1990

1990

5,428

81,784

97,272

35

43,009

55,647

17,100

19,465

2,365

Video

—

4,066

—

6,342

10,408

Electric Iron

—.

14,912

—

56,91 3

71,825

Electric rice cooker

—

16,057

■■■ -

62,400

78,457

Electric fan

1,118

15,756

35

68,805

84,561

Sewing machine

2,430

4,631

1,563

22,440

27,071

Vacuum cleaner

—

1,474

—

2,723

4,197

Refrigerator

S84

10,475

18

25,980

36,455

Washing machine

—

2,919

—

3,841

6,760

Air conditioner

—

682

—

574

1,253

Telephone

—

2,273

—

2,237

4,510

Bicycle

3,118

7,196

3,627

46,233

53,429

Motorcycle

1,455

12,111

1,383

63,512

75,623

Car

287

2,599

134

7,842

10,441

Water pump

50

2,315

45

10,545

11,860

9

45

17

6,300

6,345

Two-wheeled tractor

Source: National Statistical Office, n.d. Census of Population and Housing, Narathiwat, 1970 and 1990.

88

CONSUMING MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY

Table 3 Number and proportion of households owning domestic goods and other durables, Sue Ring community, 7998. Items

Number

of households

%

Electric rice cooker

77

94

Gas stove

75

91

Electric fan

74

90

Motorcycle

72

87

Refrigerator

70

86

Television Two-wheeled

tractor

69

84

54

68

Stereo set

40

51

Bicycle

14

18

Washing machine

14

18

Radio

13

77

Video player

8

10

9

10

82

100

Car/pickup

truck

Total Source: Household survey, Sept.-Oct. 1998.

Table 4 Number and proportion of households with members engaging In wage and off-farm employment. Sue Ring community, 1998. Type of household Without

wage earners

Number

of households

%

8

10

44

54

18

22

With insecure wage earners (i.e., construction workers and other low-skilled

employees)

With secure wage earners (i.e., state irrigation workers and employees In private enterprises) Other off-farm

earners (i.e., local state officials,

traders, and owners of private business)

12

15

Total

82

100

Source: Household survey, Sept.-Oct. 1998.

89

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

Table 5 Types and characteristics of wage and off-farm employment residents, Sue Ring community, 1998. Type of employment

Main characteristics

Insecure employment

Consisted mainly of two types, not mutually

among local

exclusive, particularly

from the point of view of local job seekers, namely: (I) housing construction

work and (2) general low-skilled

which provides the majority subgroups: the higher-paid plastering,

a n d carpentry)

transporting

jobs. The former,

of jobs, can be divided into two skilled (I.e., brick layering, wall and the lower-paid

bricks, cement,

unskilled (i.e.,

and other construction

materials). The

latter covers a wide variety of wage jobs such as temporary local irrigation

agency; employment

work at

i n hotels, restaurants, a n d

bars; childcare and waitressing in Malaysia; cleaning jobs, carrying smuggled

goods across the border; a n d piece-paid weaving and

wood carving in local Royal Initiative Secure employment

Mostly permanent

Development

work at local irrigation

Projects.

agency, and a few jobs

for clerks and mechanics at local franchised car and motorcycle dealers. Other off-farm jobs

Mainly state officials, local grocery store owners, and other owneroperators of businesses and services (i.e., cross-border trade, rice mill, truck transportation, shop).

Sources; Household survey, Sept.-Oct. 1 993, and interviews.

90

construction

contractors, mechanic

repair

CONSUMING MODERNITY IN A BORDER COMMUNITY

REFERENCES Appadurai, A. 1990. Disjuction and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture, and Society 7: 259-310. Asian Development Bank. 1994. Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle: Study on Trade, Investment, and Labor Mobility. Mid-Term Draft Report; Arlington, Virginia: The Services Group. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction.London: Routledge. Featherstone, M. 1987. Lifestyle and Consumer Culture. Theory, Culture, and Society 4: 55—70. ---------. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: SAGE. Golomb, Louis. 1978. Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adaptation in a Rural Malaysian Setting. Asian Studies at Hawaii, no. 23. Hawaii: The University ofHawaii Press. Hamilton,

Annette. 1991. Rumours, Foul Calumnies, and the Safety of the State:

Longhurst, Brian, and Mike Savage. 1997. Social Class, Consumption and Their Influence of Bourdieu: Some Critical Issues. In Consumption Matters:the Production and Experience- of Consumption, ed. Stephen Edgell, 275-301. U.K.: Blackwell Publishers. Mass Media and National Identity in Thailand. In National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand 1939-1989, edited by Craig J. Reynolds. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Natawan Haemindra. 1976. The Problems of the Thai-Muslims in the Four Southern Provinces. Part 2 . Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 7 (2): 85—105. National Statistical Office, n. d. Samut Rai-ngan Satbiti Changwat Narathiwat (Narathiwat Statistical Report). Various issues. Bangkok: Office of the Prime Minister. ---------. 1970. Sammano Prachakon Lae Kankbeha Pho So 2513 Changwat Narathiwat (Census of Population and Housing, 1 970, Narathiwat). Bangkok: Office of Prime Minister. ---------. 1990. Sammano Prachakon Lae Kankbeha Pho So 2533 Changwat Narathiwat (Census of Population and Housing, 1990, Narathiwat). Bangkok: Office of the Prime Minister. Takashi, Hashimoto. 1993. Television and Socio-Political Changes in the Muslim Community in Southern Thailand. Paper presented at the international seminar, Thailand and Her Neighbor: Malaysia, November 19-20, Kyoto University, Japan. Thomas, Philip. 1998. Conspicuous Consumption: House, Consumption, and “Relocalizadon” in Manambondro, Southeast Madagascar. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (3): 425-46. Wattana Sugunnasil. 1998. Kasettrakam Lae Chonnabot Thai: Kan Plian Plaeng Nai Chuang Song Totsawat (Thailand’s Agriculture and its Countryside: Tiro Decades 91

WATTANA SUGUNNASIL

of Change). In Ruam BotkhviamWichakan Nai Sakha Manutsayasat Sangkhomsat Lae Sueksasat (Collection of Papers in Humanities, Social Sciences and Education), edited by Narumon Kanchanathat, 47-65. Pattani: Academic Affaires, Prince of Songkla University. --------. 2001. Watthanatham Boriphok Khang Raeng Ngan Rap Chang Nai Chumchon Chonnabot (Consumer Culture of Wage Laborers in a Rural Community). Bangkok: TRF. Weyland, Petra. 1993. Inside the Third World Village.London and New York:Routledge.

92

THE INDONESIA-MALAYSIA-THAILAND GROWTH TRIANGLE: HOW THE SOUTH WAS WON . . . AND THEN LOST AGAIN PHIL KING

In future, I hope , we can cross borders just like one people without the dividing lines of different nationalities, different regulations. This is the vision I will keep-pushing. —Thai Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdii, IMT-GT Ministerial Meeting, December 16, 1994. Indonesia looks at the IMT-GT with [a] great amount of confidence and optimism, because Indonesia views its launching not as an introduction to regional co-operation, but a process of going back to history . . . a process of rediscovering a long lost natural economic entity. —Kosim Gandataruna

In July 1993, dignitaries from three neighboring states converged on the Malaysian island of Langkawi to sign a document which became known as the Langkawi Accord. This agreement marked the formal establishment of what was subsequently named the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT). The plan was part of a distinct trend in subregional development whereby territorially adjacent portions of neighboring members of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were targeted for integrated socioeconomic, development. In the case of the IMT-GT, the southern provinces of Thailand, northeastern Malaysia, and the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra were identified as components of a distinct subregional territory. It was argued thatliberalizing regulatory regimes along their common borders and exploiting various complementary strengths could transform these relatively poor national peripheries into key nodes of an emerging polycentric global economy.

93

PHIL KING

The top Thai delegate to the accord signing was Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdii, who, a decade later, would become Director General of a much larger globalization project, the World Trade Organization (WTO). It was Supachai who provided the quotation at the beginning of this paper. This vision of a borderless world was typical of the sort of rhetoric that regularly surfaced in speeches regardingsubregional development projects in Southeast Asia. It tapped into a popular discourse about borderless economies, global shifts, and megatrends that deeply influenced economic theory and practice during the years of the Asian Miracle (Hirst and Thompson 1999, 1; Hinton 2000, 8). The second comment, by an Indonesian analyst, is representative of the manner in which the borderless economy was internalized in Southeast Asia. Subregional growth zones were often considered a uniquely Southeast Asian phenomenon (Noyer 1995, 11). “Going back to history” to revive economic and cultural ties between neighboring regions was a strong selling point for projects such as the IMT-GT, particularly in regard to southern Thailand’s Malay majority, for whom the proposed subregion once constituted a unified Malay world (alam Melayu). But while it served as an effective means to introduce the IMT-GT in its early phases, it remained to be seen just how deeply such rhetoric would influence actual development policy. ( The following overview of the IMT-GT insouthem Thailand is developed around these two themes, examining the relationship between the promotional and policy agendas of the scheme over the last decade. Along with other observers who have likened the cultural and historical dimensions of subregionalism in Southeast Asia to a cloak for crony capitalism (Sydney Morning Herald, April 14, 1996) or a feel-good way to conduct business (Shamsul 2002), I argue that cultural identity has become largely irrelevant to the functioning of the IMT-GT in southern Thailand. The possibility of southern Malay identity operating as a form of social capital (drawing on resources such as transborder language and kinship ties) within the Triangle has not eventuated. Indeed, the Malay-majority border provinces have been increasingly marginalized from the scheme itself. Central to this divergence has been the significance attached to natural resource exploitation as a basis for subregional development. The growing importance of natural resources (primarily hydrocarbons) to the IMT-GT in southern Thailand has shared an inverse relationship with the value ascribed to the region’s human resources. As a consequence, forms of social capital that were originally flagged as valuable justifications for the creation of the subregion have taken a back seat to more traditional modes of infrastructure-led development. The twist to this story, however, has been the discrediting of such modes of development in the wake of the 1997 Asian economic crisis. In their place emerged a vigorous nationwide movement advocating the recognition of 94

THE INDONESIA-MALAYSIA-THAILAND GROWTH TRIANGLE

Thailand’s social and cultural capital as the best means to achieve equitable and sustainable growth. With the virtues of self-sufficiency and community culture endorsed at the highest levels of Thai society, when proposals for the mass industrialization of the southern border provinces were made public in 1998, this core IMT-GT project was stranded by a tide of changing public opinion. It was within this climate that the IMT-GT agenda was challenged by numerous groups in the South with a set of arguments similar to those that had accompanied its introduction. The outcomes of this challenge are as yet unclear, but it has already demonstrated that the forms of social capital that were considered irrelevant to the development of the IMT-GT in southern Thailand are folly capable of bringing core dimensions of the project to a halt. The wedge-like structure of this paper leads from a brief overview of subregional development theory, subregionalism as it has been applied and commented upon in Thailand in general, and the more specific case of the IMT-GT in southern Thailand’s border provinces. Throughout the paper the terms growth triangle, subregion, and subregional growth zone are used interchangeably. Various names for projects, companies, and institutions are translated in full in the first usage and thereupon referred to by the acronym.

SUBREGIONALISM IN SOUTHEAST

ASIA

The formal establishment of the IMT-GT in 1993 was part of a distinctive trend in subregional development in Southeast Asia beginning in the late 1980s. It is often traced to the suggestion by Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in 1989 that Singapore, Johor State (Malaysia), and Riau Province (Indonesia) could establish a “triangle of growth” to capitalize on complimentary economic differentials between the city-state and its immediate neighboring territories (Parsonage 1 997, 255). Despite the unique circumstances that permitted the eventual establishment of the IndonesiaMalaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle —a project that was essentially a case of land-poor Singapore spilling over into an international hinterland (McGee 1995, 19-20) —the idea of growth triangles was received enthusiastically elsewhere in Southeast Asia. This response was surprising given the defensive posture that Southeast Asian states had long taken towards their border regions. Decades of persistent conflict across various frontier zones had made borders jealously guarded containers of both state sovereignly and national identity. Whether these disputes reflected deeply embedded memories of historical struggle, Cold War' geopolitical, divides, or a combination of both (Camilleri 2000, 13j 515 2), the net effect was the status of territorial borders as critical demarcations for both state and nation. 95

PHIL KING

By the early 1990s, however, the idea that state boundaries were foremost instruments of containment was called into question. Thawing Cold War tensions produced a context in which new forms of regionalism could be explored. Significant aspects of the new “towards one Southeast Asia” (Achatya 2000, 133-62) regional agenda included plans for the expansion of ASEAN and a staggered program of trade liberalization aimed at creating a common market between all present and future members of the group (the ASEAN Free Trade Area). The concept of subregional development rode on the coattails of “towards one Southeast Asia.” It provided a test in relation to the complex task of integrating and liberalizing regional economies within a limited spatial context (Naseem 1996, 31; Weatherbee 1997). The liberalization of national identity could likewise be carefully managed on account of the state’s ability to select who would be afforded the privilege of easier movement across borders within these delimited transnational spaces (Grundy- Warr and Perry 1998). Additional impetus was supplied by a popular discourse on free-market globalization that articulated a global logic for such strategies. The persuasive ranting of Kenichi Ohmae proved particularly popular amongst business and government circles in Southeast Asia.1 Through a series of publications, Ohmae melodramatically signaled an end to the ancient regime of an international economy divided into nation-states, drawing in its place his lopsided vision of a global economy of region-states, or “natural economic zones in a borderless world” (of which the IMT-GT was given as one example) (Ohmae 1995a, 134; Ohmae 1995b). While his theories were extreme, they were balanced by an otherwise coherent body of literature on the topic of growth triangles (Acharya 1995; Kakazu, Myo Thant, and Min Tang 1995; Van Grunsven, Shuang-Yann Wong, and Won Bae Kim 1995; Kumar and Siddique 1994; McGee 1995; Parsonage 1997; Peachey, Perry, and GrundyWarr 1998; Thambipillai 1991; Tbh and Low 1993). The concept received strong institutional support as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) made the acceleration of subregional development projects one of its key funding priorities. Thailand quickly hopped aboard the subregional bandwagon to embrace what Reynolds has termed “the new geometries of regional development” (Reynolds 1998, 177). > SUBREGIONALISM IN THAILAND Thailand’s subregional development ambitions were announced in a rousing fashion in 1989 with Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan’s famous declaration of trade on Indochina. The integrated development of conflictridden border zones along Thailand’s borders became the mantra of 96

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Chatichai’s administration under the banner of “New Look Diplomacy” (Khatharya 1991), A range of transborder development initiatives on Thailand’s northern borders were floated, and longstanding efforts to cooperate in the development of the Mekong Basin were resuscitated under the framework of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). These schemes became the subject of a number of studies. Walker’s analysis of the northern Economic Quadrangle stands out for its depth (Walker 1999), while articles from Grundy- Warr (1998), Innes-Brown and Valencia (1993), Hirsch (1995), Khatharya (1991), Reynolds (1998), Chai-Anan (1997), and Evans, Hutton, and Kuah (2000) have made valuable contributions to our understanding of these projects. The amount of discussion in both the domestic media and academia regarding subregional development on Thailand’s northern and northeastern frontiers stands in stark contrast to the attention given to similar programs in the south of the country. Whereas Chatichai’s “battlefields to marketplaces” remark has become a part of Thai political folklore, Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh’s later subregional war cry for the South—“I will turn the handle of this golden axe into a diamond” (Bangkok Post,]m\iaxy 19, 1997) — has not. Integral to the high profile of subregional initiatives in the north of the country has been the specter of a “rising” Chinese economy and Thailand’s attempt to be part of it.- For social scientists, the ethnic re-engagement discourse that has accompanied expanding business and trade ties to the North has provided fertile ground for analysis. As Reynolds discusses, such ties have become the focus of substantial research interest for “anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists who discuss their findings in magazines and highly publicized seminars” (Reynolds 1998, 122). With the exception of Thai scholars’ work, which is generally unavailable outside of the country, Thailand’s participation in the IMT-GT has proceeded quietly. This is usually ascribed to the lack of progress that led one informant to refer to the scheme as a decade-long exercise on NATO (“no action, talk only”). But even were this the case (and it is not), what has not eventuated from ten years of relatively continuous dialogue, working committees, and promotional activities should surely constitute as interesting a topic as what has. Furthermore, when the IMT-GT is evaluated by the criteria that have drawn so much attention to the northern borderlands, it is a comparatively rich research topic. The Thai-Malaysia border handles a volume and value of trade that dwarfs the combined total of trade conducted with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and southern China. 2 While the development of the Mekong into “a river of commerce, not conflict” (Bangkok Post, February 26, 2002) continues to capture political and media imaginations in Bangkok, over two97

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thirds of Thailand’s land exports continue to trundle across a single checkpoint in Songkhla Province. The unique ethnic composition of the southern border provinces and their relationship to northeni Malaysia need no introduction andadd a strong human dimension to the economics of the scheme. It is with an appreciation of this that the remainder of this paper begins to correct the imbalance;

THAILAND'S PLACE IN THE IMT-GT When Thailand’s participation in the IMT-GT was formalized in early 1993 it was celebrated as a boon for the five southern border provinces for a number of reasons. Firstly this was positioned as a long-term commitment to addressing poverty issues in one of Thailand’s poorest areas. The southern border holds the dubious distinction of including provinces with the first (Narathiwat) and third (Yala) highest poverty levels in the country (based on 1998 figures from the NationaLEconomic and Social Development Board), and across the region unemployment is.high (Bangkok Post, September 30, 2001). Returns in the dominant agricultural sectors (fisheries and rubber) have long been diminishing on account of resource depletion and falling market prices, while drug usage has spiraled in the largely Malay coastal and border communities. While development projects in the past did little to arrest such problems, the IMT-GT was presented as a fundamentally new approach. The significance of the scheme was the potential role it held for ethnic Malays, who make up the majority of the population in four of the five southern border provinces (Songkhla being the exception). In line with changing opinions within the government that Malay identity and social networks could be “considered an opportunity, not a constraint, for economic development” (Srisompob, Piya, and Chidchanok 2000, 45; Salleh 1992), the triangle was presented as an ideal vehicle for the advancement of Malay interests in a variety of sectors. Malay identity was presented as a form of social capital to be exploited for the development of closer ties with subregional partners of similar etiinic, linguistic, and religious persuasions (Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center 2000). The pan-Melay aspect of the triangle was indebted to changing attitudes on both sides of the border. It was a part of a “cultural and regionalresurgence” in Thailand that has seen regional culture and long-suppressed ethnic markers gain varying degrees of official and popular acceptance (Jory 2000). For southern Malays, this has meant a reversal of many discriminatoiy policies, as well as moves to promote Malay-ness as a national asset as opposed to the traditional approach ofviewing it as a problem to be overcome. InMalaysia, 98

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Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s well-known views on the need for Malaysian Malays to embrace his vision of a technology-driven Islamic modernity was extended to the Thai border provinces over the course Of the 1990s as the concept of a borderless tamadun Malayu (Malay civilization) displaced the more limited national imaginings .of the past. Yet whereas panMalay sentiment emanating from Malaysia was once perceived as a threat to Thailand’s control of the southern border provinces, the 1990s version of tamadun Melayu sat comfortably within a framework of nation-states and maintained a strong developmentalist streak akin to Thailand’s own. To alleviate any lingering suspicions, Mahathir’s speech at an IMT-GT project signing in 1998 included the reassurance that “Thais in Malaysia are loyal to Malaysia and likewise the Muslims in Thailand should be loyal to Thailand” (Nation, April 23, 1998). Presenting the IMT-GT in such a light was an astute political move in the South. As the 1990s progressed, the southern border provinces became an important swing constituency in the national' parliament (Albritton .1999). However, the promotion of the scheme by parties such as the Democrats (who pushed the project through election campaign literature, for instance) was putting the cart before the horse. Prior to the completion of an extensive survey by the ADB in 1995, precisely how the triangle would function remained vague. When it was released, the ADB’s blueprint dealt largely with macro-policy and did not seriously address issues of Malay participation or the complexities driving poverty cycles in the border provinces. Foremost, the blueprint emphasized the need for the'liberalization of trade policy and for highly capitalized projects that would attract foreign direct investment into the subregion. As a trickle-down approach to socioeconomic development, the Bank’s survey reports' carried the assumption that by allowing the private sector uninhibited initiative within the subregion, the market would arbitrate the equitable flow of benefits to ensure that “the welfare of indigenous populations and women of the subregion will be enhanced” (Asian Development Bank 1995a, 1). The private sector that the ADB envisaged as the “motor of subregionaldevelopment” bore little resemblance to what Srisompob, Piya, and Chidchanok (2000, 42) term “the real private sector” in southern Thailand — small to medium enterprises with low levels of capitalization and personalistic entrepreneurial links. With complex constraints on capital accumulation amongst the Malay community (Chavivun 1985, 297), .the capital-intensive nature of investments in both supporting programs and productive facilities meant that private sector investment and entrepreneurial talent in the IMTGT would be sourced from outside of the southern border provinces (Lail 1996, 154). For the estimated 50 percent of petty border trade in the South that consists of agricultural products from the subsistence economy, the 99

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simplification of trade regulations to facilitate freight passage was unlikely to have any effect on people’s lives. Such trade would continue to operate within an informal regulatory climate of bribes and gift-giving (Suparb 1990, 2526). A further significant feature of the ADB study was that considerations of equity were largely concerned with devising a balance between the three segments of the triangle— not the distribution of projects within each segment. As a consequence, the degree of participation in the five border provinces was remarkably skewed. Fifteen of the twenty-one major projects initially proposed for southern Thailand were concentrated in a narrow corridor running from Songkhla to the border at Sadao (Asian Development Bank 1995b, 114 47). All investment and industrial proposals were limited to this province, which at the time of the survey in 1994—95 accounted for 94 percent of southern Thailand’s trade with Malaysia and held more than 60 percent of investments (Rao 1995, 113, 116). Projects scheduled for provinces such as Yala and Pattani were often of the lowest priority, despite being projects that the local Malay business community saw as essential to their growth and meaningfill participation.’ Board of Investment figures released in 2002 showed thatsince 1996 there had been no new foreign investments registered in the three provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala. Many Malaysian companies had invested in Songkhla, however, which registered foreign investment during the 'same period to the value of eight billion baht (Bangkok Post,March 27, 2002). When* queried on the reasons for the absence of investment in the other provinces, the director of the Board of Investment’s Southern Region Investment and Economic Center suggested that the “different culture” of the predominantly Malay east coast provinces was a part of the problem.

FROM TRIANGLE TO CORRIDOR Following the completion of the ADB report, the primary issue at the annual IMT-GT meeting in 1995 was, “How do we transform the IMT-GT from an elaborate and expensive study into a dynamic reality?” (IndonesiaMalaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle Development Project 1995). The blueprint was widely considered too ambitious in its recommendations and at times exhibited a profound ignorance of factors that would decisively affect its fulfillment. It was therefore perfectly consistent with a Thai development ethic that has been described as “putting on gumboots when it floods” (Unger 1998, 143). Thus began the process of wading into the mess that y'ould leave Thailand’s subregional development agenda in the South wallowing by the end of the decade. 100

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GROWTH TRIANGLE

In 1995 the Thai cabinet passed a resolution for the preparation of a development master plan for the southern border provinces. In a move that can be interpreted as the domestication of the IMT-GT project, the National Economic and Social Development Board subsequently conducted a ■comprehensive survey that was published in 1999 under the title oiPreparatian of Master and Action Plan: Development of the Penang-Songkhla Economic Zone Through the Utilization ofThailandYNatural Gas Resources.The report outlined an ambitious plan for the rapid industrial development of a capital-intensive corridor between Songkhla and Penang. The report combined the recommendations of the ADB report with ongoing negotiations between Thailand and Malaysia over natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Thailand. This latter subtext to the development of the IMT-GT -had its origins in a 1979 agreement to jointly develop a disputed patch of seabed on the east coast maritime border between the two countries. Banking on the existence of hydrocarbon reserves, the two countries had agreed to form a joint authority at a later date to manage what would become known as the Joint Development Area (JDA). Although this agreement predated the trend in subregional development, it was not until the early 1990s, when plans for the IMT-GT were being formulated, that the two countries established a joint authority that subsequently signed a series of agreements regarding the exploration of the 7,250-square-kilometer JDA. By 1994, exploratory drilling had revealed commercial quantities of natural gas. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and his Thai counterpart Chuan Leekpai presided over the signing of production-sharing contracts in Songkhla the same year. At that time no decision had yet been made as to where the gas would be brought ashore. By 1998, when Mahathir and Chuan met to witness the signing of sales agreements for the JDA gas, the details were much clearer. The gas would come ashore in Songkhla and be piped overland through this province to connect with Malaysia’s domestic pipeline network near the Sadao/Bukit Kayu Hitam border crossing. The project was announced as a successful example of the “prosper thy neighbor” ethic of IMT-GT cooperation (Straits Times, April 24. 1 998). For southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, it would form the backbone of a larger project that would later be bundled together by an IMT-GT task force into the concept of the Seamless Songkhla Penang Medan corridor (SSPM). This trimming of the triangle into a corridor was termed “repositioning” (Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle Development Project, 2001). With the declaration that “historical concern that equitable geographical distribution of resources is sufficient to spur development and growth is outmoded" (Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle Development Project 2000, 1), the SSPM corridor became the overridingpriority of subregional development in the South. In Songkhla, 101

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as the full implications of the master plan unraveled, various groups began questioning its worth. A deep suspicion of debt-financed mega-projects —a consequence of Thailand’s disastrous meltdown in 1997 —had reversed the view that the country’s future was best invested in large infrastructure projects. The place of globalization in Thailand’s vibrant public sphere had likewise been usurped by one of localization. In the bookshops and newspapers, a popular discourse centering around ideas of community culture had replaced the fascination with growth triangles, circles and economic quadrangles. The sea change of opinion made the gas pipeline and accompanying industrialization strategy a hard sell for both government and the quasi-state body established to construct the pipeline and accompanying gas separation — Trans-Thai Malaysia (TTM). A new constitution that stipulated the need for large infrastructure projects to fulfill community consultation criteria and new environmental safeguards added to the “burden.” Falling back on practiced formulas, the scheme was defended with a combination of doommongering about an imminent energy shortfall in the South and a more subtle propaganda campaign aimed at winning the “hearts and minds” of the South. The content and format of the latter had a strong Malay flavor given that the most virulent opposition to the project came from the Malay fishing villages whose districts were most directly affected by the proposals. In.an ironic twist, however, the folksy symbolism that had long been part of the promotional material for the IMT-GT developed into a potent force of its own.

CONTESTING

SUBREGIONALISM

Opposition to the industrialization strategy emerged after the 1998—1999 signing of a series of secretive contracts that were noncompliant with seven sections of the 1997 constitution (National Human Rights Commission 2003). When the government made the curious decision to hold public hearings to discuss its industrialization strategy (after the contracts had been signed), the southern city of Hat Yai descended into riot in July 2000. This was followed by a further riot.when a second public hearing was attempted in September. The campaign against the industrialization scheme and gas pipeline was directed at a number of issues. Initially the procedural irregularities related to the construction of the main gas pipeline and gas separation plant were attacked; As the full implications of this scheme became apparent (that the Thai segment of the SSPM was planned to become the third largest industrial zone in Thailand), the protest movement seized on the gross discrepancies between the promotional and policy agendas of the IMT-GT, which were not officially corrected until the post-hoc “repositioning” of the project in late 2001. Foregrounded in the dispute was the defense of small-scale 102

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enterprise and the preservation of local identity in Songkhla Province. Protestors emphasized the existing “subregional” assets of the affected districts, such as the Jana turtle dove industry, estimated to have a value of up to one hundred million baht per year and attracting buyers from as for afield as Singapore. Attention was drawn to the value of the small-scale fishing industry in subdistricts such as Sakom, which were involved in the export of anchovy to Penang, as well as providing food for an estimated one hundred thousand people in the local area (Penchom 2002, 4). The fact that various reports compiled under the IMT-GT framework had previously recommended tourism as an appropriate strategy for the coastal zone was also seized upon (Tourism Authority of Thailand 1997). The NGO networks that coordinated the protest movement branched into die publication business and published a series of books critiquing the basis of the government’s ambitious subregional development plans for the South (Civic Net 2000; Prasetsak 2543; Group for the Sustainable Development of Natural Gas 2543). It was, and remains, a sustained and creative stream of opposition that has also made regular appeals to the Malaysian consul in Songkhla and to Prime Minister Mahathir to end the worrying plight of Muslims villagers in the south of Thailand. As the controversy evoked increasing nationwide concern, the Thai government decided to publicly drop its plans for the rapid industrialization of the South. The new government of Thaksin Shinawatra that swept to a landslide victory in January 2001 instead constructed a giant billboard in Jana district advertising the value of local products such as turtle doves and anchovy as a part of his party’s “One Tambon, One Product” scheme. (A tambon is a subdistrict.) This project was like “going back to history” to revisit the sort of promotions that accompanied the initial unveiling of the IMTGT in the early 1990s. Once more, however, the commitment attached to this populist grassroots development scheme is open to question. Under pressure from Malaysia; Thailand has remained committed to the development of the TTM project, which is likely to proceed after a delay of some three to four years. With some people tired of negotiating with protestors, growing instances of state-sanctioned violence against villagers and activists in Songkhla signal a more sinister approach in recent times. Where this leaves the growth triangle is uncertain. Thaksin has declared his intention to “revive” the southern provinces and the triangle project in order to develop “a strong and self-sustaining economy” (Nation, April 1, 2002). But many southerners believe that once the gas pipeline is built, the industrialization program will be resuscitated in the hope that the protestors will be worn out or in jail. Malaysian plans for the construction of a thirty thousand-strong city at the border in Bukit Kayu Hitam are proceeding, and the rubber.stands along the main artery from Songkhla to Sadao continue to recede as they are replaced by factories. 103

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It is important to note that such progress has not the source of discontent in the South. It has been the dissembling nature of the policy agenda itself that has been the primary bone of contention. While any conclusions as to where this story may end remain provisional, it stands that rather than “turning battlefields into marketplaces,” subregional development in southern Thailand has proven remarkably adept at engendering conflict where relative social harmony once persisted.

CONCLUSION This paper has endeavored to outline in very broad terms the implications created by the diversion of the IMT-GT from its popularly stated objectives in southern Thailand. It has argued that the project, far from not having achieved anything over the last decade, has produced some extreme results. For the east coast provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and "Yala, it has produced extremely little. The residents of Songkhla, on the other hand, have been confronted with the opposite extreme of IMT-GT-sponsored industrialization. The promotional and policy agendas of subregional development diverged remarkably over the course of the 1990s. Although the defense can be made that such policies were never hidden, the critical subtext of natural gas exploitation was rarely linked with the idea of the IMT-GT until the pipeline proposal was a done deal. Moves towards the industrialization of Songkhla proceeded quietly while politicians from various parties harped about the pursuit of broad-based socioeconomic development and local social capital as a valuable resource in the evolving subregional economy. Under the current administration, small-scale industry and the social capital of local communities has been re-admitted to the policy planning room under the rubric of the “One Tambon, One Product” scheme. How long this agenda is maintained would seem to be just a matter of time. The history of the IMT-GT over the last decade is therefore a little like the recently held IMT-inaugural IMT-GT Friendship Auto Rally. It too had originally been scheduled to take in all five border provinces, beginning in Betong before winding through Narathiwat and Pattani Provinces to include sites of cultural and historical interest such as Narathiwat’s Thaksin Ratchaniwet Palace and Pattani’s Krue Se Mosque. These provinces had, after all, been targeted as niche markets for tourism under the “repositioned” IMT-GT (Tourism Authority of Thailand 1997, 2001). Should we then be surprised that when the light turned green, the contingent of two hundred participants in over forty cars set out from Hat Yai and quickly sped off to Penang (Star. August 25, 2003; Bangkok Post, August 14, 2003). 104

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NOTES 1. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad even appointed Ohmae as an advisor to his cabinet (Milne and Mauzy 1999). 2. Two-way trade on.the overland route to China was worth 217 billion baht in 2000 Bangkok Post,February 26, 2002). The value of two-way trade among Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia in 1999 was 254 billion baht. In the same year, the combined two-way trade with Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar was 51 billion baht (National Statistics Office 20*00). 3. These projects were road linkages that would remove the requirement for Malay traders in the east coast provinces to pass through the main border crossings in Songkhla Province.

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POPULAR CULTURE AND TRADITIONAL PERFORMANCE: CONFLICTS AND CHALLENGES IN CONTEMPORARY WG TALUNG PAUL DOWSEY-MAGOG

Nang talung, the southern Thai genre of shadow puppetry, is one of the few shadow theater forms existing in Southeast Asia that has not yet been intensively studied! Thai scholars have generally concentrated on the classical court forms of theater mostly found in the national capital, and it was not until the 1970s that local academic attention was paid to this form of regional theater, previously considered a primitive form of agricultural entertainment for rural southern villagers. This academic interest has been associated with the national enhancement and promotion of Thai traditional art forms, and with the utilization of such genres in assisting national development in rural areas. Current local studies, often in the form of brief articles or seminar papers, tend to concentrate on the use of nang talung as an educational tool, largely relying on the first detailed analysis of its technical and literary aspects by Suthivong Pongpaiboon (1 975). 1 This longstanding, fairly isolated southern Thai village traditional performance genre has only recently been exposed to a vortex of new influences. Increasing foreign investment, agrarian reform, industrialization, the introduction of media technology, and the rise of the middle classes, particularly since the 1970s, have rapidly accelerated its exposure to the “global cultural' flow.” 2 With increasing access to electricity, television ownership, and modem road transport in the southern rural areas, a new and complex heteroglossia of competing voices has been working itself out through these shadow plays. As Turner suggests, genres of cultural performance are more than a mere reflection of society. “The interrelationship of social drama to stage drama is not in an endless, cyclical, repetitive pattern; it is a spiraling one. The spiraling process is responsive to inventions and. the changes in the mode of production in the given society” (1990, 17). An emerging professional elite of performers must now also negotiate with an “invented tradition” 3 influenced especially by the educational 109

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establishment. Local academics are attempting to standardize the shadow play in order to create an “art tradition” worthy of national. and international approbation. They also wish to “develop” it as a form of “folk media” for the promotion of nationalist education and propaganda.4 A similar process is going on in Indonesia and other Association for Southeast Asian (ASEAN) countries, but in Thailand this has become one of the major factors in the current modification of nang talung performance. To some extent its history, social context and practices are currently being reinvented as a result of local documentation, academic encouragement, performer training, and conservative institutional values. The performers are simultaneously attempting to both cooperate with this recent interest by the establishment, and yet resist- its inroads into their relationship with' the local audience, particularly in their own development of technology and story content that is being used to combat the appeals of competing forms of entertainment, such- as film and television. Previously an important village ritual practice, over the past few decades nang talung has become widespread in the southern towns as a form of professional entertainment, with a higher cultural profilein the wider Thai community. Though it has always been a form of popular culture that has changed to suit audience tastes, nang talung is still in the early stages of integration into urban Thai culture, and is rapidly undergoing various conflicting pressures. This process is perhaps already more advanced in other Southeast Asian forms of shadow theater that have taken a more central role in historical and cultural development. Some of these, such as Javanese tvayang kulit for example, have already developed several distinct “types” of performance which Sears (1989, 123) suggests have changed in emphasis to reflect “Western authority,” whilst still adhering to set oral or written texts. Rather than developing distinct new types as in Java, or being marginalized by competing westernized forms of entertainment, like many other traditional Thai theater forms, nang talung is maintaining an important regional voice within a popular customary framework. Since it selectively appropriates elements of contemporary culture, however, it is being promoted both as a “traditional art” form of southern Thailand and as a voice addressing the social concerns of the establishment and the local working class, urban and rural. No other form of entertainment available, excepting possibly manora,5 offers the peasant wit, localized vernacular, and local idiom integral to the southern Thai sense of identity, as well as reference to local places, current conversation topics, news, and features of daily southern existence. This identity, however, is necessarily changing with the times. From an audience formerly comprised of agricultural villagers, nang talung spectators are still mostly working class, but often include urban dwellers, and also include small business proprietors, teachers, students, immigrants, and visitors from 110

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PERPORMANCE

other regions of Thailand. Members of the audience may see themselves principally as Thai, southern Thai, Buddhist, or Muslim, with varying degrees of retained older folk beliefs. Many townsfolk may also see themselves as much more “western” or “modem” in outlook than some of their rural or working-class neighbors, as a result of education, travel, ownership, trade in “modem” commodities, or their political outlook. Southern Thais, however, have a particular sense of regionalism, which is often reflected in their politics. One person interviewed by this author said: Some people say that southern people are more political than elsewhere and you see this in nang tailing as it deals with our problems —it’s our entertainment. Most people from die South have to return to it, as they are part of the South, and the South is part of them. I have to come back every year when I’m not working here, or I don’t feel the same. Many southern people feel the same way.6

BRIEF HISTORICAL

OVERVIEW

The cultural traditions of the provinces of Thailand south of Surat Thani, where nang tailing remains highly popular, were largely cut off from the main seat of Thai culture in early rimes. The northeastern Malay states were also largely separated from southern and eastern Malaya but had quite close cultural connections with what is now southern Thailand (Rentse 1947b, 23-40) Historical evidence suggests that these regions both north and south of the current national border had strong trade links with China and India fifteen hundred years ago, 7 and later became the center of the Srivijayan kingdom, with major trading city-states at the sites of Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phatthalung, Songkhla, Pattani, and Khota Bahru (Rentse 1947b; Wheatley 1961, 282-305; Coedes 1968, 28, 39, 51). Considering the limited information available on the almost legendary civilizations of Tambralinga and Langasuka in southern Thailand and northern Malaya, it does appear possible that traditions of performance such as nang talung and manora were directly influenced by India before the Srivijayan period (see Coedes 1968, 19-51; Landon 1949, 100-133; Rentse 1947a, 23; Wheatley 1966, 282-305). These early southern Thai city-states existed before the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya kingdoms expanded southwards and later included some of them in modem Thailand following various conflicts and colonial impositions of national boundaries. Most of the historical information on performance traditions currently available is concerned with the kingdoms of'central Thailand, which were for removed from the relatively independent southern areas by physical barriers of distance and poor communication until 111

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the twentieth century. There is also little written information on village performance traditions. “The chronicles are embarrassingly empty of details concerning the daily life of village people, and popular entertainment forms are more likely to have been ignored by royal scribes” (Smithies, and Kerdchouay 1972, 130). Most foreign scholars of theater performance generally have a much greater knowledge of shadow puppetry from other parts of the world. The TholuBommalata shadow puppet plays from Andhra Pradesh in India, for example, are said to have a tradition originating well over two thousand years ago. There are currently four traditionally linked Indian shadow theater genres in the states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Orissa (Awasthi 1974; Pani 1976; Helstein 1986; Blackbum 1996). It is generally accepted that the Indonesian shadow puppet genre wayang kulit-vfus well established about one thousand years ago in Java and Bali and underwent important developments during the advent of Islam in Indonesia two or three centuries later (Brandon 1967, 44; Keeler 1987). 8 Malay performers are known to have visited Java during'the past two hundred years (Sweeney 1972b, 24). Many local performers have also traveled between Malaya and Thailand during this time, so knowledge of both Javanese ivayang kulit and Thai nang taking traditions may have spread quite widely, especially since a single performer may train forty or more apprentices during his career. Knowledge of the Javanese 'wayang kulit tradition has also been widely documented in the twentieth century, whereas documentation of nang tailing is still in its infancy. Many historians consider the southernmost Thai provinces and the Malaysian provinces of Kelantan, Trengganu, Perak, Kedah, and Perlis to probably all be associated with the early kingdom of Langkasuka, as a crossroads or melting pot of cultural influences, and especially a melting pot for shadow puppetry genres (e.g. Scott-Kemball 1959, 73; Sweeney 1972a, 25). Besides nang tailing., this area is also home to tuayang siam or nang siant, iDayangjauia,and itiayang kulit gedek, generally believed by many scholars to be regional variations of ■wayang kulit shadow puppetry, or perhaps even parallel traditions, though it is impossible to accurately date which form began when, or which was the precursor of another. It is likely, however, that development of nang tailing performance in this region was the origin of the nang pramothai or the nang buk ten, the shadow play of northeast Thailand, and possibly the ayang or nang kaloung, the smaller shadow puppet genre. of Cambodia, as well (Suriya 1992; Sheppard 1968). Further difficulties in ascribing origins to shadow play genres in the region stem from the parallel performance traditions using much larger shadow figures and scenes, some as tall as two metres, held by dancers performing mostly in front of a screen, rather than behind it. Cambodia appears to be 112

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the origin of the larger Khmer shadow puppet form of nang sbek thorn, the likely precursor of the similar nang yal in Thailand (Pech Turn Kravel 1 995; Brunet 1974a, 53; 1974b, 127; Sheppard 1974, 199). This form is often confused with the distinctly different and southern genre of -nang taking, occasionally even by some central Thai scholars. The smaller southern shadow play is distinguished from nang yai by referring to it as nang taking, though the derivation of “taking? is regarded as difficult to ascertain. There are usually seven etymological origins given for the word “talung,” associating it with the southern province or city of Phatthalung or with an earlier southern city or community. An early Khmer chronicle describing the foundation of Angkor Thom mentions the tribute paid bya southern city or people known as “taking.” A group of early Burmese migrants who settled in the South were known as the Thai Lung, and are thought by some to be the first group to perform the shadow play there. Another version suggests that elephant keepers in the South would entertain themselves at night by stretching a shadow play screen between “talun ' posts used to tether or fence in elephant herds. “Taking or “lung" was also a term applied to elephant keepers themselves, and it has been suggested that elephant soldiers making forays into Malaya in time of war brought back the form, which was then named after them. Other versions suggest that Phatthalung province was the origin of the form. King Rama DI is supposed to have seen a performance named “Nang Khuan” in Bangkok and named it after the performers’ home province. King Rama V is said to have named the form “nang lung” after another court performance in 1 876 by villagers from Khuan Maphrao village in Phatthalung province. Nang talung is also thought to be a name originating at Phraya Hong Hill, in Karong village close to the city of Phatthalung. The form was thus known elsewhere as Nang Phatthalung, which was quickly shortened by southern people in a customary abbreviation typical of the. local dialect (Pathrapom 1986, 437; Leesuwan 1981, 89). Prince Dhaninivat has suggested that the name of the form was also regularly mispronounced as “nang kalung' by illiterate people in the past, which he suggests as the probable derivation of the similarly named nang kaloung shadow play form of Cambodia (Dhaninivat [1959] 1975). No explanation of the name is regarded as conclusive, though local legends of the form’s various origins lend credence to some of the above possibilities. For instance, some introductory chants paying homage to founders of the form refer to Ta Nak Thong and Ta Kon Thong, who were possibly elephant keepers campaigning in northern Malaya in the reign of Rama I, from 1782 to 1809 (Paritta 1980, 55). My interviews with villagers and local academics revealed that the city of Phatthalung is known to have changed its site several times in its early history. 113

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From the evidence of intertwined oral myths it appears likely that nang tailing in earlier times was closely associated with the southern area of Thailand around the Thale Sap Songkhla Lake inland sea, bounded by the towns of Phatthalung, Songkhla, Ranot, and SathingPhra, an area previously important for elephant transport and also possibly used as a staging post for wartime forays into northern Malaya and southern Burma. The Songkhla Lake was larger in earlier times, and was a center for a complex of waterways that stretched north towards Nakhon Si Thammarat, whose performers and academics also claim it as an early site of nang talung performance origin. During my major research period in 1993, in the provinces of Songkhla, Phatthalung, Surat Thani, Trang, and Nakhon Si Thammarat, I found that both Java and India were cited by performers as the origin of nang tailing. The older and usually less well educated performers nearly always proposed India as the origin, pointing out the connection with Brahman beliefs and the traditional figures of Shiva, known as Phra Islam, and the ruesi, or hermit/ sage character, which were used in ritual introductions to performances. 9 The newer generation of performers, often teachers who had been trained at the local teachers’ training colleges, were generally more likely to suggest Java as the source. The recent institution of performers’ assembly meetings, or chom ram, regularly held in the southern provincial towns and addressed by academics in order to further the promotion of regional culture, may also have influenced these opinions. 10 Many Thai academics refer to Java as the origin of nang tailing, sometimes citing the period of Srivijayan influence when areas of southern Thailand were dominated by kingdoms ruled from Sumatra and Java. Despite the fairly widespread belief that nang talung originated elsewhere, many older performers were able to give varying accounts of the indigenous Thai origin, as well as stories of its first arrival in a number of provinces. These accounts often suggested the antiquity of the genre and its possible advent before the times of the Ayutthaya and Sukhothai kingdoms. It seems possible that nang talung was extant long before it first became known to court chroniclers or was given its current name. According to some versions ofthe name’s etymology, the naming may perhaps only have occurred during the last two hundred years. Unfortunately, the beginning of the name’s usage has been taken as the time of nang tailings origin, and thus the time of its divergence from the nangyai tradition, by some central Thai commentators (e.g. Surapone .1990, 96). This occasionally leads to later misinformation in other works based on secondary sources. Although the tradition of some type of nang talung performance may have been present in the region of southern Thailand for perhaps more than one thousand years, we will probably never know for certain. As Amin Sweeney

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comments, “It will have become apparent that the study of the origin of the uiayang is largely a futile task” (1972b, 22).

THE NATURE OF PERFORMANCE In common with other Southeast Asian forms of shadow play, nang talung performances usually occur at domestic ceremonies, or at commercial and temple fairs. Plays are five to eight hours long, usually commencing at eight or nine in the evening. Asingle puppeteer, the nai nang, chants poetry, narrates the story, and, by using many voices, conducts the dialogue for about thirty to fifty characters drawn from a collection of about two hundred. He is assisted by five to ten musicians. Traditional musical instruments include the pi, a double-reed, oboe-like flute; the thap, a pair of pear-shaped drums; the ching, a pair of small-hand cymbals; the mong, a pair of small brass gongs in a wooden box; the krap, a wooden clapper; the klong, a two-faced drum; and the so-u, a double-stringed Chinese-style violin. These days, electric lights, microphones, and loudspeakers are standard equipment for a troupe. Traditional instruments are regularly complemented by electric guitars, keyboards, saxophones, and drum kits, and some of the most famous troupes may number as many as twenty people. As a result of the increasing use of these modem instruments and their ability to play popular modem “country” tunes, generally known as phleng luk thung, many older classical tunes and songs that traditionally accompanied nang talung have fallen into disuse. The desire of performers to modernize the music and thus increase audience size is often iri direct conflict with academic sponsors’ preference for traditional instruments. The use of electronic musical instruments has been spurred by increased competition from newer forms of entertainment that have become extremely popular among the younger generation. Live pop music, karaoke clubs, and cinema are making heavy inroads into the traditional market for nang talung, not only in the towns, but also at rural fairs, with direct competition at the same performance venues. Some favored nai nangs may use prestigious characters within a story to dispute the preference for traditional instruments during performances at college fairs, as in the following example, which is a speech by a deity: The teachers’ college has held the fair for seven days in Songkhla. The referees will mark the points for nang talung, such as those for the movement of puppets and the verses. Nai nangs should be careful. For Nang Nakharin from Songkhla, he just wants to take part in the fair. Deva sends us to come here, not eager for

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fame, The nang talung competition is to find a good performance, story, rhyme’, and rhythm, including music, and to keep the art tradition, lb use the modem drums is to use modem musical instruments. But we still play the pi, the thap and the thing. Nang Nakharin has played with “the five” musical instruments but added an electric organ including lights. Nowadays nang talung shows have been adapted to suit modem society. We don’t hope for the prize of first place. We’ll perform in the mixed style and hope to get criticism for development later.' 1

The audience sits on the ground in front of the rang, a sheltered platform raised one or two metres above ground level, which provides a stage for the nai nang and his troupe. Usually the rang is partitioned off on both sides, and only a few spectators, mostly curious children, watch from the sides or the rear. The general style of construction, though often adapted to utilize modem materials, is more closely related to the style of construction used in the panggong, or shadow play stages of Kelantan, rather than to Javanese performance arrangements. As the leather puppets are colored and translucent, and manipulated in front of an electric light, the audience sees colored shadows or projections on the decorated white doth screen, which is usually about two meters tall and four meters wide, and often partially covered in advertisements. The puppets, ranging in size from thirty centimeters to over one meter tall, are spiked into banana tree logs for support, and the nai nang manipulates the one or two jointed arms of each figure, and the jaws of down characters. Simple movement conventions enable the stories to flow like a primitive form of cinema, though often the main attraction for the audience is the vocal skill of the puppeteer. Puppets are grouped into several character types, which are easily recognized by the audience, and detailed information about the persona of each new figure is usually given in verse on its first appearance in the story. Kings and queens (of fictional city-states) are typically crowned, with ornamental apparel similar to that worn by traditional court dancers. The yaks, grotesque demonic ogres with magical powers, modeled on old temple sculptures, are. nowadays more often characterized as evil people without dharma, though figures of western or Chinese investors have begun to replace them in some stories. Heroes and heroines (phra ek /nang ek) are often the children of royal parents, and may be similarly dressed, but usually without crowns, and are always attractive young people. These figures are sometimes dressed in a contemporary style, and described as normal villagers, but still act and speak in a more “noble” or educated way than their companions. Supporting characters include deities, with a type of halo and the ability to fly; ghosts and spirits, often shown as skeletal .figures; older male and female villagers; bandits; officials and policemen; and the ruesi, a type of learned i 116

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ascetic. Other, newer figures are depictions of local or national politicians, more easily recognized now as a result of widespread national television news broadcasts. Puppet props of newspapers, guns, cigarettes, spectacles, motorbikes, and even airplanes are not uncommon. The most important characters are the clowns, who are black-skinned, often with grotesque or animal-like features. There are six major clowns, 12 supposedly based on real village characters, who usually appear in pairs as companions or servants to the major aristocratic protagonists. Nai nangs will adopt different clowns as their personal favorites, which are often believed to have ritual potency, or may invent new clowns during their careers. The clowns, who epitomize the stereotype of the unlearned but “streetwise” peasant, are the only figures that maintain their names and personalities between stories, and are readily identified by audiences throughout the South.13 After about an hour of music to attract the crowd, performances begin with a series of introductory ritual episodes, which combine Buddhist prayers with local observances of “folk Brahmanism.” 14 The presentation of the ruesi always occurs before the main story. He is usually followed by a figure of Phra Isuan (Shiva) mounted on his sacred bull. These two figures are believed to avert evil spirits and bring good luck to the performer and audience, and during their appearance various quasi-secret incantations (khatha), usually inaudible to the audience, are performed over the puppets by the nai nang. Individual householders, who often sponsor domestic performances known' as ngan kae bon to ask or thank local spirits for good health, increased prosperity, pregnancy, or successful evasion of army conscription, may also ask for a short votive ritual to the relevant spirit to be included. A prince figure with a lotus blossom (Ruup Na Pot) follows to ritually thank the nai nang’s previous teachers, his parents, the sponsor, and the audience in traditional verse, and then one of the clowns will offer a more informal greeting to the audience and announce the story for the evening.

STORY CONTENT Many Asian forms of shadow play borrow plots from the great Indian epics of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, but the Ramakian, the Thai version of the Ramayana, has not been performed by nai nangs for over fifty years. 13 Contemporary stories include elements from multitudinous accessible sources, and are mostly invented by the performers themselves. Puppeteers may adapt episodes from novels, contemporary films, and television, and may intertwine these with episodes derived from classical literature. Nang Prom Noi, for example, a famous performer from Phatthalung, was wont to carry a selection 117

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of comic books which he said sometimes gave him good ideas that he could incorporate into his performances. He has found Indian movies a great source of inspiration in the past, especially as they included characters similar to legendary Thai heroes. Modem movie thrillers and pop music videos are a common source for conversations between the clowns. Real events witnessed in the villages and small southern towns or read about in newspapers are also often combined with elements of various existing tales in new ways. The flexibility of plot structure in traditional Thai folk tales increases the possibilities for incorporation of old and new elements in the composition of a story. Performances may use a classical plot in a pseudohistorical setting, or take a realistic approach by portraying dilemmas faced in everyday life by modem Thais, or combine both within a single performance. Multiple heroes are common, and the multiple settings usually feature a number of different kingdoms that may or may not be interrelated in the story. A series of subplots can thus portray the simultaneous adventures of various protagonists in different mythical kingdoms, who may or may not be finally reunited. Alternatively, separate plots with parallel themes may coexist without any narrative linkage. It is accepted that nang talung stories never really end. Stories regularly begin with a problem of some kind or the start of a journey. The journey may never be completed, and the problem never completely solved, though the major part of any story concerns the heroes’ or heroines’ ongoing adventures that have been set in motion by the opening scenes. These commonly involve crises that are solved by help from friends or the supernatural; encounters with villains and officials; abduction and seduction; battles; oppression; rewards; and the reunification and parting of lovers or family members. These fictional stories are best seen as reflections of a southern worldview, which often bases its sense of social order within a traditional cosmic hierarchy, most distinctly defined in an historical era. Most of the puppeteers I interviewed in the 1990s claimed to have two to three hundred stories in their repertoires, and somehad many more. Very few of these are fully written down, however, and they are rarely referred to during the mainly improvised performances, as episodes will often be cut, expanded, or adapted to suit tastes in any particular locality or to take advantage of local gossip or topical issues. Important issues for many villagers in the postwar period revolved around being oppressed by growing numbers of government officials in pursuit of phatthana,or “development," and the increasing status of education. Imaginary kingdoms in the stories often resonated with these themes, as in this king’s opening speech from Blood Pond in 1959. The government should try to develop its people, I agree. But I also think that there’s no need to develop the people. We should develop our government 118

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officers first. If the government officers are bad, the people will also be bad, even if we try to develop them. Some of the officials are not good. They make use of their power and position to take advantage of the people and annoy them. . . . They don’t realize that their salary comes from the people’s sweat— their taxes. . . . They should be loyal to their duty, nation, and the throne. I have gone to factories and many places and know that some officials are still bad, and even the uneducated people have better manners than them. Some well-educated officials are worse than uneducated people. Education cannot make you good if you don’t practice doing good. 16

More' recent performances, in contrast, often refer to specific current political events reported in the newspapers or oh television. The partiality of sponsors to certain interests is also an opportunity for a performer to negotiate for inclusion of his own opinions. In the following example, a deity is speaking. The deva looks down on the earth and sees Prime Minister Chuan’s government which tries to solve the problem of low produce prices to increase the farmer’s income. In the South the prime minister tries to do his Best.Still, the opposition argues that they will not trust the government. Theirrepresentatives fight for a seat, seize power. They are greedy. The pity is that the southern situation worries people in Pattani, "Yala, and Narathiwat. And it .is not a small problem. The students have no place to study. Wicked people burnt down the schools. Devil! They were angry with the Ministry of the Interior. Why did they have to bum the schools? Still, there are problems in four southern provinces. Not burning the police stations but schools again! The teachers are sorrowful. They have no guns, but tears. A teacher should be moral, but let the teachers have guns!17

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which was a theatrical street procession. In this event, the gods of the temple are taken out of the shrine and paraded around the town on the backs of pickup trucks, ostensibly to bring good fortune to the residents of the town. I say ostensibly here because unlike in Phuket and Trang, where such parades are well integrated into the community, the processions in Hat Yai received only passing public interest. It is worth contrasting the two very different dynamics. In Phuket and Trang, crowds of locals and visitors await the parades of pierced and unpierced mediums, statues of deities, and especially the palanquins bearing the Nine Emperor Gods. Shop-owners and residents set up alters bearing a variety of offerings for the .gods and prepare enormous chains of Chinese crackers to be let off over passing deities. Such processions are therefore characterized by a great deal of community participation and interaction between laypersons, spirit mediums, and other sources of sacred power. Local businesses and homes are blessed. The festival affirms a sense of local residents acting together as a collective. Thus it is not only individuals but also the community as a whole that is subject to blessings, purification, and renewal in these events. In Hat Yai, however, this is not the case. As the Thep NaCha procession moved through the streets, the majority of people there appeared to have no idea that the parade was coming, and no preparations had been made to welcome or receive the gods. It was not possible to construe that the community as a whole was in any sense participating, in this event. The spectacular nature of the parade succeeded in drawing quite a crowd of onlookers —a mixture of locals and tourists. However, initially at* least, residents and tourists alike have acted as spectators, not participating in the ritual event. 4 The images on display expressed an eclectic mix of Taoist, Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist, and Hindu forms. They included Chinese gods such as Thep Na Cha and Chao Mae Kuan Im, the Hindu god Brahma, and, interestingly, the images of two famous southern Thai monks. 5 Following these, there came a dozen or so spectacularly pierced mediums. Piercings included a bicycle, a bumper bar from a pickup, and a three-to-four-meter piece of PVC piping. Two mediums bore five plastic rings filled with different colored liquids (making them look vaguely like the Olympic symbol), another had a teapot spout through his cheek, another an electric fen on a stand. There were other mediums with more “traditional” piercings too, such as spears and “generals’ heads.” 6 In one case, a medium had a long spear through his cheek which bore the logo of a soy milk manufacturer at both ends, turning the medium into a walking billboard. Not all the mediums were pierced, however. Some were merely in trance, and there were others who performed other acts of self-mortification such as tongue-cutting. At the rear of the procession there was a float upon which the chief spirit medium —the owner of the shrine —rode dressed in a spectacular red and 157

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gold silk costume,, complete with brightly-feathered headpiece. He was accompanied by one middle-aged layman in white. Both of them were distributing saksit (magically charged) objects —-yellow and red thread, small plastic statues of Na Cha in plastic cases, and phayan (small pieces of cloth bearing arcane symbols) —to the onlookers. Spectators, including Thai and foreign tourists, stood on the footpaths and stared. Some people held their hands with palms together to receive blessings from the passing deities, while others, visibly disgusted by the piercings, held their hands over their mouths. Many people moved up to the float of Thep Na Cha and tried to acquire some of the objects that were being given away. They often seemed delighted to receive these objects, and would return to their companions brandishing their prizes and smiling broadly. At times there were crowds of people competing for, objects, and things got quite frenetic. One female' tourist was knocked to the ground and had to be helped up by her neighbors. Shrine assistants circulated through the crowd and collected donations in red boxes. Their white T-shirts were stenciled with a colorful image of Na Cha on the front, and the symbol of their primary sponsor, Coca-Cola, on the back. “Enjoy!” the shirts admonished the spectators. The parade halted in front of the Central department store, opposite McDonald’s and Sizzler, and there, framed by American corporate logos, the show continued. The mediums lined up for the benefit of those who wanted to take photos. In this way the event was very publicity-friendly, a stark contrast to the days in which mediums forbade photographs of themselves. In fact, it appeared that the temple assistants had been given instructions to encourage photography. On several occasions assistants gestured for me—one of the few Westerners there—to come in close and take photos. .Earlier on, during .the procession, at least one medium posed for me to photograph him. He then had additional “generals’ heads” pushed through his arm, apparently adding to the spectacle for my benefit. An altar was set up with the Chinese gods Kuan Im and Kuan U on it, as well as the remaining small sacred trinkets. The mediums then proceeded one by one to select objects from the table and throw them to the substantial crowd which had gathered on the steps of the department store. Some people, some probably Thai, others definitely Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese, approached the chief medium and asked for blessings, hands in gestures of prayer. They received magical items. Most onlookers appeared to take the event seriously. Some Malaysian and Singaporean tourists reached for their wallets to make donations, while others held their hands in prayer in the hope of receiving a blessed object from the mediums. Amother brought her young son forward for the chief medium to bestow a blessing upon the boy’s head. The final part of the show involved the chief medium, having distributed many of the magical items, removing the piercing objects from lesser mediums. 158

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This was a theatrical performance during which the chief medium used a couple of hastily placed tables as a stage. He removed the piercing objects with theatrical flair. Apparently exhausted, the lesser mediums gathered around the floats and waited to leave. They usually had pieces of yellow paper pressed against their cheeks. Some smoked cigarettes, with smoke escaping from wounds in their cheeks. Several of the mediums appeared to be in shock, shivering quite severely despite the warm temperature. When the performance was finished, all participants were quickly whisked away to the shrine on the backs of pickups, leaving the crowd to disperse back into the surrounding department stores, restaurants, hotels, karaoke clubs, and massage parlors that dominate the area. In another ritual event a-couple of evenings later, the devotees of the Poi Sian shrine, who have been celebrating the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai for just three years, organized a blade-ladder ritual in front of the Odeon department store, just around the comer from where the Thep Na Cha mediums ended their procession. As with the Thep Na Cha event, this event attracted large crowds of mostly Malaysian and Singaporean tourists, some of whom waited for hours for the performance to begin. In this case, the ritual equipment again became a framework on which corporate logos could be draped. A large banner and innumerable smaller cards advertising Mama Noodles covered the ladder apparatus. Attendants with Mama logos stenciled on their T-shirts prepared for the ritual, attaching the sharpened knife-blade rungs to the ladder, which was at least ten meters high. When all was ready, the mediums arrived in a convoy of pickups, entered trances at the temporary altar that had been set up, climbed the ladder, performed self mutilation with swords, axes, and other objects, and walked over thorny branches. As in the earlier procession, the audience alternated between merely watching and becoming involved in the' action. Blessings were sought from mediums and at the end, objects such as flags andpfo jwn, which had been sacralized by being carried over the ladder, were sold for ninety-nine baht each, AMalaysian devotee who was taking part commented to me that to purchase such flags at a similar ritual in Malaysia would certainly cost more than three times that amount. By being there, he took part in this ritual experience at bargain rates.

THE VEGETARIAN

FESTIVAL AS MAHAYANA

BUDDHISM

While such spectacular performances have become a very public aspect of the festival in Hat Yai, it is not the only manner in which it is being taken up. A very different example can be found at Wat Thawonaram (Wat Thawon), one of the city’s major Mahayana Buddhist temples. Although Taoist shrines 159

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which are devoted to the worship of the Nine Emperor Gods are traditionally at the center of the Vegetarian Festival in Phuket and Trang, in Hat Yai it is the two large Mahayana temples that have this role. Wat Thawon and Wat Chue Chang, representing the so-called “Vietnamese sect” (Annum nikai) and “Chinese sect” (Chin nikai) respectively, form the geographical focus of the festival. It is in the neighborhood surrounding these temples, rather than Taoist shrines, that stalls and shops are set up during the festival and are decorated with the distinctive red and yellow flags proclaiming that they are selling che food. In Hat Yai, Wat Thawon is experiencing a period of growth, having established an international Buddhist university on the outskirts of town which includes landscaped gardens and giant -statues of Chinese Buddhas and bodhisattvas. 7 The abbot maintains an extensive network of transnational contacts (although somewhat atypical for Hat Yai, this is strongly oriented towards Taiwan, where he spent several years). While officially belonging to the “Vietnamese sect” of the Mahayana Buddhist monkhood in Thailand, the sect is essentially Chinese in terms of its high level membership and lay patronage. However, its practices represent a second longstanding hybridity of traditions, with chanting done in Vietnamese, but also incorporating Pali chants from the Theravada sect. 8 The incorporation of the Vegetarian. Festival into this context represents a new fusion of folk Taoism and Buddhism in a long history of religious syncretism between these two traditions. In fact, the nature of the religious forms that have been brought to Southeast Asia by Chinese migrants is best described as an amalgam of Taoist and Mahayana Buddhist forms. However, unlike the Taoist shrines, which represent a tradition distinct from the majority religion of Thailand, Theravada Buddhism, the Mahayana sects are partially integrated into the Theravada Buddhist hierarchy (sangha). Like Thai monks, Mahayana Buddhist monks in this sect are under the administration of the government bureaucracy and receive ecclesiastical titles only from the king. 9 Thus, Mahayana Buddhism, although a “foreign” tradition in Thailand and with a somewhat lower status than Theravada Buddhism,10 is able to bridge the gap between “Chinese” and “Thai” very effectively. In other words, in Thailand, while Buddhism remains a primary identifier of Thai-ness, the distinctions between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions are less well recognized, or, if recognized, are commonly de-emphasized. At Wat Thawon, it was not these transnational connections that were the most important factor leading to the temple’s involvement in the Vegetarian Festival. Instead, it. is mainly the desires of local supporters that are being expressed in the temple’s participation in the festival. Monks at Wat Thawon explained that the temple had observed the Vegetarian Festival for around ten years, and had begun to take part in it due to demand on the part of 160

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regular supporters of the temple, who are almost all Sino-Thai residents of Hat Yai. The former abbot had considered the matter and agreed to observe the festival, since vegetarianism was consistent with the teachings of the Buddha. According to one monk, although the festival is not, strictly speaking, Buddhist, the temple tries to emphasize the teachings of Buddhism. Thus, the underlying rationale for taking part in the festival emphasizes personal purification subordinated to Mahayana Buddhist notions of the bodhisattva ideal of showing compassion towards, and reducing the suffering of, all sentient beings. Unlike the activities of the Thep Na Cha and Poi Sian shrines, there is no emphasis at all placed on spectacle by Wat Thawon. There are no public processions of the deities and no recourse is taken to spirit mediumship. The primary activity during the festival is preparing vegetarian food, which is distributed free to all comers as an enactment of the Buddhist virtue of selfless giving (dand). For many regular supporters of the temple with whom I spoke, this was the most salient aspect of the festival. It is also worth nothing that Theravada Buddhist monks were included in some of the ceremonies, being invited to give dhamma talks during each evening of the festival. However, the Nine Emperor Gods have not been completely divorced from this Mahayana Buddhist context and remain as important figures in the temple’s rituals. The gods are incorporated within a Mahayana Buddhist cosmic framework, and are conceptualized as seven Buddhas and two bodhisattvas, corresponding to the seven visible and two invisible stars in the Big Dipper (Cohen 2001, 23). In a similar practice to that of Taoist shrines, rituals are performed to invite the Nine Emperor Gods from the water of Songkhla Lake at the beginning of the festival and to see them off at the end. However, there is no secret room in which the Emperor Gods reside, and they ate not paraded through the streets of the city. Instead, nine urns are filled with water from the lake and brought back to the temple and nine statue images of the Emperor Gods are placed in front of the main Buddha image at the temple. The current abbot of the temple explained that the Nine Emperor Gods are present for those who wish to pay respects, but the rituals are primarily about venerating the Buddha. Devotees who come to the temple place incense at the urns and make offerings to the statues as a way of venerating the gods, but the placement of the images means that respects are also directed towards the Buddha. Thus, the primacy of the Buddha is retained and the Nine Emperor Gods are here honored not as supremely powerful and unrepresentable spirits, but rather as subordinate to the Buddha and his teachings. How might the simultaneous growth in popularity of these very different modes of practice be accounted for? In both, the Vegetarian Festival expresses certain kinds of Chinese religiosity; it thus articulates different ways of being 161

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“Chinese.” I argue then that in order to understand the significance of these differences, it is necessary to consider the changing status of Chinese-ness in Thai society and how this is articulated within local, national, and transnational contexts.

CONSTRUCTION OF CHINESE-NESS IN THAI SOCIETY In neighboring countries such as Malaysia, state policies have constructed relatively essentialized notions of ethnic difference that have produced and maintained well-defined boundaries between the Chinese and Malay ethnic groups (Gangluly 1997; Jomo 1997). However, the question of the position of the “Chinese” in Thai society is more problematic. As many observers have noted, any attempt to distinguish the “Chinese” as a distinct ethnic group in Thailand immediately raises problems of definitions. In contemporary Thailand, Chinese-ness refers less to an objective identity than to a complex, discursively produced and performatively evoked identification which cannot be reduced to a set of objective criteria. As Cohen states: While being Chinese was in the past a simple matter —belonging to a Chinese immigrant community —Chinese-ness in contemporaiy Thailand is a less clearcut issue. Chinese ethnicity is at present an emergent, often contested and situational, rather than an objective and immutable characteristic of individuals. (2001, 9)

Although state policies towards the Chinese have varied, and have at times vilified orattempted to marginalize this group, the most significant aspect of the historical production of Chinese-ness in Thailand in the postwar period has been the Thai state’s general policy of emphasizing a cultural rather than a racial definition of “Thai-ness.” This has effectively opened up a space that has enabled ethnic Chinese to become “Thai” by adapting the language, manners, refigion, and respect for the monarchy which are said to define Thai-ness. As Szanton Blanc puts it, since World War Two, “nation-ness is defined by practices” in Thailand, thus allowing the Chinese to maintain the “public veneer of Thai-ness” and to “creatively combine Chinese practices with the Thai behavior expected from citizens” (1997, 267-68). Since the 1980s, expressions of Chinese-ness appear to be on the rise in Thailand. Contrary to the predictions of influential earlier theories that the assimilation of the Chinese into Thai society was inevitable (most notably Skinner 1957), expressions of —and claims to —Chinese-ness have become increasingly prominent in public life over the past two decades. Much of the literature classifies this efflorescence as a predominantly middle-class 162

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phenomenon, as expressions of Chinese-ness come to b e increasingly associated with an outward-looking, confident, modern, chic urban Thai identity as opposed to a primarily inward-looking and marginalized minority Chinese identity (Hamilton and Waters 1997; Kasian 1997; Pasuk and Baker 1998; Szanton Blanc 1997; Vatikiotis 1996). In concert with the economic boom that began in the 1980s, the end of the Cold War and the growing prominence of mainland China as a regional economic player, Thais with Chinese backgrounds (luk chin) began to “come out of the closet” and reaffirm their Chinese heritage. As Pasuk and Baker (1998, 174) put it, in the 1980s and 1990s, “it had become not just acceptable but chic to claim Chinese roots.” 11 Members of the Thai middle classes are therefore increasingly using their Chinese-ness to -express their “thoroughly modern” Asian identity (Szanton Blanc 1997). This resurgence of expressions of Chinese-ness, has not, however, necessarily led to the rejection of Thai-ness as an identity. As Hamilton and Waters put it, “no longer members of a harassed, inward-looking minority group, the Chinese in Thailand have embraced the outside world and reaffirmed their Chinese identity, as well as maintaining their Thai identity” (1997, 262). Bao has also theorized a hybrid Sino-Thai identity, which combines Theravada Buddhism with Confucian values, showing how these categories, far from being mutually exclusive, are mutually constitutive, and indeed interpenetrate one another (1995). Chan and "long see this as a “two way process, which, in the long run, will leave the Chinese with something Thai, and the Thai with something Chinese” (1995, 6). However, Chang and Tong go further to point out that a range of factors need to be taken into account when considering the issue of Chinese-ness in Thai society. These include “the issues of global culture, trade flows, and transnationalism” (Chang and Tong 1995, 8) such as the Chinese diaspora, “with its numerous interlocking modes and networks that transcend political and geographical boundaries.” In short, recent theories have emphasized the emergence of a hybrid urban Sino-Thai identity, while at the same time evoking the situational and fluid character of claims to Chinese-ness, as opposed to their being mutually exclusive expressions of an essentialized ethnic identity. The “either/or” choice —whether or not to assimilate into the national whole; —is no longer considered to be the dilemma the Chinese face. Instead, identity has become a question of context and strategy: when and how and why is Chinese-ness evoked? When is it better to be Chinese? When is it better to be Thai, SinoThai, or something else (Chan and Tong 1995, 5)? Chinese-ness, then, is not a unified or monolithic “thing” but, as len Ang (1993) states, an “open signifier” that can be performatively evoked in a variety of contexts. However, Ang (1993, 4) also notes that such “postmodern” constructions of identity that emphasize fluidity, instability and the nomadic subjectivities 163

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can have the effect of producing an overarching sameness amid difference, of “flattening out” and abstracting difference by removing it from specific contexts. Itis important, she argues, to consider the moments in which identity is “fixed” in categories of ethnicity, race, and gender —also, I would argue, nationality. It is important, she further argues, to pay attention to “the particular historical conditions and the specific trajectories through which actual social subjects become incommehsurably different and similar.” In other words, identities, emerge as lived experience in specific contexts.

THE EXPANSION THAILAND

OF THE VEGETARIAN

FESTIVAL IN

The growing popularity of the Vegetarian Festival throughout Thailand since the 1980s bears a close relationship to the changingnature of Chinese identity which I have just outlined. Authors such as Erik Cohen have made direct links between the popularity of the festival and the status of Chinese-ness in Thai society, in which interest in the festival is a sign of the increasing incorporation of the Chinese community into the Thai mainstream rather than an increasing differentiation of Chinese-ness as a separate identity. However, the exact form the festival’s expansion has taken depends a great deal on the dynamics of particular locations. In Phuket and Trang, the “homes” of the festival in Thailand, where it has been practiced for at least a century, 12 the process of expansion has essentially changed a local Chinese migrant activity into a major tourist event. Although in the early stages of the festival’s expansion, unofficial media such as video cassettes played a significant role in circulating images of the festival beyond the realm of the state-controlled broadcasters (Hamilton 2002), more recently the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has actively taken a role in promoting the festival. Indeed, the festival has become big business. In the years 2000 and 200 1, it has been estimated that the festival generated around 3 billion baht and 2.7 billion baht (U.S. $66 million and U.S. $60 million) respectively, eighty percent of which can be attributed to foreign (mostly Chinese) visitors (Thai Farmers Research Center 2000, 2001). The growing touristic nature and corporate sponsorship of the festival in Phukethas led to criticisms that the festival is becoming commercialized and that shrines are placing too much emphasis on the astounding and spectacular practices, especially the processions and activities of spirit mediums, who are pierced with ever more “bizarre” objects (see Cohen 2001 for a detailed analysis of these debates). What is not so clear, however, is how the visitors to the island experience these spectacles: as commodified and therefore inauthentic? Or is the extremity of the practices actually what testifies to its 164

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authenticity? These issues will be discussed below in relationship to Hat Yai. At the same time that the festival has become a major tourist attraction in the South, it has also increasingly been taken up in Bangkok. One source suggested that folly three-quarters of Bangkok’s population took part in the festival in one way or another in 2001.” It seems, however, thatnot all aspects of the festival have been adopted to the same degree. Arguably, the “extreme” aspects of the festival that have made it a tourist attraction in Phuket and Trang have largely been rejected by Bangkokians, while those that emphasize a level of personal asceticism on the part of the general participants— vegetarianism, wearing white, abstaining from alcohol and sex—characterize the manner in which it is practiced there. Indeed, vegetarianism itself, rather than the worship of the Nine Emperor Gods, has become the primary mode by which people take part in the Vegetarian Festival, with hotels, restaurants, and now even fast food chains like Burger King and Chester’s Grill providing special vegetarian dishes that meet the appropriate dietary requirements. Cohen remarks on the trend of eating che in Thai society, particularly in Bangkok, suggesting that this “is not necessarily a consequence of a greater devotion to the Nine Emperor Gods” (2001, 30). Rather, “vegetarianism became trendy even as the attendance at the shrines during the festival declined.” Thus it would seem that for the most part, the uptake of the festival in Bangkok has been divorced from the event’s original cosmological significance, and from unpalatable practices of mortification —also, arguably, from its highly marked “Chinese-ness.” I propose that this process reflects a general ambivalence among middleclass Thais towards the extreme practices associated with the festival as practiced in Phuket and Trang. Such sentiments mightbe seen to be expressed in the widespread fascination, with the case of the spirit medium Chuchat, who in 1997 revealed On national television that his more than twenty-year career was based on charlatanry, and called on all mediums to renounce their own fakery (Morris 2000, 456). Although Morris notes Chuchat’s Chineseness and connects his practices with the Vegetarian Festival, she does not emphasize it, instead allowing Chuchat to stand for Thai mediumship in general. However, I would argue that it is the highly marked Chinese-ness of his practices—the self-mortification, piercing, and so on —which was central to the fascination his confessions held. These extreme practices not only point to an “atavistic leftover” within Thai society that is not easily reconciled with local understandings of rational modernity, they also represent a distinctly Chinese outlook that is not easily reconciled with Theravada Buddhism, still one of the primary markers of Thai-ness. A less problematic way for many middle-class Thais to express a certain kind of Chinese-ness, then, is to practice what Irene Stengs has recently labeled “moderate asceticism” (2002). It is this “moderate” asceticism, rather than 165

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’

“extreme mortification,” that has been “secularized” so that it can be more easily reconciled with notions of a rational modernity, and can represent as much an expression of class as of ethnic identification. According.to Stengs’ argument, those aspiring to middle-class values adopt “tokens” of middleclass life, such as “vegetarianism” or other dietary practices like abstaining from eating beef. These symbols of class status are said to be based on distinctive Sino-Thai ethics. Thus, the widespread interest in the vegetarian festival in Thailand is consistent with other forms of lay-based religiosity connected with the Sino-Thai middle-classes, such as the worship of the Chinese Mahayana bodhisattva Kuan Im, and is located in a continuum with other forms of middle-class religiosity such as the Santi Asoke and Thammakai Buddhist sects, which also place an emphasis on lay ascetic practices. 14 J THE FESTIVAL IN HAT YAI As my examples of the different activities in Hat Yai illustrate, the manner in which the Vegetarian Festival is expanding suggests that it is internally fragmented rather than being a unified event. On the one hand, Mahayana Buddhist temples such as Wat Thawon represent the “moderate ascetic” mode of practice which relates to emerging, nationally-bound constructions of SinoThai identity in which Chinese-ness can be expressed in a manner that can be reconciled with Theravada Buddhism. On the other hand, the Taoist shrines, such as Thep Na Cha and Poi Sian, which emphasize spectacular performances of spirit mediums, are much more oriented towards a transnational audience, an audience, it should be noted, which is relatively secure in its Chinese-ness. For Malaysians and Singaporeans who participate in the Hat Yai festival, their Chinese-ness is a given. This is not to reify Chinese-ness and suggest that it is unchanging or unitary, or that it can be reduced to a definite set of objective qualities. Rather, for the Malaysian and Singaporean participants in the Vegetarian Festival whom I interviewed, their Chinese-ness was always assumed and did not have to be discursively produced, demonstrated, or disavowed, as is more likely the case of the SinoThai. Thus, their participation in highly marked Chinese rituals could remain an affirmation of a distinct ethnicity without necessarily impacting upon their sense of being Malaysian or Singaporean, as I’m suggesting is more likely to be for the Sino-Thai experience. There is no doubt that the second mode of practice —i.e., that which is based in Chinese shrines and emphasizes the performances of spirit mediums —is on the rise in Hat Yai. Of the three Chinese shrines at which I conducted research —Thep Na Cha, Poi Sian, and Chai Sing la —all were expanding the scope of their operations. AU had just moved or were about to 166

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move from tiny storefront-style residences in the center of town to more “palatial” settings on the outskirts. These new shrines had the space that would permit activities such as fire walking and blade-ladder climbing. This trend towards expansion appears to be quite recent. As an example, the Chai Sing la shrine had been operating in a tiny townhouse in a narrow lane for sixteen years. However, in 2001 the shrine was about to move into a newly built temple on a large block of land. According to the owner, this would allow the shrine to perform larger rites such as fire walking and blade-ladder climbing as a tourist attraction —something that space had not allowed up until then. In another case, the principal medium and owner of the Poi Sian shrine had been practicing for around twenty years from a small roadside shrine. One or two years earlier, patronage from his Malaysian supporters had allowed him to move his shrine to a large block of land on the outskirts of town. Likewise, his shrine has recently begun performing spectacular public rituals. Shrine owners who are promoting the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai are attempting to tap into already existing dynamics and tourist flows. In particular they are utilizing longstanding relationships between southern Thailand and neighboring countries in which ritual specialists and charismatic individuals, sites, and objects from a number of traditions are sought out, visited, and propitiated by ethnic Chinese with omnivorous spiritual tastes. Thus, I would argue that the, growth of the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai, which plays on the linkages and shared understanding between “Chinese” on both sides of the border, must be viewed in the context of broader trends in which a wide variety of sources of sanctity are utilized to promote pilgrimage and “sacred tourism” on the part of Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans. Such a tactic has been adopted by the Hat Yai municipality itself, which has transformed sections of its large municipal park into a “sacred parkland,” building statues of images popular with foreign Chinese. These include the Chinese bodhisattva Kuan Im and the Hindu god Brahma (who is almost universally misidentified by Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese as the “Four-Faced Buddha,” one of the most popular religious icons in those countries). 15 Writing about this Chinese mode of tourism that is currently being promoted, Marc Askew has stated that “over the last three decades the Lower South has been transformed from a place and landscape of ‘danger’ to one of pleasure and sacred” (2002, 3). Sacred sites and figures, not always objectively “Chinese,” are adapted to the tastes of foreign Chinese. This is reflected in the wider mobilization of Chinese-ness in Hat Yai for the benefit of the tourist market. That is, Hat Yai is a very “Chinese” city, but the peculiar nature of tourism there means that the city also quite literally trades on its Chineseness. This is evidenced by the fact that Hat Yai’s tourism industry is heavily oriented towards the Chinese. 16 In an interview, the director of the TAT in 167

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Hat Yai expressed this view, and informed me that plans were being made to draw tourists from other Chinese areas—especially Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong. As an example of this mentality, following severe flooding in Hat Yai in 2000, a campaign to support the damaged tourism industry focused on Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan by promoting Hat Yai’s-Chinese New Year celebrations (Bangkok Post,Online edition, “Hat Yai to be Promoted as Tourist Spot,” December 10, 2000). Although trying to appeal to tourists and other foreign visitors, die mediums who run the shrines that are promoting the Vegetarian Festival are adamant about the authenticity of their practices. Shrines assert their authenticity by emphasizing connections to the “original” Nine Emperor Gods shrines in Phuket or Trang. The main symbol of this connection is ash,(&W thup) which is taken from the incense urns of one of the “original” shrines and installed at a new one, thereby legitimating the shrine as an appropriate place to worship the Nine Emperor Gods. Members of the shrines in Hat Yai that I interviewed were emphatic that this was necessary to' perform a genuine ceremony worshipping the Nine Emperor Gods, and that only shrines within the lineage of Nine Emperor Gods shrines could claim authenticity. There is no general consensus on. the identity of the “original” shrine in Thailand, although all the Hat Yai shrines .that I visited traced their lineages to shrines in either Phuket or Trang. The connection to the authentic “point of origin” is not necessarily direct, however, and may pass from one shrine to another. For example, Thep Na Cha traces its lineage through a shrine in Nakhon Si Thammarat back to the Bang Niao shrine in Phuket, while Chai Sing la traces its lineage back to Trang. None of the shrines that I encountered trace their lineages across national boundaries, back to temples in Malaysia or Singapore, in the way that some Singaporean shrineshave traced their lineages to Penang (Heinze 1981,155-56). This emphasis on lineage can be contrasted with Wat Thawon, which, as a Mahayana Buddhist temple, does not participate in the genealogical tradition of the Taoist shrines. There are also no links made to temples elsewhere in Thailand or in China through indexical symbols such as ashes. The tradition found at Wat Thawon is in this sense “despatialized,” not employing the concrete symbols that link something to a place but instead making use of the universal teachings of the Buddha. The fact that most of the shrines that worship the Nine Emperor Gods are moving or have moved to the outskirts of town means that the modes of practice of the Vegetarian Festival can be spatially differentiated. The center of town is dominated by the Mahayana temples, and by the mode that emphasizes personal asceticism and vegetarianism. The periphery is dominated by temples that worship the Nine Emperor Gods and cater to ■transnational patronage. However, these shrines organize incursions into the center of town for many of their ritual activities, including the processions of 168

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the Nine Emperor Gods through the streets and events such as blade-ladder climbing and hot oil bathing. Those responsible for organizing the events were almost universal in their reasons for doing this: they wanted to go to areas frequented by ChineseMalaysians and Singaporeans in order to raise the profile of the Vegetarian Festival and to generate patronage for their shrines. The spirit mediums who run the shrines, temple employees, and supporters are often not Hat Yai natives. For example, the owner of Thep Na Cha recently moved from Nafchon Si Thammarat, bringing many supporters with him. The Chai Sing la shrine is run by a spirit medium originally from Trang; a large number of the people who celebrate the Vegetarian Festival at his shrine are from Trang or Phuket. When interviewed about their reasons for moving to Hat Yai, these shrine owners stated that since the Vegetarian Festival is not well established in Hat Yai, the possibilities for expansion are greater than in Phuket and Trang, where the more established shrines dominate: Furthermore, the shrine owners believed that the opportunities for gaining support from Malaysian and Singaporean' devotees in Hat Yai were plentiful because of the tourist infrastructure, which meant that a large number of Malaysian and Singaporean tourists were always available for “conversion.”

THE ROLE OF FOREIGN PARTICIPANTS The examples of the street processions and blade-ladder climbing suggest the spontaneous manner in which foreign Chinese onlookers easily move between the roles of spectator and participant, thus blurring the distinction between observer and devotee, tourist and pilgrim. Such a m o d e of participation already challenges the notion that such ritual performances in Hat Yai can be written off as examples of “staged authenticity” (MacCannell 1989) that exist merely for the benefit of an objectifying “tourist gaze” (Urry 1990) . However, this notion is further complicated by the fact that many of the shrine attendants, organizers, and wealthy patrons, and even some of the spirit mediums, are in fact Chinese from Singapore and Malaysia. Thus the festival in Hat Yai differs significantly from those in Phuket and Trang: while the other festivals are best conceived of as local traditions that have attracted transnational interest in recent years, the festival in Hat Yai is emerging precisely in a translocal and transnational nexus, or at least certain aspects of it are. Thus the participation of Malaysians and Singaporeans is not just an “addon” to an already established event: their participation is crucial to the very existence of these activities. In the case of the Thep Na Cha shrine, its celebrations in 2001 would not have been possible without the huge donation 169

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of three million baht from the Chinese Malaysian patron. The Poi Sian shrine does not have one major patron but rather a large number of Malaysian devotees/patrons who participate in every aspect of the festival. According to the chief medium and owner, the shrine is actually devoted to the Eight Immortals and not the Nine Emperor Gods at all. 17 However, the desire of the Malaysian devotees to celebrate the Vegetarian Festival was such that he acquiesced, even through performing an extra set of rituals was exhausting for him. Thus it is the Malaysian devotees who are the driving force behind the shrine’s participation in the festival. The Malaysians run many aspects of the shrine’s business duringthe festival. They maimed the temple and collected donations doled out vegetarian food to visitors (although they didn’t cook it —Thais did), and performed daily rites to venerate the Nine Emperor Gods and other deities. During their street precession, it was Malaysian men exclusively who carried the palanquin containing the Nine Emperor Gods, and on the final evening of the festival they participated in the fire-walking (luifat) rites, carrying images of various deities and other sacred objects across the red-hot coals in order to purify both the objects and themselves. In many cases, the Malaysian supporters have very regular contact with the shrines in Hat Yai, traveling numerous times a year to visit, worship, make donations, or help with temple development in one form or another. For example, one devotee from Ipoh said she visited the Poi Sian shrine at least monthly, explaining that it only took her four hours by car to make the journey. Such frequent and sustained patterns resemble closely Marc Askew’s theorization of a particular mode of cross-border travel he calls “border tourism” (2002), though I found no examples of devotees who went across the border on a daily basis, as Askew did. The business networks of some Malaysian devotees are also relevant to the manner in which the festival is evolving. One supporter of the Poi Sian shrine is a travel agent from Kuala Lumpur and has thus been able to tap into the lucrative flow of tourists on their way to attend the Vegetarian Festival in Phuket and Trang. During the festival in 2001, more than fifty tour buses, direct from Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh, crept their way up the narrow dirt road to the Poi Sian shrine each morning and disgorged their occupants, who had a vegetarian breakfast and propitiated the shrine’s various images before reboarding to be .taken into Hat Yai, or on to Trang or Phuket. The Poi Sian shrine had managed to “intercept” tourists on their way to the more established centers of the festival. But in a sense it had also helped to “dislocate” the festival for these tourists, turning it into a multisite event.

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MOTIVATIONS FOR CROSS-BORDER PARTICIPATION With any transnational dynamic, it is important to consider the reasons for its existence. Why do people make the effort to cross boundaries? It is a task that requires effort, time, and money. While there are undoubtedly a number of reasons for such cross-border traffic, I now want to consider the role of the border itself as implicated in the process. For many of the transnational participants I spoke to, financial differences between Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand provided a significant reason for patronizing shrines in Hat Yai and taking part in the Vegetarian Festival there. This dynamic is partially a result of the growing popularity of the festival in Malaysia, which parallels its growth in Thailand. Informants told me that in Ampang, near Kuala Lumpur, where devotees of the extremely popular festival, are put up in hotel-like accommodations during their stay, the cost of attending can be prohibitive. For many Malaysians, traveling to Hat Yai is a tempting alternative. The relative wealth of Malaysia and Singapore also means that participants from these countries can obtain a higher status and more central role in the ritual proceedings than would otherwise be available to them. One woman from Ipoh, Malaysia who takes part in the Vegetarian Festival at the Poi Sian shrine proudly pointed to the donation of 163,000 baht 18 on the donor list and saidMiat her husband had made it. She explained their participation in terms of income differentials between countries: “Hat Yai people are poor so they cannot donate so much money.” One informant, Mr Wong, a Chinese man from Kuala Lumpur, offered reasons for why Malaysians and Singaporeans were interested in traveling to Thailand to participate in rituals. He stated that participation in the festival in Hat Yai is inexpensive compared to Malaysia and there is a sense of religious freedom in Thailand. By contrast, in Kuala Lumpur, he claimed, Chinese crackers, extreme piercings, blade ladders, and so on, are not allowed. In other words, in Thailand, the “same” ritual experience was seen to be more “traditional,” more spectacular, and better value for money. Statements of this kind are quite common and support the notion that Thailand’s relative permissiveness in comparison to Muslim-dominated Malaysia and authoritarian, highly regulated Singapore, is a significant motivating factor in cross-border tourism and pilgrimage. 19 This sense of freedom can also be found in the openness to innovation of many of the shrines, and particularly the greater role given to women than is traditionally the case in Singapore and Malaysia. For example, while women in Malaysia are not allowed to take part in the fire-walking and some other rites in Malaysia because of their inherent “impurity” (Cheu 1988), the Thep Na Cha and Poi Sian shrines were both willing to allow women to take part, sometimes having spirit mediums walk diem across the coals by holding their 171

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hands. In perhaps the most surprising innovation, the Thep Na Cha shrine actually gave its female devotees the privilege of removing the Nine Emperor Gods from their room at the end of the festival and bearing the palanquin onto the back of a pickup truck and thence to the sea. However, foreign participants not only cite such transnational differences for their interest in patronizing shrines in Hat Yai but also attest to the sacred power of spirit mediums with whom they have entered a devotional relationship. One Singaporean man said he was guided to the Thep Na Cha shrine by a series of coincidences but when he saw the chief medium his eyes were filled with a brilliant light and he knew he was in the presence of a powerful figure. A Malaysian man donated three million baht to Thep Na Cha, becoming the shrine’s major benefactor, because he was convinced of the power of the head medium to bring him good luck Other devotees cited help with financial, health, and personal problems as bases of their devotion. In Mr. Wong’s words, as he tried to put his feelings in terms I could understand, “It’s like the X-files. At first you don’t believe, then [you experience the power of the medium] and you have to believe.” Given that such relationships are taking place in a transnational context, and one in which there is a widespread phenomenon of ethnic Chinese seeking sources of sacred power on the other side of a national boundary, it is worth asking if the presence of the border itself, a concrete manifestation of disjunctures between states, has any role in this process. Louis Golomb has noted the strong productive force of ethnic boundaries that can allow members of one ethnic group to be perceived as powerful healers or ritual specialists by virtue of their other-ness. In the case of Kelantan in northern Malaysia, he has shown how ethnic Thais have been able to creatively adapt ethnic differences to create a niche as “brokers ofmorality,” providing ritual services for, in particular, the ethnic Chinese (Golomb 1978). In the case of southern Thailand, h e has shown how ethnic boundaries help to enhance the power of ritual healers (Golomb 1984). These observations lead me to suggest that perhaps a national boundary can function in a similar way, with the division of an ostensibly singular ethnic group by a national boundary creating a tantalizing sense of power in other-ness which can be exploited by a variety of actors. Thus, perhaps ironically, it is actually the Thai-ness of the spirit mediums and the ritual proceedings they oversee —the fact that they emerge in a Thai context and make use of a particularly Thai way of managing ethnicity and the sacred—that allow transnational participants to experience these events as powerful and inherently authentic.

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CONCLUSIONS In this paper I have outlined the recent emergence of the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai as a prominent ritual event. I have described two main modes by ..which this is occurring: one which emphasizes vegetarianism and “moderate asceticism,” and which may be related to the dominant Sino-Thai middleclass expressions; and one which retains its connections to the worship of the Nine Emperor Gods, complete with requisite ritual practices. While the former is more amenable to mainstream notions of middle-class Thai modernity, the latter is regarded with more ambiguity and distrust. Nevertheless, at the periphery of the nation-state these “marginal” practices have proven to be a powerful medium through which connections are made between southern Thai Chinese and neighboring countries. The development of the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai is therefore not a simple relocation of the event from other sites in Thailand. Instead, it is emerging in a fundamentally transnational context and draws on cultural continuities and parallel social developments in Malaysia and Singapore. These include the diminishing exclusiveness of dialect groups and the concurrent increase in interest in the festival beyond specific Holdden Chinese communities. However, these continuities are also crosscut by the productive disjunctions created by the presence of the national border. These enhance rather than diminish the dynamics of interaction, providing an opportunity for those foreign participants who wish to experience an exotic yet familiar Chinese-ness that is conditioned by the possibilities of another national context. Finally, the specificity of Hat Yai itself is important for the manner in which the festival is developing there. In the festival’s traditional locations Hokkien communities still largely control central shrines and ritual proceedings. However, in Hat Yai participants from both sides of the border, who could at best be marginal to the established festivals, find a space of relative openness and opportunity in which they are able to take central roles, either as ritual specialists or.important sponsors. In this context they are able to extend the lineages ofworship of the Nine Emperor Gods to a new location, while at the same time having the freedom to introduce innovations to suit new ritual sensibilities. The result is a dynamic event, fragmented and obviously in flux. It remains to be seen if this will stabilize and the festival will become a more firmly integrated feature of the ritual life of the city’s inhabitants.

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NOTES Material for this paper is based on fieldwork that was conducted in 2001 and represents one part of a more general study on cross-border religious dynamics in the southern Thai periphery. I would like to thank Annette Hamilton for encouraging me to focus on the Vegetarian Festival in Hat Yai.Many thanks too to Marlane Guelden, Rosemary Wiss, Jennifer Deger, and Paul Cohen, who provided much-needed feedback on different drafts of this paper. I also owe a debt of gratitude to an anonymous reviewer, whose suggestions have been more that helpful. 1. In this way, this paper answers Chan and Tong’s call for more attention to be given to aspects of the Chinese diaspora and transnationalism in consideration of Chinese ethnicity in Thailand (Chan and Tong 1995, 9). 2. Che is a local version of the Mandarin chai and refers to a particular mode of vegetarianism which not only excludes the consumption of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products, but also' five kinds of vegetables, including garlic and onions, which have a strong smell and are considered to be harmful to the body (Cohen 2001, 28-29). 3. Heinze (1981) refers to this festival in Singapore as the “Festival of the Nine Imperial Gods.” 4. It should be noted that such community-affirming processions do take place in Hat Yai, but not in connection with the Vegetarian Festival. Rather, it is uring Chinese New Year,that the city’s most prominent Chinese charitable foundation, Munnithi Thong Sia SiangTueng, organizes a “procession of the deities” (khabuan haephra) through the central business district of Hat Yai. This parade is highly inclusive, and all the city’s Chinese shrines (san chao) are invited to display their deities in it. It is in connection with this procession that widespread community participation is expressed through the setting up of altars, use of crackers, and so on by local businesses and residents. 5 . The famous local saint Luang Pho Thuat (yiap nam thale chuet), who is associated most commonly with Wat Chang Hai in Pattani, and Pho Than Khlai from Nakhon Si Thammarat, probably southern Thailand’s second most famous “magical” monk. My Ph.D. dissertation deals in more detail with the incorporation of these Theravada Buddhist saints into Chinese rituals in southern Thailand. 6. General’s head: a narrow spike with a small head attached at one end. 7 . It is interesting to note that the giant bodhisattva image towering over the neighboring Tesco-Lotus shopping complex (Kshitigarbha,or “earthstore” bodhisattva, who is responsible for helping to rescue the spirits of the dead from hell realms) frequently has attracted negative comments, ridicule, or perplexity from local residents, who are unfamiliar with the figure. Unlike the bodhisattva Kuan Im, whose giant image stands on the hills of the municipal park, this Chinese statue is experienced as being more “foreign” and represents for some a more worrying transformation of Hat Yai’s urban landscape. 8. The hybridity of this sect is even more complicated than this, however. For example, most of the novices being educated at the temple have no Chinese background at all. 9. For more detail on the position of Mahayana Buddhism in Thailand, see Blofeld (1971).

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10. An example of this is the fact that Mahayana monks receive their ecclesiastical titles from the king -on the “doorstep” of the temple of die Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew) in Bangkok while Theravada monks receive theirs inside. In situations where I saw senior Mahayana monks interacting with senior Theravada monks, it was always the former who behaved deferentially. 11. Vatddotis described this in similar terms, referring to the phenomenon as “Sino Chic” (1996). 12. In the year 2000, the festival in Phuket officially celebrated its centenary (Thai Fanners Research Center 2000). However, the conventional opinion in Phuket is that the festival was first practiced on the island in 1825 (Cohen 2001, 50). 13. Nation, October 16, 2001. Cited in Stengs (2002, 4). 14. The most detailed study on the Santi Asoke movement is Heikkila-Hom (1997). For comparisons of Sand Asoke and Thammakai, see Jackson (1989), Apinya (1993), Taylor (1993, 1989, 1990), and Mayer (1996). On Thammakai, see Zehner (1990) and Rungwaree (1999). 15. This fact has been attested to by Peter Jackson (personal communication). See also Shirley Itee (1996), who mentions the popularity of representations of Brahma in Singapore. 16. Although my own impressions suggest that the level of Muslim Malaysian tourism in Hat Yai is more significant than is often assumed, a common opinion among the Thai and Sino-Thai residents in the area is that 90 percent of foreign tourists to Hat Yai are ethnic Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans. 17. The name “Poi Sian” refers to the Eight Immortals, who are middle-level Chinese deities. 18. About U.S. $3,600. 19. For a recent discussion of this issue, see Askew (2002).

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REFERENCES Ang, len. 1993. To Be or Not to Be Chinese: Diaspora,. Culture, and Postmodern Ethnicity. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 21 (1): 1—17. Apinya Fuengfusakul. 1993. Empire of Crystal and Utopian Commune; Two Types of Contemporary Theravada Reform in Thailand. Sojourn 8 (1): 153-83. Askew, Marc. 2002. Tourism and the Production of Lower Southern Thailand’s Border Space: From Danger to Pleasure andPilgrimage. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Hotel, Pattani. Bao Jienin. 1995. Sino-Thai Ethnic Identity: Married Daughters of China and Daughters- in-Law of Thailand. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 23 (1): 57-77. Blofeld, John. 1971. Mahayana Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Singapore: D . Moore for Asia Pacific Press. Chan Kwok Bun, and Tong Chee Kiong. 1995. Introduction: Modelling Culture Contact and Chinese Ethnicity in Thailand. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 23 (1): 1-12. Cheu Hock long. 1988. The Nine Emperor Gods: A Study of Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Times Books International. ---------. 1996. The Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods in Malaysia: Myth, Ritual, and Symbol. Asian Folklore Studies 55: 49-72. Cohen, Erik. 2001. The Chinese Vegetarian Festival in Phuket: Religion, Ethnicity, and Tourism on a Southern Thai Island. Studies in Contemporary Thailand, edited by Erik Cohen. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Ganguly, Sumit. 1997. Ethnic Policies and Political Quiescence in Malaysia and Singapore. In Government Policiesand Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific,edited by Michael E. Brown and Sumit Ganguly, 233-72. Cambridge, Mass, and London: MIT Press. Golomb, Louis. 1978. The Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adaptation in a Rural Malaysian Setting. Asian Studies at Hawaii, vol. 23. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ---------. 1982. The Curer as Cultural Intermediary in Southern Thailand. Social Science and Medicine 18 (2): 111-15. Hamilton, Annette. 1999. Kuan Im, Nine Emperor Gods, and Chinese “Spirit” in Southern Thailand. Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, July 4—8, Amsterdam. ---------. 2002. The National Picture: Thai Media and Cultural Identity. In Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain, edited by Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila AbuHughod, and Brian Larkin, 152-70. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. 176

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Hamilton, GaryG,, and Tony Waters. 1997. Ethnicity and Capitalist Development: The Changing Role of die Chinese in Thailand. In Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jew in theModern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, edited by Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid. 258-84. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Heilddla-Hom, Marja-Leena. 1997. Buddhism with Open Eyes; Belief and Practice of Santi Asoke. Bangkok: Fah Apai. Heinze, Ruth-Inge. 1981. The Nine Imperial Gods in Singapore. Asian Folklore Studies 40: 151-71. Jackson, Peter A. 1989. Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict: The Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism, Social Issues in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Jomo, K. S. 1997. A Specific Idiom of Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia: SinoMalaysian Capital Accumulation in the Face of State Hostility. In Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modem Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, edited by Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid, 75-98. Seatde and London: University of Washington Press. Kasian Tejapira. 1997. Imagined Uncommunity: The Lookjin Middle Class and Thai Official Nationalism. In Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe, edited by Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid, pp. 75-98. Seatde and London: University of Washington Press. MacCannell, Dean. 1989. The Tourist. New York: Schocken. Mayer, Theodore. 1996. Thailand’s New Buddhist Movements in Historical and Political Context. In Loggers, Monks, Students, and Entrepreneurs; Four Essays on Thailand, edited by Bryan Hunsaker and Northern Illinois University Center for Southeast Asian Studies 33-66. Dekalb, Ill.: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Morris, Rosalind C. 2000. Modernity’s Media and the End of Mediumship? On the Aesthetic Economy of Transparency in Thailand. Public Culture 12 (2): 457-75. Pasuk Phongpaichit, and Christopher John Baker. 1998. Thailand's Boom and Bust. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Rungrawee Chalermsripinyarot. 1999. Doing the Business of Faith: The Capitalistic Dhammakaya Movement and the Spiritually-ThirstyThai Middle Class. Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, July 4—8, Amsterdam. Skinner, G. William. 1957. Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Stengs, Irene. 2002;. Moderate Asceticism among the Thai Urban Middle Class: Alternative Paths to Buddhist Piety and Social Prestige. Paper presented at 8th International Conference on Thai Studies, January 9-12, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Szanton Blanc, Cristina. 1997. The Thoroughly Modem “Asian”: Capital, Culture, and Nation in Thailand and the Philippines. In Ungrounded Empires:The Cultural

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•.Politics of Modem Chinese Transnationalism,edited by Donald Macon Noriini and Aihwa Ong. New York: Routledge. Taylor, J. L. 1989. Contemporary Urban Buddhist “Cults” and the Socio-Political Order in Thailand. Mankind 19 (2): 112-125. ---------. 1990. New Buddhist Movements in Thailand: An “Individualistic Revolution,” Reform, and Political Dissonance. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies!! (1): 135— 54. , ---------. 1993. Buddhist Revitalization, Modernization, and Social Change in Contemporary Thailand. Sojourn 8 (1): 62-91. Thai Fanners Research Center. 2000. Phuket’s Vegetarian Festival Generates Tourism Revenue of over Bt 3 Billion, http://www.tfrc.co.th/tfrc/cgi/ticket/ticket.exe/ 286468 1 900/tfrc/eng/briefrbri00/sep/b tou793.him. ---------. 2001. Vegetarian Festival: Bt2,700 million in Tourism Revenue. Accessed on 22 August 2003. http://www.tfrc.co.th/tfrc/cgi/ticket/ticket.exe/2864681900/ tfrc/eng/briefrbri01/oct/btou95 1 .htm. Urry, John. 1990. The Tourist Gaze. London and Newbury Park: SAGE Publications. Vatikiotis, Michael. 1996. Sino Chic: Suddenly It’s Cool to Be Chinese. Far Eastern Economic Review, http://www.feer.cotn/articles/ archivel996/9601_ll/P028.html. Yee, Shirley. 1996. Material Interests and Morality in the Trade of Thai Talismans. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 24 (2): 1-21. Zehner, Edwin. 1990. Reform Symbolism of a Thai Middle-Cl ass Sect: The Growth and Appeal of the Thammakai Movement. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 21 (2): 402-26.

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SPIRIT MEDIUMSHIP IN SOUTHERN THAILAND: THE FEMINIZATION OF NORA ANCESTRAL POSSESSION MARLANE GUELDEN

Across the Songkhla Lake in southern Thailand, a village performance called nora (also sometimes called manord) is underway on a small palm and bamboo stage to show respect for deceased ancestors 1 in the Thai lineage. Considered the country’s earliest form of dance-drama, nora arose in the South as a possession ritual in which spirit ancestors would dance and speak through the bodies of their descendants. Betel nut offerings prepared, the performers start to sing the twelve ritual songs and spirit mediums enter into a state of possession, changing their clothes into red, yellow, and green beaded costumes with long, curved imitation fingernails. But a possessed woman takes center stage to make a strong demand: “All female nora please go out. Female nora cannot stay in the stage. Go out!” Her ancestor spirit is the respected mother odnora dance, Mae Simala. Most women performers leave, but one stubbornly refuses to budge, silently lying'on the stage facing east. Her name is Nora 2 Omchit Charoensin of Phatthalung Province, and she is the leader of her own dance troupe. Nora Omchit retold the episode at a nora competition in August 2003 to Rangsit University lecturer Thianchai Isaradej, his mother and myself: Nora Omchit I was like a half-crazy person. The professor's mother It is like you didn’t fear anybody? Nora Omchit No I did not! The reason is that I thought that the possessed person also was a woman. Mae Simala also is a woman. I am a female nora [performer]. Why do they have to drive me out? So I didn’t go out. But I didn’t say anything. Other people went out of the stage. She [the spirit of Mae Simala] pointed at me and said, “Get up! Get up! How can you lay in the nora stage? You are a female. You cannot stay in the nora stage.” I smiled and didn’t say anything. She spoke like this many times. Then she said, “If you don’t go, I will slap your lace.” When I 179

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heard that word she was standing up, but I was sitting on the floor. And I said, “If you doubt me and you thinkyou are very smart, you can slap my face. But I will slap the ancestor back and knock you down.” The event happened like this. Everybody could hear me. I was really going to slap the ancestor back. I won’t lie. I stood up and she stood up too. I caught the ancestor’s hand and pulled her to go to the mat in front of the stage, and I let her sit down on the white cloth. And I sat down also. There was only one woman left in the stage —that was I. And she wanted me to go out. Many people crowded around. They filled up the area around the stage because they wanted to see nora fight with the ancestor. Then I got the microphone and spoke: “Everybody, please don’t crowd around because you could faint and maybe die. Please sit down and be calm. At this point, I want to know what the name of the ancestor is and if the spirit medium of the ancestor is a man or not. If the spirit medium is a man, I will pay for this ceremony. The owner of this house doesn’t have to pay. I will pay for this ceremony. It is around 30,000 baht [U.S. $714]. Then you [the other medium] have to be possessed without clothes. I don’t have to take my clothes off because I’m a woman.” She could not fight me with words, so she lost. She cannot beat me because she has to take her clothes off when she is possessed. In fact the spirit medium is female, but she tries to drive me, a female, out. No man gives birth; only women give birth. Have you ever heard that men give birth?

After this brazen confrontation, the other female performers returned to the stage. Nora Omchit had dramatically won her point —that a woman could not take on the androcentric role of a man and exclude other women from the inner sanctum of the stage. This analogous incident reflects the gender transition from male to female prominence in the nora performance, which has been occurring largely undocumented over the past few decades. Once considered a supremely masculine magical art (Ginsburg 1972), this ritual dance-drama is becoming a strong base for women’s religious expression. Nora, most likely based on Hindu-Brahmanism, historically was structured as a patrilineal descent system in which men with nora spirits trained their sons and other male offspring, and on death passed the spirit to them. With this population of masters aging, few young men in modem Thai culture are willing to give up more secure and lucrative positions to follow the religious occupation (see Johnson 1999). There has long been speculation that ritual nora would die out (Pittaya 2003). Instead, breaks in the male succession line have opened new opportunities for women leaders to inj ect fresh energy into the tradition. However, this change is a complicated negotiated dynamic 180

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between powerful men and women in which men continue to hold a significant place. Nora women work within the established patrilineal system as “good women,” acting as proper mothers and daughters, rather than challenging Thai gender ideology (see Packard-Winkler 1998: 87). Although nora is both on the periphery of the national religion of Theravada Buddhism and on the geographic edge of the nation-state, this transition to greater female involvement has larger significance for several reasons. Nora is the oldest known Thai drama, probably dating back five hundred to seven hundred years. It most influenced dance, including the classical masked court drama (khori), and is considered “an art which may explain patterns which underlie human drama in Thailand” (Brandon 1993, 236; Preecha 1980). The genre is also the most recognized Thai national symbol’ of the far South, a border region with major populations of ethnic Chinese Buddhists and Taoists and Malay Muslims who often have competing cultural identities. In addition, nora women must be seen within the context of several groups of religious women who are gaining status and space within and outside of Buddhism. These include female meditation masters (Van Esterik 1996), lower-ranked nuns (mae chi) in all-female nunneries (Chatsumam 1991), and professional spirit mediums (khon cong) (Irvine 1982). By and large, nora families state they are ethnically Thai and Theravada Buddhists. Although many monks and participants say that nora is not actually a Buddhist ritual, it is closely linked to that religion in practice. Performances are often held in monasteries and begin with monks chanting a blessing. But the position of women within the national religion is quite controversial today. Women are not allowed to be ordained as female monks or hold positions in the hierarchy, and some have argued that this- is a prime example of how the religion subordinates them (Chatsumam 1991; Sanitsuda 2001). In relation towomen in nora, Buddhist doctrine is used to block women from becoming leaders. However, women who control their own troupes are confronting this construction of nora leadership as male in rather subtle ways. Nora should also be understood within the unique context of southern Thailand. The historic independence of the South due to geography and the strength of autonomous peninsular kingdoms based on international sea trade has helped to create a regi on disconnected from the center of national political power (Dowsey-Magog 2002; Munro-Hay 2001; Sunait 1999). As a result, southern mediumship has some special characteristics. Most importantly, there has been a blending among possession traditions in Thai, Chinese, and Malay 4 ethnic communities. While Thailand has a long history of syncretism expressed in “folk Buddhism,”5 this recent extensive joining of southern faiths has unique features (Maud 2002; Nishii 1999). Within this context, nora holds a particularly strong position as a legitimate, respected spiritual form because of its connection to the Thai arts, royalty, birthplace, southern history, and 181

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ancestors. 6 For many other types of possession, the public generally has an ambivalent attitude. It is common to hear southern Thais say you can believe some mediums but not others, who run fraudulent, profitable businesses. But for Thai Theravada Buddhists, nora holds a special place as an emblem of the South.

FOUR CENTRAL FINDINGS This paper presents four findings about the changing roles of gender in the nora performance. The research is based on an ethnographic study 7 of different types of spirit mediumship in the far South of Thailand undertaken from October 2000 to March 2003, with periodic follow-up until December 2004. The nora aspect of the research concentrated on the provinces of Pattani, Songkhla, and Phatthalung. The first finding is that the number of girls and women involved in nora ritual performances has significantly increased so that commonly 70 to 80 percent of the participants and from 10 to 30 percent of the leaders are female. Before the historical arrival of Hindu-Brahmanism and Theravada Buddhism in present-day Thailand, women may have held positions as priestesses and conducted similar ancestral ceremonies in the region (Andaya 1994). But as remembered from the past, only men were allowed to head nora troupes and pass the spirit to male offspring. Increasingly, women are taking over these roles today. Second, the doctrine of Buddhist ordination has been used to create androcentric rules that exclude women from becoming the head nora person or big nora (nora yai). Rather than challenging this structure, women are adapting the rules to run their own groups and pass the spirits to daughters as well as sons. This is possible partly because rural Buddhism has syncretically mixed with Hindu-Brahmanism, Taoism, Islam, and animism and therefore is quite flexible in dealing with ancestral beliefs. Third, female nora performers are joined by another group of mostly female mediums, which I call occasional and professional home-based spirit mediums. These mediums are part of the nora lineage but have not been initiated as performers. Throughout the country, urban professional mediums are the newest group of spiritualists; their population has exploded since the late 1970s (Irvine 1 982 8; Morris 2000; Pattana 1999). This linkage between nora persons and spirit mediums provides reciprocal benefits for both groups in terms of legitimacy, sharing of knowledge, and an expanded client base. It is also illustrative of the growth of religious sects in the South and of their interconnections. Fourth, although nora rituals serve the needs of both men. and women, the services are particularly valuable to women clients, who are often the main support of their families and culturally are expected to shoulder the parenting role. 182

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Although Buddhism administers to the spiritual needs of many women, some feel it is difficult to turn to male monks for personal practical help.

BACKGROUND

ON NORA

This ancestral possession ritual is only found in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. The name of the genre is used in a generic, fluid maimer to refer to nora ancestors, lineage, persons, and performance. People who are nora are believed to be related by kinship to the original, royal dynasty 9 in Phatthalung Province, which reputedly was located along Songkhla Lake, the largest inland body of water in the country. In the past, this was a busy port where large ships from many nations converged, especially dealing with the trade between India, China and (the present) Indonesian islands. Although the date is in dispute, 10 many scholars suggest that nora appeared in southern Thailand between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries or earlier (Brandon 1993; Udom 1999b). Key elements of the drama, such as dance postures and the invocation of Hindu gods, probably came from Indian culture (Pittaya 2003). Very early on, Indian Brahmin priests and traders brought their cultures to southern Thailand in the beginning of the Christian period (Munro-Hay 2001). However, scholars suggest the link to nora probably traveled through the later Srivijaya Kingdom when priests brought Hindu-Brahmanism 11 (satsana phram) to the Songkhla Lake region. The Srivijaya Kingdom was believed to have been a major maritime empire probably based in Sumatra from about the seventh to thirteenth centuries C.E.

LEGENDS OF TWO

PRINCESSES

‘

The nora performance is based on two early legends, both of which significantly feature strong heroines of royal blood associated with spirits. Several scholars suggest that these tales are based on early female spirit mediums. Theater specialistjames Brandon says these myths “may be evidence that nora was originally a male performance form that evolved from femalespirit-medium dances of divination” (Brandon 1 993, 235). Asian drama expert Poh Sim Plowright (1998) argues that the southern Thai nora performance was founded by female spirit mediums who were adept at healing. The Phatthalung legend tells of a king who sets his daughter (later named Mae Simala) adrift on a raft for dancing excessively, possibly in a possessed trance, or, in other versions, for, being pregnant. Although some stories say an angel urged her to eat lotus pollen and thereafter give birth to a spiritual child, others say she had illicit.sex with a soldier or incest with her brother 183

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(Gesick 1995 12; Udom 1999b). (Of course there are similarities to the virginal conception by Mary, mother of Jesus in Christianity). The king’s daughter gives birth to a son on an island and teaches him to dance elegantly. The son returns to the kingdom and is welcomed back into the fold. His grandfather, the king, gives him the title of Khun Sisattha and a costume called the “king’s clothes” for his dancing performances. Since physical monuments described in the story have been found around Songkhla Lake, this legend is considered partly factual (Suthivong 1999). Today the characters from this dynasty possess nora descendants along with the personal ancestors of each medium. Significantly, the story has been interpreted in contemporary times to mean that the king’s grandson, Khun Sisattha, is the founder of nora rather than his mother, Mae Simula, who was exiled. Although the mother was inspired by angels and created the dance, her son is given the highest honors at Wat Tha Khae in Phatthalung Province, considered the original home of nora. A statue of him in costume was erected there three years ago and a larger shrine is planned. I suggest that this male lineage version is receiving some competition from a matrilineal perspective at present. Some female nora performers have described Mae Simala as the originator of the dance-drama instead. The second story of Indian origin, called Suthon-Manora, is believed to be a subsequent Buddhist overlay. In Thailand, the tale is considered to be about a former life of the Lord Buddha. It is a romantic tale of a half-bird princess (kinnari) who marries an earthly prince, escapes execution by burning, and returns to her heavenly home. This ancient story about a bird-woman is widespread in mainland Southeast Asia and beyond to Japan, China, Sweden, and North America (Plowright 1998). The nora genre takes its name, bird wings, and tail from this Princess Manora, but her life plays a rather small role in the rituals.

FROM GREETING

KINGS TO VAUDEVILLE

Early nora performances were thought to be rather simple, staged by only three illiterate actors who traveled the countryside with light equipment. It remains today a local art form filled with guttural singing, southern dialect, and earthy humor. As a theater of the common people, nora has no written script, unlike court dramas, but is a “folk art, sprung from Thai village life. . . . It is almost certainly a theatre form which is part of a very old, native tradition of communicating with spirits through the medium of dance” (Brandon 1972, 115).Men with semi-bare chests played all roles (Jonit2002). The government used nora performances to greet kings, nobles, and foreigners in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Pittaya 2003). Blackand-white photographs illustrate a welcoming ceremony in 1905 for King 184

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Chulalongkorn (who reigned from 1868 to 1910) and a performance for the Lord Buddha relic at the royal temple Wat Phra Mahathat Woramahawihan, both in the South’s Nakhon Si Thammarat'Province (Arun 1980). With bare feet, boys and men dance wearing hangingwaistsashes symbolic of bird wings, their chests crisscrossed with decorative ornaments. These early photographs show nora as an -exclusively male dance genre and one connected with important Buddhist temples. Boys and men performed the roles of women in nora until the early decades of the 1900s. Henry Ginsburg suggests that women joined when troupes began to travel more widely after the railways were completed, which historians estimate was in the 1910s to 1920s (Ginsburg 1971). Based on interviews with older nora men, researcher Pittaya Butsararat (2003) reports that women joined in the 1920s to 1930s. 13 In the beginning, only men performed, so the dancing styles had male characteristics and men held the highest positions, according to dramatic arts lecturer Sompote Ketkaew of Prince of Songlda University, Pattani. Apparently at one time the male and female costumes were more distinct from each other. Certain apparel was considered part of the king’s costume, appropriate only for’men. Women dancers wore colored cloth around their heads rather than the insignia gold crown (roef). But today women wear an identical crown (Suthivong 1999). Although the men’s dress is considered more complete with full rank (temyot), the costumes look identical to the average observer. I suggest that this uniform dress enables women to more easily move into male roles. The genre has not stood still in modem times —both being modernized and preserved —and the changes have brought more women into the performance. In the late 1960s, nora split into two overlapping types — commercial entertainment and ritual. By combining western music technology with Thai country songs, nora was repackaged to appeal to modem southern tastes at large outdoor country fairs, often minus the ancestor rites. Ginsburg (1972, 172) writes, “A luk thung [sentimental country music] performance offers crooners in Western dress singing long narrative ballads on romantic themes accompanied by a Western style band and interspersed with comic skits and jokes in front of a microphone. The most successful nora troupes today copy the luk thung formula while retaining perhaps just a smattering of the traditional dance and comic verse.” Young women in nora costumes are considered essential to attract viewers to such vaudeville shows. Meanwhile a widespread nationalist discourse about connecting with Thai roots and resisting western cultural corruption has prompted schools and cultural centers to try to preserve nora in what some consider traditional form 14 (Hirsch 1991, Pittaya 2003, Sulak 1991). Dance classes attract mostly girls and young women, since Thai .dance is strongly gendered female. (From kindergarten to secondary school, young girls are encouraged to perform in 185

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front of public audiences.) Although dance classes are largely divorced from much of the spiritual side, they have introduced’ thousands of girls to the performance and provided teaching jobs for nora women and aging male leaders. On the other hand, dance classes have launched more young women into the performing beauty culture, sometimes described as the “chorus line” (Mills 1999). In addition, the government has used nora in its campaigns to advertise various political and social projects. For instance, in 2002, the Asia Foundation and Prince of Songkla University sponsored a project using nora to promote political democratic activities such as voting in the South, Such campaigns and a recent government sponsored competition at Rajabhat Institute Songkhla give women, and a few men, a bully pulpit to address the audience on drug abuse, nature conservation, and patriotism in poetic song.

NORA TROUPES TODAY There are an estimated one hundred or more 15 traditional nora groups in the South. Although troupes once traveled from town to town through the South 'and often stayed in monasteries, nowadays most troupes have a home base and travel short distances to perform. Nora groups typically consist of twelve to twenty persons, including musicians, dancers, and singers. Because the groups are large, paying for a performance is costly for working-class Thais. A performance for three nights costs 15,000 to 25,000 baht (U.S. $357 to $595). To' reduce the price, some troupes offer shortened programs even for the holiest of ceremonies. Possession ceremonies are restricted to the sixth, seventh, and ninth lunar months (about May to August), skipping the eighth month (about June to July) out of respect for Buddhist Lent. During the season, people in the nora lineage will hire groups to perform the most hallowed “nora teachers’ stage” ceremony {nora rang kbru) to show respect to ancestors and “vow fulfillment” ceremony (kae bon) to pay back for wishes that have been answered. Requests, by descendants (luk lan) include being cured of illness, avoiding the military draft, and passing education or work exams. If the wish is fulfilled but the offspring neglect to give the reward, such as a dance for the spirits, then the family member can expect spiritual punishment possibly an accident or economic bad luck. During the nonritual season, groups may perform without possession at fairs, funerals, monk ordinations, and even Buddhist ceremonies for famous deceased monks such as Luang Pho Thuat in Pattani Province.

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FROM MALE TO FEMALE PROMINENCE HISTORY THROUGH

MASTERS

The history of nora in the twentieth century is often described through the lives of its male masters who have received honors for preserving southern culture. The strong male image associated with nora can be clearly seen in the representations in the largest southern museum. Climbing the hill to the Institute for Southern Thai Studies in Songkhla Province, I looked up to see a larger-than-life size black metal sculpture of powerful nora men acrobatically balancing on each other. In this folk art museum, one room displays nora and the shadow puppet play (nang tailing).16 A sign describes the nora crowning ceremony, as a male rite of passage that entitles a performer to enact rituals, lb qualify, a man must be a skilled apprentice and “a bachelor and at least twenty years of age.” The photograph shows two older men putting a crown on a young man’s head. The photographs and descriptions in the room are of elderly or nowdeceased men, several bom in the late nineteenth century. For instance, Nora Khun Uppatham Narakon, bom in Phatthalung in 1891, was given a title of Nora Phum Dewa, meaning a dancer who performs gracefully like an angel. According to Art and Culture Magazine (Preecha 1980), at eighty-nine, Nora Phum Dewa was still dancing and being honored by the Phatthalung provincial government as “the artist of the South.” From a poor rice-growing family, he began performing in 1905 at fourteen years of age and traveled throughout the South. In 1915, he had the honor to perform for King Rama VI in Phatthalung and Songkhla provinces. He performed for King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 1959 and received a royal medal from the King in 1971. Then in 1974, at eighty-three, he began teaching at teachers colleges in Songkhla and Nakhon Si Thammarat, where he instructed more than one thousand students, including two famed nora masters. Although the folk museum has no photographs or statues of nora women, they exist. The Encyclopedia.of Thai Culture: Southern Region (Udom 1999a) has a short story on Nora Kanya Nattarat, bom in Nakhon Si Thammarat in 1945. Her father and siblings were all nora. When she was sixteen years of age, her father crowned her and later made her a main character in his troupe. Rising in prominence, she danced the ancient style at the National Theater in Bangkok several times, formed her own troupe, and has appeared on television. Now she is passing on her skills to her two daughters. Her history illustrates the trend for nora -women to be trained by fathers and transmit the knowledge to their female descendants.

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WOMEN DOMINATE AS PARTICIPANTS

From my brief encounter with the nora display at the Institute of Southern Thai Studies, I had expected to see mostly male performers at the fortieth annual rang khru ceremony 17 in 2001 at Wat Tha Khae in Phatthalung Province. But then I counted the number of participants of each sex on the wooden stage (rang) built on the grounds of the monastery. The participants were roughly divided into two types. The first group consisted of those who had been initiated as nora performers and wore the costume and crown. The second group were spirit mediums from nora families, who usually wear white or yellow blouses, traditional chong kraben pants, and a scarf over one shoulder. Both groups were mostly women. In contrast, three male nora leaders ran the ceremony and controlled the microphone for announcements and singing poetry. The male musicians acted as the chorus, repeating back verses. Counting both types of participants on the stage during the three-day ceremony, about 20 percent were men and 80 percent were women. The women were very active in each ritual, holding key roles, but were guided by male leaders. For example, two men and twelve women (86 percent women) performed an important beginning ritual called “setting up the town.” 18 A “teacher respecting” ritual consisted of two men and eighteen women (90 percent women). The last day, the “stabbing the crocodile” ritual had seven men and nine women (56 percent women). The final prayers to say goodbye to the ancestors involved three men and ten women (77 percent women). During one large ritual, sixty-two people filled the stage; ten were men and fifty-two were women (84 percent women). Close by this outside stage, a small shrine room had been built to honor Khun Sisattha, the son of the exiled princess. I thought of this as “spirit medium central” because mediums slept, drank, ate, gave respect to the ancestors, and possessed here. Typically the spirit would arrive unexpectedly in the body of a middle-aged female medium. She would go into quick convulsions and. then dance in a sedate and stylized manner across the grounds to the outside stage. Younger mediums, both female and male, tended to be more violent, sometimes climbing the high outside supports of the platform to enter the stage. In the 2001 to 2004 rang khru ceremonies, the mediums in this shrine were also primarily female —about 25 percent were male and 75 percent female. These mediums are mostly an, older group; from fifty to seventy-five years of age, along with a few men and women in their early twenties. Meanwhile, the .audience was more evenly divided between men and women. About two hundred to five hundred persons of all ages attended, including many children, as well as teenage boys and girls in separate small clusters. Economically, most viewers appeared to be in lower- or lowermiddle-income brackets.

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The increased participation by women could also be seen at an unusual nora competition at Rajabhat Institute Songkhla in August 2003. Although nora groups held intense competitions with high stakes and reputedly employed black magic in the past (Ginsburg 1971), this “folk music” competition was instead sponsored for the first time by the government’s National Cultural Office. According to the event booklet, competitions were organized throughout tlie country to promote Thai cultural heritage, which was in decline, especially due to young people preferring international music (often a code word for western music). Nora was selected as the music genre for the South, and groups from the fourteen southern provinces were invited. A widely recognized elderly master performer, National Artist Nora Yok Chubua of Ranot, was a judge and honored speaker. Indicating the seriousness of the event, the top championship prize was a hefty 20,000 baht (U.S. $476). Of the eleven groups that attended, the position of musician was clearly gendered male, with 92 percent being boys or men. The position of dancer was gendered female, with 76 percent being girls or women. There were a few more women leaders, with six female leaders, four male leaders, and one married couple. Rajabhat drama teacher Thammanit Nikhawmrat said-that nora dance classes are quite popular now, drawing'about forty students, usually 75 percent female. I asked a student in the audience why the musicians were male, and she said because men have the strength to beat the drum loudly. The government officials and the judges were all men. When it came to the five awards, four prizes went to groups with women leaders and one went to the couple. The female Nora Larnai Siraksa of the Nora Lamaisin Group of Songkhla Province won the championship, and Nora Omchit was second runner-up. Although female leaders dramatically swept the honors, Achan (a title meaning “teacher”) Thammanit said that this kind of competition tends to be more entertainment, while performing deep rituals requires men with religious knowledge derived from the monkhood. This is a common cultural belief. In another gauge of women’s involvement, I looked at the sex of the spirit and of the medium. In Thai mediumship generally, including nora, male and female spirits can possess humans of either sex. However, male spirits more commonly possess men.19 In contrast, powerful and elite males such as deceased Thai kings, nobles, and Buddhist religious figures often possess female mediums. For a lower class woman, this cross-gender possession causes a reversal of her status when her body is used by an authoritative wealthy male. But today I would argue that there has been an increase in respected female spirits who are possessing female mediums. A notable case is the Chinese goddess Kuan Im, but also nora goddesses are becoming better known in the South. The youngest daughter of the late Nora Plaek Chanaban said

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that more women are possessed in nora because there are more female ancestor spirits from the Phatthalung legend, such as the king’s daughter and her assistants: She said, "Most of the ancestors are women.” WOMEN AS TROUPE LEADERS AND OWNERS

The annual Wat Tha Khae ceremony illustrates the involvement of women as participants, but how many women have moved into leadership positions? Nora Chaloem Kaeophim of Pattani estimated that there were one hundred groups in the South, and that about thirty of them had female leaders. Being a leader means the person owns and runs the troupe, which is named after her/him and is identified with that person’s hometown. But Nora Omchit put the figure much lower. During the interview described at the beginning of this article, she said that about 10 percent of the groups are owned by women, but- that only 3 percent of these women know the ritual rang khru tradition, poetry, and all aspects of the drama. Lecturer Thianchai Isaradej asked her about women’s increasing roles as nora leaders. Nora Omchit It depends on the ability of individuals. Anyone who has ability to administer it can. Achan Thianchai You mean before, women didn’t have ability? Nora Omchit It is not because women didn’t have the ability. This is my feeling. I think that men didn’t give women a chance. This is my deep feeling. For people in past times, when they did anything, women could not be leaders. They would let men be the leaders. But later I think our women had abilities tod. I think it depends on the changes in society. Later in society, women could be village leaders, 20 could be chiefs of a subdistrict, could be musicians, or they could be presidents or director generals of government departments. Common people could beleaders in that situation, so they also could be leaders of culture and artists.

Some elderly nora masters are giving that chance to their daughters as well as sons. The death of Nora Plaek Chanaban in 2001 and the roles of his strong daughters illustratehow women are filling the void, shifting from-the periphery to the center. In 2003, 1 asked Nora Plaek’s oldest daughter, age fifty-three, what .she thought of more women being involved in nora. She said, “It depends on the head of the group. For my [late] father’s group, there were not a lot of women. He didn’t like women. He liked only men. When women came to him, he didn’t touch them. He told other people to touch them when he did the initiation ceremony because he didn’t like women.” She was describing Nora Plaek’s belief that only men should perform ritual roles and that nora men are similar to monks in their purity, which might be

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violated by touching a woman. She said that the current performance held at her home has more women now because she runs it. I attended the annual Nora Plaek rong khru ceremony at Wat Tha Khae for four years. Among nora families, it is widely believed that this is the origin place of the dance because the ashes of Khun Sisattha are buried near the bodhi tree inside the monastery. His spirit possessed Nora Plaek, who was eighty-one and ill when I met him in 2001. During the ceremony, Nora Plaek had to be almost carried onto the stage. At the event, a principle female spirit from the Phatthalung legend, Mae Khaenon, possessed his youngest daughter, age thirty-eight. This spirit had been passed down the female line from her grandmother. In a loud voice and waving her arms, she told the followers, “All of the sacred spirits come here to give respect to Khun Sisattha. But both bad and good spirits will come together. I would like to tell you that if my father cannot do the ceremony, I can do it by myself. But if father can find another person to do it, that is fine.” The daughter’s spirit was authoritative that day, and was instrumental in making the ceremony a success. Some observers have noted that southern women act more aggressively and use stronger language when possessed by either male or female spirits. Nora Plaek died two months later, and the King sent a royal flame by airplane from Bangkok to light the funeral pyre (Pian 2002). His- passing prompted a split in the nora families of that village between a progressive, development-oriented male nora leader and the more local, low-key Plaek Chanaban family, over issues such as profits and control of the ceremony. So by 2003, the Chanaban daughters held a more private rong khru ceremony at their home while a separate larger public nora fair took place at Wat Tha Khae nearby. That May day, in the stifling morning heat at the Chanaban house, three women sat huddled together locked in an intense debate on the floor of the stage. Fifty other people —young male musicians, older female mediums dressed in white, and performers in beaded costumes with tails— surrounded them. Two of the women were daughters of Nora Plaek. The oldest daughter smoked a hand-rolled cigarette and poured water down her blouse. Appearing to be tipsy, she waspossessed. Also possessed, her youngest sister angrily pointed her finger and made demands. They were possessed by patrilineal and matrilineal spirits having a spat over whether to extend the ceremony an extra day. There was crying, yelling, and hugging. A third woman, Nora Omchit, faced them with her right arm raised to broker a peace. The possessing spirits were fearful that their descendants would abandon them; the descendants wanted to go home early to return to their busy modem lives. The spirit of Pu Dam slapped his knees and the spirit of Mae Khaenon yelled in disagreement. Finally it was decided. Mae Khaenon said, ‘We will finish the ceremony today so that our descendants won’t be

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busy and bothered. They can go back to do their careers." In the background their older brother, the leader of the ceremony, rocked back and forth in a trance, possessed by the spirit of his father, Nora Plaek. He contributed a few comments but clearly the three women under the power of their spirits were in charge. Within the stage, 80 percent of the participants were women. The topic appeared to be a rather mundane housekeeping matter —whether to end one day early. But it was symbolically important. The spirits expressed deep anguish in their tears that the family might drift apart and also they held an awesome power to punish disobedient descendants. Finally the spirits acquiesced to end the ceremony early. Soon the brother would return to his life as a rice fanner and nora leader in Malaysia, leaving the adult daughters to care for their father’s shrine. Although women are fulfilling these ritual roles more and more, as illustrated, they buck strong cultural beliefs about appropriate public female behavior. Sarup Ritchu, executive secretary of the Cultural Center at Sattri Phatthalung School, points out that women historically were once held in high regard in the South as heroines, citing the story of two sisters who fought the Burmese in the Phuket area, Thao Thepkasattri and Thao Sisunthon, and the legend of Lady White Blood, an important southern ancestral figure (see Gesick 1995). Yet this is not the reality today. She said, In Phatthalung, it seems that men have higher status than women, but women are the supporters of men. Some people did research on women’s role in the elections in Phatthalung, Songkhla, and Trang. The result is that women influence decisions in the families, but men still have the superior status in the society. This is the same as in nora.Men have to be the leaders because Thai society believes in the men’s role. It is related to Thai culture, that women are the back legs of the elephant. 21

In a similar vein, Achan Sompote says, “The leaders of the nora groups are men. The belief is that men have to be the leaders of the ceremony because men are more effective [get results] in the ceremonies for fillfilling the vows. There are also nora women but they are not as popular as men.” This concept of male effectiveness is also reflected in a cultural belief that men are better in the public sphere of politics, more able to quickly make hard decisions (Packard-Winkler 1998: 99). FEMALE ANCESTRAL ANIMISM AND ARRIVAL OF WORLD RELIGIONS

The history of women’s involvement in ancestral religions may have come full circle in southern Thailand. In many Asian countries, it is believed that women predominated as spiritual leaders in prehistory, lost those positions with the advent of male-controlled world religions, and are now gaining 192

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leadership roles again. 22 Some two thousand years ago, Southeast Asia already had advanced civilizations and beliefs about women’s spirituality, according to historian David Wyatt: 2

The world was regarded as being peopled with good and evil spirits that had the power to aid or harm humans and thus had to be propitiated by ceremonies or offerings of food. Women frequently were believed to have a special power ■ to mediate between mankind and the spirit world, and were called upon to heal the sick or change unfavorable weather. (1984, 4-5)

Historian Barbara Watson Andaya (1994, 102) also reports that in early Southeast Asian history, “females were often considered to be particularly suited as spirit mediums, a role they have continued to play in some places to the present day. Female mediation with the spirit world was fundamental to rituals of life and death, such as birth, the planting of crops, and funerals.” The prominent role of women as spirit mediums in ancestral lineages continues to the present in the matrilineal sects of northern Thailand (Cohen and Wijeyewardene 1 984; Irvine 1984). Women’s closeness to village fertility spirits can still be seen in rites to the female spirits of the winnowing basket and of the mortar and pestle in northeast and northern Thailand (Pranee 2001). The world religions that arrived in Southeast Asia—Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Confucianism —replaced or joined with indigenous animistic belief systems to establish androcentric religions 2’ which supported the legitimacy of monarchies descended from the gods. 24 These world religions created an ideology in which women were not suitable to govern (Andaya 1994). Within the religious hierarchy, women were not permitted to hold the most holy positions, such as ordaining as Theravada Buddhist monks. This meant that only men could study the religious Pali texts, mystical designs, and chants which qualified them as ritual specialists within and outside the monkhood (Andaya 1994; Darunee and Pandey 1987). Charles Keyes explains that the high civilization and religions of India were thought to represent “culture” while the local goddesses 25 represented “fertility” (Keyes 1995; Sumet 1989). Keyes writes, “the dualism that links women with the earth and with nurturance and men with the supramundane and with potency is a very old idea in Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asia” (1995, 1 32). Although key female goddesses continued to exist, they were converted into the wives of Hindu gods or assistants to Lord Buddha, such as the rice and earth goddesses. The male role in reproduction eclipsed female sexual powers. Found in southern Thailand and on display at museums in Songkhla and Nakhon Si Thammarat, numerous ancientphallic-shaped stones, Shivalinga, symbolized Shiva’s fertility and emphasized the power of male 193

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reproduction (Andaya 1994; Munro-Hay 2001). The Hindu patriarchal influence can be seen in the identities of the Phatthalung legend personalities. The legendary nora founder, Khun Sisattha, is believed to be a reincarnation of Shiva. And Mae Simala is thought to be an incarnated Uma Thewi, the wife of Shiva. In addition to being a fertility symbol, Shiva also was the creator of dance. This Indian influence helped to establish men as the rightful communicators with the gods, a belief that carries, over to today (Pittaya interview 2004). The concepts of menstrual pollution and women being impure were introduced. Women were considered a possible sexual threat to religious men. Pollution beliefs are still widespread in southern Thailand today and limit women’s religious activities 26 (Chatsumarn 1991; Wijeyewardene 1986). In the Philippines, Carolyn Brewer (2000) vividly describes how in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spanish Catholic missionaries attacked animist priestesses in one of the more violent suppressions of indigenous beliefs. In comparison, Theravada Buddhism is generally considered an accommodating philosophy that blends with existing beliefs. Despite that, by the dose of the eighteenth century, “the religious role of females in South East Asia generally was considerably reduced from earlier times” (Andaya 1994, 114; also see Sered 1994).

BUDDHIST IDEOLOGY LIMITS ROLES FOR WOMEN In the distant past, both Hindu-Brahmanism and Buddhism influenced the gender codes in nora. According to B. J. Terwiel (1994, 12), these religions “shared religious concepts and their respective pantheons overlapped.” But in more recent history, the majority of nora participants and audiences are Buddhist and draw on that philosophy when creating rules for leadership in this oral tradition without'a written doctrine. According to nora leaders, to obtain this high post one must: (1) practice dancing and singing, (2) be a virgin before the initiation, and (3) be ordained as a Buddhist monk. The connection with Buddhism is important to nora legitimacy. In writing about professional spirit mediums in Chiang Mai, Walter Irvine argues that marginalized mediums tie themselves closer to mainstream religion and nationalism by stressing connections to Buddhism and the royal family (1982). Nora also is closely identified with the national religion in various ways, which likewise moves it toward the center. For instance, Lord Buddha is called upon in the opening nora ritual along with various Hindu gods and tutelary spirits. Monks are invited to chant a blessing to begin the ceremonies, which are often held in a monastery compound, but not inside any temple buildings. And monks have cut the hair of males andfemales in the initiation ceremony.

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The association between male Buddhists and male nora leaders works to exclude women from the spiritually powerful realm. Male nora leaders are seen as analogous to monks in their sacredness and spiritual powers. Although the rule about pre-virginity applies to both men and women, it is mostly considered a hardship and test of holiness for male nora candidates. Ideally, the initiation for nora occurs in conjunction with entering the monkhood, considered a purification ritual for men (Golomb 1978, 60). In both southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, the nora initiation is modeled after the Buddhist monk’s ordination. After leaving the monkhood, the male nora can marry, but should take only one wife and no mistresses. Nora Plaek’s family said he was effective with spirits because he was faithful to his wife. Nora Plaek’s niece explained, “Men have to be virgins .[“pure,” or borisut] before they become nora men. Uncle Plaek has been nora since he was a little boy. He was nora before he married.” Nora men are thought to have powers that are commonly associated with magically oriented monks —the ability to deal with ghosts, see the future, cure, make holy water, and endure physical deprivation. Nora Plaek had extraordinary powers such as being able to sing for a long time, dance without instruction, drinkperfume without getting sick, and survive without food for up to a month, according to his family. In a 2001 interview, Nora Plaek said, “When I am possessed, I will know everything about the patient’s sickness. If you are disturbed by a ghost [phi], you mention my name and you can get better.,My name can chase the ghost away.” His oldest daughter added, “Some people are sick and as soon as they come here, they can get better. When lather is possessed, he has supernatural power. He can make holy water to cure the patient.” As mentioned before, women were not allowed to touch him, just as they cannot touch monks because women are seen as harmful to the monks’ sacred power (Terwiel 1994). The highest honor for a nora is to be initiated as a complete or perfect (somburi) leader or big nora (norayai). It is not possible for women to reach this goal because the candidate must become a Buddhist monk. Often Thai men become monks for short periods, from a week to a few months, around the minimum age of twenty. In the monastery, monks learn magical prayers (khatha) in the ritual language of Pali. Nora Awut Chaichana from Pattani Province explained, “Every [nora] ritual requires the Buddhist prayers. All of the prayers are in Pali language. We use the monk’s words in the ceremony. If the people who do the ceremony were not ordained before, they won’t know how to do this.” Also only ex-monks know the prayer for a specific nora ritual called “cutting the offerings” (tatmoei)21 which symbolizes the fulfillment of promises to the ancestors. Nora Awut said, “When Thai Buddhist men want to leave the monkhood, they have to enter the ordination hall with the

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abbot. There are only two in the hall. They have to have only two people because the monk has to take off the monk’s clothing and dress in common clothes. They can get the prayer from that time. Women cannot be monks so they cannot do this ritual.” Nora Plaek’s youngest daughter, relaxing at the Khun Sisattha shrine after a strenuous day of being possessed, explained the limits to her role as a woman: “Nora men have to do the rituals in the ceremony starting from ‘setting up the town’ [tang mueang]. Only nora men who pass the initiation can do this ceremony. Women cannot be ordained [as monks] so they cannot do this ceremony. But they can dance to give respect \ram tharoat . So that is why I cannot take over the spirit from father.” In addition, there are gender taboos forbidding women from performing rituals while menstruating, standing higher than a possessing spirit, and climbing on the sacred offering shelf (phalai) where the spirits alight (see Irvine 1982). However, when a woman is possessed, her spirit is recognized as having a higher status and she is allowed to do some of these functions. I have just painted a picture of how nora has developed rules based on Buddhism and consequently reserved the top leadership roles for men. But in practice theserules are not followed strictly and are modified by both men and women. First, not all men are virgins before initiation or are faithfid after. Achan Pittaya (1995) writes that married participants can register false divorce papers to get around this rule. Also, in the past, nora men had a reputation for being romantic rouges, with a woman in every town and the ability to magically enslave them (Ginsburg 1972). Second, not all male nora leaders have served as monks. One older leader said he never was a monk and began his own group at age seventeen. Other leaders reported starting groups at a young age, although they could not ordain as monks until twenty. Third, women have found a way to be nora leaders-by allocating certain rituals to men. Nora leaders told me that women could not do three rituals —“setting up the town,” “cutting the offerings,” and a healing ritual to cure skin blemishes on children called “stepping on the sore” (yiap sen).But this problem is not insurmountable. A woman leader can have any initiated man, such as her son or another leader, do these rituals. Then the woman can conduct the rest of the ceremony. Still, she can never be called a big nora (norayai). Fourth, the initiation ceremony has b een changed to allow girls and women to share in this sacred event. There is only one initiation ceremony for both sexes, called “ritual to tie the cloth and put on the crown” (phitbi pbukpba kbrop soei). Since only men can become the complete nora, I expected there to be a special ritual for them, like a “super” initiation. Nora Plaek’s oldest daughter explained that the ritual is the same for men and women, but that men must ordain as monks directly afterward, accomplishing everything within three days. She said that the first day is the initiation ceremony. The 196

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second day, “The nora [person] has to dress in nora clothes, and then in the morning, they have to go to dance in three temples and three houses. And the next day, they have to ordain. If they want to leave the monkhood the day after that, it doesn’t matter. They are complete nora already. But sometimes nora [persons] don’t believe too much.” Not everyone is careful about following these standards, she remarked. In fact, another performer related that the three temples and three houses requirement had been dropped due to time and money constraints. I would add that becoming a monk for a day or a -week would not instill the deep ritual knowledge that nora men are thought to obtain from ordination. In Khok Pho District of Pattani Province in May 2001, I attended an initiation ceremony for young girls and women, an example of how females are being introduced to sacrosanct rites. The ceremony for seven females, who were between the ages of nine and twenty-five, took place at Nora Awut’s car care business alongside the main road, before an audience of about eighty persons. It is held only once every decade. Until they experience this’'ceremony, nora dancers cannot wear the gold crown. 28 Nora Wan Chaichana and his son, Nora Awut, performed the ceremony mostly for female relatives who attend their dancing school. Boys are not very interested in learning the dance, they said. Included were two of Nora Wan’s granddaughters and Nora Awut’s daughter. Seven high-level Buddhist monks came from seven local temples to bless the girls and women. Hanging from the ceiling were seven crowns suspended by strings. The ritual “to cut a topknot” (tat chuk) began with the monks who represented the highest spiritual level present. The head monk sprayed holy water on each kneeling girl, while a male spirit medium held the hair for the monk to cut, since monks cannot touch females. Next down in the spiritual hierarchy, the possessed spirit mediums, mostly njiddle-aged women, cut the girls’ hair. And finally a senior elderly nora man, reputed to be knowledgeable about spells, did the last cutting. As required, seven nora leaders from seven troupes, including two women, participated. The monks put a white cloth around each girl’s neck and released the crowns suspended from the ceiling onto the girls’ heads. Afterward, the girls took notebooks to the monks and nora leaders for them to sign, as evidence of acceptance into the genre. The girls will keep their locks of hair indefinitely for their auspiciousness. According to spirit medium Khun Fung, the girls’ new status allows them to perform rituals, not just to dance. During the ceremony, host Nora Awut announced to the parents, “This ceremony is like a [Buddhist] ordination [teat]. But the process is different because we don’t shave the heads or wear the monk’s cloth. This is the nora ordination.” In a later interview, Nora Awut explained the similarities. First the girl’s soul will be called back into her body (an animistic ritual called riak khwan) and then she will offer clothes to the monks —both acts are part of an 197

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ordinand’s indoctrination. In turn, the monks will symbolically give clothes to each girl by putting a cloth around her neck, representing new monk’s clothes (chiwon). And finally, the girls dress in costume, just as monks put on their orange robes. Nora Awut learned this ritual from other nora groups while traveling. Older nora women who are already married, and therefore are not virgins, cannot pass this ritual, but are given a special title, like monks who do not complete a three-month Lenten season in a temple. But even after passing initiation, women cannot perform rituals while menstruating and must find an initiated man to perform certain rites, Nora Awut said. I would point out that the fact that this ritual parallels a Buddhist ordination is quite significant because becoming a monk in Thailand is considered a major rite of passage reserved for men (for the meaning of ordination, see Swearer 1995, 48-52). After the initiation, I asked a participating monk if h e thought nora was Buddhist. Deputy Abbot Phra Khru Palat Panya from Wat Makrut replied, “No. It is the supernatural arts [or magic; saiyasat]. It is the way that people can show their respect to parents or occult teachers [khru mo]. This is the way that people repay for the kindness of their ancestors.” He said two parts of the ceremony are Buddhist: showing respect to the monkhood and Lord Buddha at the beginning, and committing to obey the five moral precepts, which are to “refrain from killing, stealing, wrong sexual conduct, lying and alcohol” (Terwiel 1994, 164). Inviting the monks to attend allows people to make merit and receive auspicious blessings, he explained. I began this section by explaining that the inability of women to ordain as monks excludes them from special knowledge and other religious roles outside of the monkhood. But I ended by illustrating that nora people have created new avenues for women to learn rituals, achieve higher recognition, and become leaders of their own groups.

JOINING WITH HOME-BASED SPIRIT MEDIUMS An important component of nora ritual ceremonies are the spirit mediums in the same lineage who come to be possessed but have not been initiated as nora performers. While a few men participate, most mediums are women who are middle-aged and older. Because they comprise one-fourth to onethird of the active participants in the ceremony, their role is noteworthy. Mediums are easily identified by their distinctive costume of traditional pants, white blouses, and shoulder scarves that indicate the sex of their spirits — white or yellow for female spirits and plaid for male spirits. Absolutely essential to the ceremony, mediums’ bodies are the channels through which the spirits come to accept the offerings from descendants. The mediums also dance in a 198

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unique style, differently from those doing the nora dance. Some nora leaders are spirit mediums able to possess but some are not. This ability is determined by the day and month of birth and the person’s sensitivity to spirits. At one ceremony hosted by Nora Awut, he had to allocate two days of the three-day ceremony for possessions to accommodate all the mediums who . attended. I asked him, “What do spirit mediums do in the ceremony and how is it different from what nora people do?” Not a medium himself, Nora Awut explained, “Nora people only play music, sing, dance, and invite the spirits to possess. When the spirits possess, they will do all the rituals. The descendants will come to see the spirits and ask them to predict their fortunes. The spirits will bless holy water and sprinkle it on descendants, bless them, and predict' their fortunes.” Mediums appear to fall into two broad categories. The first group (about 80 percent), I label as occasional spirit mediums, those who are possessed publicly only at this yearly ceremony and may periodically become possessed at home to help family members in distress. The second group (about 20 percent), I call professional spirit mediums, who have established home shrines for regularly treating members of the public in return for donations to the spirit. One such professional medium, whom I met at the Wat Tha Khae rang kbru ceremony in 2 002 , said she deals with a foil range of client problems concerning health, university examinations, black magic, and encroaching mistresses. Ratchada (not her real name 29), age fifty-one, came to mediumship in the most common way, through an illness that could not be cured by western medicine (Pattana 1999). A spirit medium interpreted Ratchada’s leg ailment as a message from a spirit who wanted to possess her, and Nora Plaek agreed that this was the root cause. At first Ratchada refused, since the idea was strange and frightening. She said, “I didn’t know anything about this. Father Plaek, who died [later], said, ‘You should accept. Your leg will get better because the spirit wants to stay with you.* When I didn’t accept the spirit, he warned me to accept.” Because Nora Plaek helped identify her spirit, Ratchada comes to the rongkhru ceremony every year to make merit (tham bun). Her story illustrates how nora and home-based mediums are linking across traditions. As the most marginalized of all spiritual practitioners, home-based mediums gain status and legitimacy by associating with the emblem of the South (see Irvine 1982). In turn, nora gains followers and a larger network.

NORA SERVICES VALUABLE TO WOMEN The services provided by nora are particularly beneficial to women in their roles as wives, mothers, family caregivers, and small business owners. Women seek help finding medical cures, fighting magic used by mistresses, stopping 199

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a husband’s infidelity, and promoting their children’s education and careers. I asked the follower of a spirit medium why women don’t get this assistance from monks. For practical help, women prefer to visit fortune tellers (zwo du) or spirit mediums, she said. “The [monks] don’t know the way to help. They just learn the Buddhist words and try to stay isolated. That is not the business of monks.” She also strongly warned that some monks use Cambodian black magic, which can harm the client. VOW FULFILLMENT RITUALS (KAE BON)

For both women and men, the main demand of nora performances is for the kae bon ceremony, through which people pay off promises to the spirits once the request has been filled. This spiritual contractis quite common in Thai culture and Buddhism. 30 The word bon means to make a votive prayer or wish, while the word kae means to untie, loosen, or mend. Therefore, a person would first make a wish, along with a promise of reward, then “untie” the promise by fulfilling the vow. Often the supplicant will promise to dance either as nora in the bird costume or as the hunter (the dance of okphran), which may require hiring a nora troupe to come to the home. Achan Sarup said that most clients for this nora service are female. “Most of them are women because it is related to the women’s role in the family. If there! are any problems in the family, women have to be responsible for them. Women always promise and men always pay off the promise.” My assistant Thananan Thuretapon explained it this way: “Women will promise to the spirit and men will contact the workgroup to pay off the promise because the connection with thenora group is related to society or 1- the public. Society believes that men take care of things like family problems that halve a connection with people in the society. It is not suitable for women to do everything by themselves.” Nora Chaloem confirmed her observations by saying that a wife must get her husband’s permission before hiring a nora group to kae bon. “iff women want to invite me, their husbands have to accept' [my!coming],” he said. Nora Awut said that his clients for kae bon were equally divided between men and women but that women usually used the ritual for medical problems. Achan Sompote provided an illustration of how women turn to nora for concerns about family health. His first personal experience, with making a vow was when his mother took him to nora for illness. “For me, when I was very young, I was sick. My mother took me to see the doctor, but I could not get better. So my mother vowed. And she promised to the spirit that if I could get better, she would fulfill the promise with nora. After that she gave an offering.” He subsequently recovered.

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HEALING SORES ON CHILDREN

(YIAP SEN)

Nora provides a unique service to heal the black or red sores which appear on children. These growths look like moles or sometimes large lesions and are painful and difficult to cure. Some people believe the mark is made by the ancestors, the female ghost of the stage who resides in the posts named Phi Nang Oo Gachaeng, or the ghost of the mark named Phi Jao Sen (Pittaya 1995). The ritual is called “stepping on the sore.” The male nora leader writes a prayer on his big toe and puts it into a flame. He then touches the child’s sore with his toe and another nora man scrapes the sore with a Malay metal sword (kris) and a wooden sword. The clients are usually women with crying babies. Nora Somphong Chanaban said, “This sore [rra] cannot be cured by medical treatment or medical science. Medical science says that the sore is a problem of capillaries, but it cannot be cured by an operation. If you have an operation, it will come again. But when nora cures it, it will be gone.” Nara women are not allowed to enact this ritual because they would be standing over the possessed spirit medium involved in the ceremony. “It is not suitable [mo som] that women sit higher than the spirits. Women cannot yiap sen” Nora Awut said. However, possessed female mediums can play a vital role. At one ceremony, a female medium sat on a chair and was possessed by a key female character from the Phatthalung legend. The medium was privileged to take part because she was possessed and had the power of the spirit. Also she was seated in a lower position. However, in general males are given preference and so boys are called for treatment before girls. GETTING

RID OF MINOR WIVES

A common problem that women bring to professional home-based spirit mediums has to do with husbands and their mistresses, known as minor wives (mia not). For many Thai women of all classes, the issue of minor wives is a real emotional and financial threat that can destroy a family (Packard-Winkler 1 998; Van Fleet 1998). But women frequently feel they have little recourse. They are often dependent on the husband’s income, and society frowns on women who marry more than once. Mary Packard-Winkler (1998, 403) suggests that Thai women’s tensions are negotiated through various avenues including silence (or “withholding voice”) and more active resistances, which include staying single, complaining at husbands, and even cutting off a man’s penis. Some wives seek spirit assistance. Nara leaders tend to shy away from this request because it fringes on blackmagic. Also, the client may be lying in order to trick the nora person into breaking up a legitimate marriage. I asked Nora Chaloem whether wives ask for help in fending off mistresses. He said, “They do, but sometimes minor wives lie to me and say they are major wives

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[the legal wife]. So I don’t want to be involved with this problem. I suggest they go to another place.” 31 This was also a morality issue for Nora Plaek, according to his niece. In 2001, she said, If minor wives want him to help them to snatch the major wife’s husband, he won’t help them. But he has to ask fitst whether that woman is a minor wife or 'major wife. The major wife has to bring her birth date .and name and her husband’s birth date and name. Seven days after that the husband will come back home. He [Nora Plaek] hardly ever helps people who have family problems because it is a sin. But if a major wife asks him for help, he will help her. He is illiterate, but the ancestors know everything and they can do everything. I

REQUESTS FOR BEAUTY AND POPULARITY Nora Plaek gave my assistant Thananan a secret magical prayer and instructed her to memorize it and destroy the paper. He said, “You use it to bless powder and put it on your face so everyone will love you. Don’t let anyone see it. Other people will use this prayer if they see it. I only give it to you. ’You haveto repeat the prayer three times. You should use this prayer especially when you have to meet senior people.” Known for his many incantations, Nora Plaek was sought out by female contestants in beauty contests and transvestites alike. His oldest daughter said, “A lot of transvestites \krathoei\ from Malaysia come here too.” And his niece added, “They ask him to make them have an inward radiance. Women who have wedding ceremonies will come here, too [for the same thing]. Clients can ask him to make love potions \yasa-ne}” (see Johnson 1999 for Thai love magicians in Malaysia). In this romance game, women are especially vulnerable. The use of love charms by village spirit doctors, particularly for men pursuing women to make them love slaves, is legendary (Terwiel 1994, 123). As the country develops rapidly and social norms change, western concepts of beauty are disseminated into the smallest villages. With emphasis on make-up, whiteness of skin associated with upper classes, and straightened hair, women’s bodies are commodified at the same time that their traditional base in villages is undermined by economic changes (Whittaker 1 999, 44). I propose that beauty and charm are tools that women use to sell themselves to men —lovers, bosses,predominantly senior people —in an attempt to equal out the gender inequality inherent in the society (Lytdeton 1999, 37).

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ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION I suggest that the meaning of women’s expanded involvement in ritual nora is that female-oriented religions are strengthening in the face of modem social and economic upheavals. Nora provides spiritual intervention for everyday problems within the supportive context of rural kinship communities where mother-daughter and sister-sister connections have been strong. Despite this recent female orientation, magically powerfill men are still quite essential to the genre. The majority of leaders.are men and tie culture privileges them as being more religiously powerful, within both Buddhism and the supernatural realm. Is nora a women’s religion? Anthropologist Susan Starr Sered (1994) compared twelve “women’s religions” or “female-dominated religions” around the world, including Thailand’s northern matrilineal spirit sects and Burma’s nat religion. She defined these as refigions in which “...women are the majorityof participants and leaders, there is no higher level male authority that ultimately directs these religions, and that these religions focus on women as ritual actors” (1994, 1 1). According to her definition, nora would not qualify as a women’s religion because Buddhist-based rules discriminate against women reaching the top positions. However, nora performers and certainly the associated female spirit mediums have many other characteristics that Sered found in the twelve identified women’s religions. For instance, nora has a focus on trance possession with direct emotional connections with spirits and flexibility in the belief system that allows participants to also believe in other religions. There is no nora central authority over all branches and no written doctrine. According to Sered, women’s religions emphasize healing and support for women, especially for mothers who suffer from physical and emotional trials, such as the death of a child. Such religions often exist worldwide in societies that are matrilocal, matrilineal, or matrifocal and where women have a fair amount of autonomy (Sered 1994). This description applies to gender roles in Thailand. Several academics have described the Thai rural social structure in many regions as being less patriarchal and more female-centered,particularly where women inherit the land (Amara 1997; Potter 1977). Historians also have remarked on the economic independence and autonomy of Southeast Asian women, especially when compared to women in China and India, although this issue has been greatly debated (Andaya 1995; Reid 1988). 32 Therefore, conditions seem right for nora to be an avenue for women’s religious articulation. But the women who practice nora are working within, not rebelling against, centralized Buddhism and the conservative gender concepts in Thai culture. Nora women give very high respect to nora men, 203

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particularly those who have trained them, in many cases their fathers. They are not trying to usurp men, but are filling the many vacancies created by the passing of the old guard of potent priests. 33 Also I do not want to overstate the importance of women moving into principal ritual roles in nora. As suggested by anthropologist Paritta Chalermpow Koanantakool, the ritual side of nora involves few people and is limited to village life, compared to the public entertainment side, where young women provide secular amusement for crowds of hundreds. Some might argue that women are coming into prominence in nora just when men are abandoning it in favor of more lucrative and modem careers, which is reminiscent of other occupations which have become feminized when devalued. Therefore, in looking at the significance of this change, it is important to explore the enduring advantages for women. Sered argues that women’s religions either provide short-term benefits for individuals or longer-term structural changes that empower women as a group. On the surface, nora would appear to assist individual women rather than push for more radical changes in religious ideology, but I would hesitate to judge the future consequences of this strengthening in women’s religious roles. Instead, this genre should be understood in the larger historical'context of female mysticism. Before the advent of Christianity in the West, mysticism demonstrated that spiritual knowledge could come from personal revelations and could be experienced by uneducated women, (Lerner 1993). In times of societal change during the early era of Christianity, female mystics increased in numbers, thriving as small, scattered groups distinct from patriarchal religious hierarchies. “Since women were forbidden the practice of the priesthood and of most public roles, with the exception of nursing the sick, it ,is not surprising that they expressed their religious experience in these more private mystical forms,” according to historian Gerda Lerner (1993, 72). I would argue that the female nora performers today have much in common with these early mystics. x

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NOTBS 1. The Thai name for ancestors,/)® ya tayai, refers to grandparents on hoth the paternal and maternal sides of the family, meaning any deceased relatives. However, in the South this is shortened to taayai, referring to the mother’s lineage, which may imply importance attached to the maternal side. 2. Nora is short for manora and is used as a title for leaders. 3. Nora is often presented with its companion art, the shadow puppet play (nang taking), another key southern drama. Paritta Chalermpow Ko'anantakool researched this topic for her 1981 Ph.D. dissertation and has written insightfully on it. 4. Mayoang is a Malay Muslim style of ancestor propitiation similar to nora. It is practiced in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia (Nuriyan Salae 1999). 5.. Folk Buddhism or animistic Buddhism is a blending of the early animism of Thailand with world religions including Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, and Hindu-Brahmanism (Kirsch 1977; Terwiel 1994). In the south, Islamic elements are also evident. 6. Although a focal ancestral tradition, nora has been co-opted by the central government as emblemic of the South for modem nation-building. Therefore, many of these links to national identity have been constructed from a certain perspective. 7. Fieldwork was completed for a Ph.D. degree in anthropology from the University of Hawaii. 8. Walter Irvine argued that the reasons for the decline in northern matrilineal sects and increase in city professional mediums were “unequal development and modernisation” in the changing economy (1982, 318). 9. There are exceptions, as not all performers have nora.ancestors. A notable example was Nora Plaek Chanaban, who nevertheless was possessed by the founder of the genre. 10. The origin and age of the drama is still debated, which relates to its legitimacy as a symbol of the South. A central question is whether nora is a corruption of foreign cultures or an indigenous art —or both. 11 . Brahmanism was an early form of Hinduism when powerful priests were needed to perform complex rituals. While Hinduism emerged about 1500 B.C.E., Buddhism developed as a reformation, beginning in 545 B.C.E. 12. See Lorraine Gesick (1995, 62-69) for this legend and related ones on “floating princesses” in southern Thailand and Malaysia. 13. As early as 1861, women were added to the closely related performance of lakhon chatri in central Thailand, when King Rama IV changed the law which had only permitted kings to have a female troupe. And by the 1920s, most performers of lakhon chatri in Phetchaburi were female (Grow, 1992). After World War II, female leaders of the related art of shadow puppetry performed on par with male leaders. Women were valued for their good voices, and excelled in off-color comedy (Pittaya, 2003). 14. The term “traditional” is an interpretation since all cultures constantly change and are always new, according to Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin (1984, 273), who cite M.E. Smith (1982). The authors argue that while tradition can be defined as “an inherited body of customs and beliefs,” it is completely a symbolic construction. 205

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15. It is difficult to estimate the number of active groups. Achan Sompote said, “We don’t have the certain information on each province, but in Nakhon Si Thammarat, there are more than two hundred nora groups. But only fifty groups still perform. The other nora groups don’t perform any more because the leaders of the groups are very old." 16. Both performances were used to propitiate spirits, and their masters were religiously powerfill. But while nora only developed in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, the shadow play genre has spread much more widely into Indonesia, Malaysia, India, China, Turkey, and Greece (Brandon 1967; Dowsey-Magog 2002). 17. This most revered ceremony is usually demanded by ancestor spirits every one, three, or five years or punishment will occur. 18. This ritual is a reenactment of-an event from the Phatthalung legend, when the king-gave land to his grandson to build a town. 19. There are a small number of men possessed by female spirits in the South, particularly by the goddess Kuan Im. Rosalind Morris writes of many male transvestite spirit mediums in Chiang Mai and Lamphun possessed by god dess Queen Chamathewi (Morris 1994). 20. In 1982, the law was changed to allow women to be village chiefs or subdistrict officials. The first woman was appointed province governor in 1993 (Darunee and Pandey, 1997). Currently women comprise 1 1 percent of district officials, 2 percent of subdistricts officials, and 2 percent of village chiefs (Sanitsuda 2003). 21. This is a common Thai saying, similar to the American saying that behind every successful man, you will find a woman (See Jawanit Kittitomkool 2000). 22. Susan Sered suggests that in parts of Asia men joined the new world religions and left women with the more ancient indigenous beliefs which were devalued. In Southeast Asia and East Asia, the new religions taught “doctrines of female pollution or subordination” (Sered 1994, 13). 23. Amara Pongsapich (1997) argues that Hinduism and Buddhism introduced ideologies of male dominance, such as the belief in karma that defines women as inferior. 24. Tlte mixture of religions in Thailand is quite complex and varies by region. When travelers from India arrived in southern Thailand in the early Christian era, they “...found a fairly sophisticated level of life already established there. It was on this indigenous base that the veneer of Indian culture was to be superimp osed” (MunroHay 2001: 8). “Organized” religions first appeared with the Buddhism of the Mon Dvaravati civilization in the central region in the sixth to ninth centuries. When the Khmer of the Angkor Empire (present day Cambodia) conquered this society in the ninth century, the kings introduced Mahayana Buddhism and Hindu-Brahmanism, particularly cults to Shiva and Vishnu. The Tai-speaking people brought in the new religion of Theravada Buddhism as early as the eleventh century, and by the thirteenth century had created states as far south as Nakhon Si Thammarat, reviving Buddhism there with help from Singhalese Buddhists from Ceylon (Wyatt 1 984; also see "lerwiel 1994). Islam was officially established in the Malay Pattani Kingdom with the conversion of Sultan Ismail Shah in 1500 (Zulltifli 2002). .From Fujian Province in southeast China, Chinese immigrants brought Folk Taoism to Phuket, Trang,. and

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other towns in the early decades o£the 1 800s (Cohen 2001). Many of these influences can be seen in? nora today. * 25. In Thailand and neighboring countries, there are two closely related goddesses connected with fertility —the Mother Rice Goddess (Mae Phosop) and the Mother Earth Goddess (Mae Thorani). The Earth Goddess had a central role in drowning the devil’s army tvhen Lord Buddha sought enlightenment. In temple murals, she is painted directly beneath the Lord Buddha and often equivalent in size, as in Songkhla’s Wat Machimawat. 26. I found many restrictions against menstruating women both in the world religions and spirit medium sects. One nora family member said that menstruating women could not even watch the fire-walking ceremonies at Taoist temples in Phuket during the Vegetarian Festival (See Terwiel 1994). 27. This ritual represents completing the obligations to ancestors. According to’ Pittaya Butsararat (1995), it is used to send the spirits back and involves cutting strings to the offerings. Wbmen cannot cut the strings completely. 28. Recently, nora groups have created a paper crown as a temporary substitute for young performers before initiation. 29. 1 am using the real names of nora leaders as they are proud of their roles and advertise their troupes, but I am "using pseudonyms with spirit mediums, who are more marginal figures in Thai society. 30. Teachers at Prince of Songkla University, Pattani, regularly request that the father of the King stop the rain from falling on their annual cultural fair. When it doesn’t rain, they fulfill their vow by giving boiled eggs to the statue of this muchloved prince, situated at the entrance to the university, 31 . Professional spirit mediums regularly deal with this problem. Techniques include symbolically tying the husband to the wife, making the husband impotent with any other woman, and harming the minor wife. 32. Factors leading to this higher status are: matrilocal residence, equal inheritance, bilateral descent, monogamy and simple divorce, complementary roles in local rituals, and women’s importance in agriculture and markets. 33. One media version of this transition was shown ina2001 TV soap opera called “Nora,” set in Nakhon' Si Thammarat. It tells the story of a traditional nora leader attacked by rowdy men in the audience who prefer the modem style. His daughter dances in his stead, crying profusely. Then she prostrates herself at her father’s feet as he dies, and she promises to preserve the ancient performance.

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REFERENCES Amara Pongsapich. 1997. Feminism Theories and Praxis: Women’s Social Movements in Thailand. In ILw/ch, Gender Relations and Development in Thai Society,edited byViradaSomswasdiand Sally Theobald, 3-51. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Andaya, Barbara Watson. 1994. The Changing Religious Role of Women in Premodem South East Asia. South East Asia Research 2 (2): 99-116. ---------. 1995. Women and Economic Exchange: The Pepper Trade in Pre-Modem Southeast Asia. Journal ofthe Social and Economic History of the Orient 38 (2): 165— , - - - -190. Arun Wetsuwan. 1980. Manorah Did Not Originate Wdtthanatham [Art and culture] 1 (11): 20-25.

in Java (in Thai). Sinlapa-

Brandon, James R. 1967. Theatre in Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ---------. 1972. Traditional Asian Plays. Translated by Ubol Bhukkanasut. New Abrk: Hill and Wang. ---------, ed. 1993. The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre. Advisory editor Martin Banham. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brewer, Carolyn. 2000. From Animist “Priestess” to Catholic Priest: The Re/ gendering of Religious Roles in the Philippines, 1521-1685. In Other Pasts:Wotnen, Gender, and History in Early Modem Southeast Asia, edited by Barbara Watson Andaya, .69-86., Honolulu: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Chatsumam, Kabilsingh. 1991. Thai Women in Buddhism. Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press. Cohen, Erik. 2001. The Chinese Vegetarian Festival in Phuket: Religion, Ethnicity, and Tourism on a Southern Thai Eland. Bangkok: White Lotus. Cohen, Paul T., and Gehan Wijeyewardene. 1984. Introduction: Spirit Cults and the Position of Women in Northern Thailand. Mankind 14 (4): 249-262. Darunee Tantiwiramanond, and Shashi Pandey. 1987. The Status and Role of Thai Women in the Pre-modem Period: AHistorical and Cultural Perspective. Sojourn 2 (1): 125-149. ---------. 1997. New Opportunities or New Inequalities: Development Issues and Women’s Lives in Thailand. In Women, Gender Relations and Development in Thai Society, edited by Virada Somswasdi and Sally Theobald, 83-135'. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Dowsey-Magog, Paul. 2002. Popular Culture and “Traditional Performance”: Conflicts and Challenges in Contemporary Nang Talung. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern

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Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Pattani Hotel, Pattani, Thailand. Gesick, Lorraine M. 1995. In the Land of Lady White Blood: Southern Thailand and the Meaning of History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. Ginsburg, Henry D. 1971. The Sudhana-Manohara Tale in Thai: A Comparative Study Based on "Iwo Texts from -the National Library, Bangkok, and Wat Machimawat, Songkhla. Ph.D. diss. University of London. ---------. 1972. The Ahmonz Dance-Drama: 60: 169-81.

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Golomb, Louis. 1978. Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adaptation in a Rural Malaysian Setting. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Grow, Mary L. 1992. Dancingfor Spirits: Lakhon Chatri Performers fromPhetchaburi Province. Journal of the Siam Society 8 0 (2): 1 05- 1 1 . Handler, Richard, andjocelyn Linneldn. 1984. Tradition, Genuine or Spxswnss.Journal of American Folklore 97 (385): 273-290. Hirsch, Philip. 1991. What is the Thai Village? In National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand 1939-1989, edited by Craig J. Reynolds, 323-340. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Irvine, Walter. 1982. The Thai-Yuan “Madman” and the “Modernising, Developing Thai Nation” as Bounded Entities under Threat: A Study in the Replication of a Single Image. Ph.D. diss. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ---------. 1984. Decline of Village Spirit Cults and Growth of Urban Spirit Mediumship: The Persistence of Spirit Beliefs, the Position of Women and Modernization. Mankind 14 (4): 3 1 5-24. Jawanit Kittitomkool. 2000. Elephants Standing on Their Hind Legs: Women in the Changing Village Context of Southern Thailand. Ph.D. diss. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath, U.K. Johnson, Irving Chan. 1999. Seductive Mediators: The Nuuraa Performer’s Ritual Persona as a Love Magician in Kelantariese Thai Society. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30 (2): 286-309. Jonit, Rosini. 2002. A Note on Manora in Malaysia. Paper presented at First InterDialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Pattani Hotel, Pattani, Thailand Keyes, Charles F. 1995. The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kirsch, A. Thomas. 1977. Complexityin Studies 26 (2): 241-66.

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Lerner, Gerda. 1993. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1810. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Lyttleton, Chris. 1 999. Changing the Rules: Shifting Bounds of Adolescent Sexuality in Northeast Thailand. In Genders and Sexualities in Modem Thailand, edited by Peter A. Jackson andNeridaM. Cook, 28-42. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Maud, Jovan. 2002 J Chinese on the Road: Mobility and Spectacle in Hat Yai’s Vegetarian Festival. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Pattani Hotel, Pattani, Thailand. Mills, Mary Beth. 1999. The Chorus Line and the Assembly Line —Gender, Ideology, and the Recruitment of Labor. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, July 4-8, University of Amsterdam. Morris, Rosalind C. 1994. The Empress’s New Clothes: Dressing and Redressing Modernity in Northern Thai Spirit Mediumship. In The Transformative Power of Cloth in Southeast Asia, edited by Penny Van Esterik and Lynne Milgram, 53-74. Toronto: Museum for Textiles and Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies. ---------. 2000. In the Place of Origins: Modernity and its Mediums in Northern Thailand. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Munro-Hay, Stuart. 2001. Nakhon Sri Thammarat: The Archeology, History and Legends of a Southern Thai Town. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Nishii Ryoko. 1999. Coexistence of Religions: Muslim and Buddhist Relationship on the West Coast of Southern Thailand. Tai Culture 4 (1): 77-91. Nuriyan Salae. 1999. Ma Yong (in Thai). In Saranukrom Watthanatham Thai: Phak Tai [Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Southern Region], Vol. 12: 5,932-44. Bangkok: Siam Press Management. Packard-Winkler, Mary. 1998. Knowledge, Sex and Marriage in Modem Bangkok: Cultural Negotiations in the Time of AIDS. Ph.D. diss. Anthropology, American University, Washington, D.C. Pattana Kitiarsa. 1999. You May Not Believe, but Never Offend the Spirits: SpiritMedium Cult Discourses and the Postmodemization of Thai Religion. Ph.D. diss. Department of Anthropology, University of Washington. Pian Chanaban and Family. 2002. Anuson Ngan Phra Ratchathan Phloeng Sop Khun Pho Plaek Chanaban [Remembrance of cremation ceremony from the King for Father Plaek Chanaban; in Thai]. Translated by ThanananThuretapon. Ban ThaKhae, Phatthalung Province: published by the Chanaban Family. Pittaya Butsararat. 1995. Nora Rong Khru [Nora Teachers’ Stage Ceremony]. In Nora kap kan phalit bandit khanaeng wicha kansadaeng phuenban [Nora and the production of the .graduate students of the local performance branch; imThai], edited by ChawThapthimthong, 43-73. Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand: The Office of Development for Artistic Work, Nakhon Si Thammarat Teachers’ College. . 2003. The Change and Relations between Society and Culture at the Low Lying Areas of Spngkhla Lake: The Case Study of Nang Talung and Nora 210

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---------. 1999b. Nora Tamnan (in Thai) [Nora: Legend]. In Saranukrom Watthanatham Thai: Phak Tai [Encyclopedia of Thai Culture: Southern Region]. Vol. 8: 3,8973,904. Bangkok: Siam Press Management. Van Esterik, John. 1996. Women Meditation Teachers in Thailand. In of Southeast Asia, edited by Penny Van Esterik, 33-41. DeKalb, Ill.: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Van Fleet, Sara. 1998. Everyday Dramas: Television and Modem Thai Women. Ph.D. diss. Department of Anthropology, University of Washington. Whittaker, Andrea. 1999. Women and Capitalist Transformation in a Northeastern Thai Village. In Genders and Sexualities in Modem Thailand, edited by Peter A. Jackson and Nerida M. Cook, 43-62. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Wijeyewardene, Gehan. 1986. Place and Emotion in Northern Thai Ritual Behavior. Bangkok: Pandora. Wyatt, David K. 1984. Thailand: A Short History. London: Yale University Press. Zulkifli, Mohamad. 2002. Evanescent Kingdoms, Everlasting Spirit: Seeking . Langkasuka. Paper presented at First Inter-Dialogue Conference on Southern Thailand, “Experiencing Southern Thailand: Current Social Transformations from People’s Perspectives,” June 13-15, C. S. Pattani Hotel, Pattani, Thailand.

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SOUTHERN THAI WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT: A TALE OF TWO VILLAGES JAWANIT KITTITORNKOOL

AN OVERVIEW OF THAI WOMEN AND GENDER IDEOLOGIES The formulation and implementation of the eight national economic and social development plans since 1961 have been closely related to external, political and economic forces, ranging from the anticommunist policy of the American government after World War II to the internationalization of economic forces and the globalization of capital during the last few decades. However, such international factors have been mediated by the prevalent economic, social, and political elements in Thai society. Although the absolute state was transformed into a representative democratic society in 1 932, much of Thailand’s democratic era has been dominated by successions of militaryled governments. The transformation of agriculture into an export-oriented industry concentrating on economic growth and the centralization of bureaucracy and business groups led to maldevelopment, as is evidenced by the environmental problems, social and economic inequalities, and social differentiation facing Thailand. 1 Not until recent decades have new social forces emerged, bringing alternative development approaches, as well as women’s development, onto the public agenda (Darunee and Pandey 1997). According to a number of scholars, Thai women enjoy a relatively high degree of status and involvement in production and community life in comparison to women in many other Asian societies. 2 However, evidence of gender inequalities and exploitation of women is apparent in a range of social phenomena, particularly prostitution, and in the international image of Thailand (Bell 1997; Darunee and Pandey 1997). Historically, Thai women have been actively involved in production and reproduction activities, since their communities were subsistence-based until the villages were incorporated

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into the market economy. As such, Chai Podhisita (1998) reinterprets the persistent traditional Thai metaphor of women as “the hind legs of the elephant” led by their husbands, as they are actually the “driving forces” of their families and Thai society due to their predominant contribution. Since a great number of women migrate to work in cities as cheap wage labor in the service sector and export industries, it is undeniable that the economic growth of Thailand has been based on the exploitation of Thai women (National Commission on Women’s Affairs 1994; Wirada Somsawasdi and Theobald 1997). Due to gender inequalities and sexual discrimination, which, are deeply rooted in cultural and social institutions, women are concentrated on the bottom rung of the employment ladder, as well as being excluded from the decision-making process (Thomson 1997). The position of Thai women has been summarized as, “Most women work. A few manage. Almost none govern” (Pasukand Baker 1996, 114). In spite of a decline in women’s importance in traditional society, which was associated with matrilocality in rural communities, migrant daughters continue to fulfill their obligations by sending remittances to their parents. Only a small number of women-in the middle social stratum benefit from the expansion of educational and job opportunities in the modem sector. Nevertheless, most working women in all social strata share the same double burden of being mothers and homemakers (Suwanna Kriangkraiphet 1992; Darunee and Pandey 1997). Mathana Phannaniramai (1996, 275) remarks that the traditional expectation that women take responsibility for housework as well as economic activities has persisted throughout social and economic changes, although economic activities have increasingly come into conflict with women’s household responsibilities. Drawing on the findings of the 1994 Thai family survey, Bhassom Limmanonda (1998) says that the extent to which parents attempt to change gender roles by socializing boys to be in charge of the household is minimal. Most families tend to assign housework to girls, and women are inclined to hear the burden of housework without expecting their husbands’ assistance. The woman’s role as a mother has been consistently highlighted by Buddhism, as well as by other social and cultural mechanisms, helping to perpetuate the inferior image of women in contemporary Thai society. Although Chatsumam Kabilasingh (1998) identifies the gender equality in Buddhist Salvation texts and relates the gender bias to the Hindu-dominated social context of the religion, a number of scholars conclude that gender discrimination has been reinforced by the strong male bias in Buddhism (Pasuk, Sungsidh, and Nuannoi 1996; Amara 1997). In spite of the fact that phiksuni (female monks) were common in Buddha’s time, and still exist in Mahayana Buddhist practice, they are prohibited in Thailand, where women

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are only allowed to be mae chi (nuns that, unlike phiksuni, are not ordained). Aman’s major merit-making act is ordination, whereas a woman’s is “giving” a son for ordination. Consequently, it is assumed that due to their status as wives and mothers, women should be consistently diligent in performing routine merit-making activities, such as providing food for monks" and attending temple services (Thitsa 1983; Kirsch 1982; Mills 1993; Pasuk, Sungsidh, and Nuannoi 1996). In addition, drawing on a number of traditional teachings and proverbs, Uaypom Phanich (1998) concludes that particular behavioral standards for women were written by men as normative guidelines to control women as wives, slaves, and daughters. The process of socialization has been sustained through a variety of social mechanisms such as classical literature. It was emphasized in a seminar organized by the National Council of Social Welfare of Thailand in 1980 that women should be humble and well-mannered, and should serve their husbands and parents. Thai girls are influenced by the social values of “being good wives” and “being good mothers” in the future (Kritaya and Napapom 1995). Furthermore, drawing from her analyses of Thai language textbooks in primary school, Moller (1999) notes that females are portrayed as being inactive and as “followers.” Viewing the situation from a sociolinguistic perspective, Panit Boonyavatana (1999) concludes that despite the relatively better position of contemporary Thai women, and despite their having more security and protections of their rights under the new constitution of 1998, a wide range of conflicts regarding the identity and status of women are still maintained through the discriminatory language used by the media, as well as by men and women themselves. In other words, the inferiority ofThai women is related to worldly Buddhist teachings and traditional norms which persist irrespective of social and economic changes, or of women’s still-prominent roles in production and reproduction. Nevertheless, gender ideologies can be both constraining and enabling factors in women’s lives, depending on particular social and economic contexts as well as on women’s resources. Drawing on different cases of women migrating from village to city, Nithi Eaosriwong (1995) remarks that Thai women’s subordinate status does not necessarily always lead to “sexual suppression.” This is the case particularly in rural contexts where traditional social and cultural mechanisms, including matrilocality, matrilineality, and women’s dominant role in rituals are of significance in protecting women from being exploited by men. However, when women migrate to cities, die likelihood of being exploited by men or violently treated by men increases, since the traditional norms relating to women’s inferiority are perpetuated without the coexistence of traditional social and cultural structures.

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WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT IN THAILAND The issue of women’s development in Thailand has been influenced by the international agenda on women in development. It was not until the United Nations’ Declaration of the Decade for Women (1976-85) that governmental attention to the area of women’s development became evident. After Thailand participated in the 1985 Nairobi Third World Conference on Women to review the achievements of the Decade for Women, the Thai Government finally created a state organization for women. The Office of the National Commission on Women’s Affairs was formally established in 1989. Subsequently, a list of Women in Development (WID) activities was promoted (Amara 1 997). In brief, governmental efforts regarding women’s development can be grouped into three levels: the formation of national commissions and task forces, the formulation of national plans, and the implementation of the plans through various ministries and schemes (Danmee and Pandey 1991). With reference to national social and economic development plans, women’s concerns have not been addressed continuously, and the policy on women has fluctuated. In the first few plans, development efforts concentrated on men as the family breadwinners, whereas women were classified as welfare receivers. Women’s issues were mentioned for the first time in the Third National Economic and Social Development Plan (1972-1976) though attention was given only to family planning issues. Women’s development was incorporated into other social development programs concerning ' education, health, and labor in the Fourth Plan (1977-1 981), which recognized women as a productive force, in accordance with the United Nations Decade for Women (Darunee and Pandey 1991; 1997). The issue of women’s development was finally included under an autonomous heading in the Fifth Plan (1986-1990) in order to prepare women to join an industrialized capitalist society by providing training on management skills and primary occupations. Since 1981, two task force committees appointed by the National Economic and SocialDevelopment Board have formulated two national women’s development plans: the shortterm plan (1982-1986) to be incorporated into the Fifth Plan, and the longterm plan (1982-2001). Recognizing women’s double role in both the family and their occupations, the short-term plan emphasized the promotion of education and health services for women in thirty-eight of the poorest provinces in Thailand. Categorizing women into six groups, the long-term plan provides a series of guidelines for future policy formulation, as well as some measurements of the different aspects of the advancement of women’s status and role, from education to religion and culture (Darunee and Pandey 1991, 1997).

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Subsequently, the Sixth Plan was criticized for its lack of reference to the twenty-year plan, and there was ho differentiation of target groups by their needs. In fact, both the short-term and long-term plans were only advisory and had no binding force. Likewise, the dilution of the importance of women’s development for the Second United Nations Decade for Women (1985-1995) was also reflected in the Seventh Plan. The previous twenty-year plan was replaced in 1992 by a more ambitious new twenty-year plan. The Eighth Plan (1997-2001) differed from the previous plans due to its focus on thedevelopment of Thailand’s human resources. However, it is only in the section on the development of the potential of Thai people that women are referred to in the context of sex workers. In spite of the fact that women are underrepresented in decision-making at all levels of government and in regard to the government’s policy to promote women’s political participation, gender concerns are not explicitly mentioned in the plan (Chanya 1992; Darunee and Pandey 1991, 1997; Pongsapich 1997). Most of the governmental programs on women’s development are under the jurisdiction of four ministries; the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministry of Education. The most significant women’s organizations are women’s development committees established by the Department of Community Development (Ministry of the Interior) in accordance with the Fifth Plan. The committees have been set up at the village, subdistrict, district, province, and national levels with the aim of promoting women’s initiatives and participation in local development and welfare activities, as well as promoting their participation in local politics (Saowalak 1999). According to the 2000 data, there were 73,816 women’s development committees with 802,165 members throughout the country. Meanwhile, the number of women’s groups organized by the Department of Agricultural Extension (Ministry of Agriculture) since 1968 is 13,999, with a total membership of 533,735 (Srisawang 2000). The women’s development programs and projects can be classified into three types: those involving supplementary income-earning skills, those involving the fulfillment of housewives’ duties, and those involving childcare. The shortcoming is that rigid topics and patterns of activities are not based on local women’s conditions (Thewin 1990). In addition, although members of the women’s groups are largely from the same pool of housewives and women leaders, each ministry tends to build up its own clientele network. Due to the lack of funding and capacities, most of the groups are hardly active, although they provide a forum for some learning experiences and opportunities for grassroots women to form wider networks, as well as to take part in local politics. However, it is also likely that the groups tend to be exploited by politicians for vote-buying (Srisawang 2000; Pandey 2002).

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In conclusion, the government’s efforts to improve the situation for women are insufficient due to three factors. Firstly, the government’s concern for and understanding of women’s issues has fluctuated according to the perceptions of women as welfare recipients and the needs of special groups. Secondly, the implementation of programs tends to focus on the improvement of the traditional role of women as wives and mothers. Thirdly, programs have had a minimal impact, since women who participate in training courses can only utilize their skills to a limited extent. The women are either occupied with agricultural work or else do not have adequate education, credit or funds, or management experience to initiate their own enterprises (Srisawang 2000; Pandey2002). In the meantime, the emergence of new social forces has resulted in the growth of women’s development NGOs. Increasing public awareness of women’s issues and bringing about amendments to particular gender-biased laws are the achievements of the long-term advocacy and collaborative efforts of women’s NGOs, academics, and women’s groups across Thailand. During the last two decades, new groups of young urban-based middle-class women have organized to search for an alternative strategy for the development of women. Srisawang Phuawongphaet (2000) notes that data concerning numbers of women’s NGOs were out-of-date. According to an inventory of NGOs working on women’s issues published by the National Commission of Women’s Affairs, in 1973 there were 195 women’s NGOs in Bangkok Metropolis and 84 in fifty-five provinces. In fact, it was found in 1992 that a larger number of them were working in different areas. Compared to the government’s efforts, women’s NGOs have stronger motivation and greater commitment to women’s development issues and have more flexibility in their structures. Meanwhile, other groups have also gradually shifted their activities towards women’s development. Although most Thai women activists have adopted the Western concepts of starting women’s “projects” and of “enhancing the status of women,” they are different in terms of their constituencies and approaches.- They are either reformist (first wave) groups of elite women with royal links, or feminist (second wave) groups of middleclass urban women with demands for equality and justice from women’s perspectives. The differences between the traditional and the progressive groups become more evident in relation to the most pressing and obvious problems of Thai women, such as forced prostitution (Darunee and Pandey 1991, 1997). As the 1994ActofSubdistrictAdministrative Organization and the campaigning process for the 1998 Constitution have generated more opportunities, a greater number of women’s networks, development projects, and NGOs have taken part in promoting women’s participation in politics (Theeranat 1999; Warapom 1999; Saowalak 1999).

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Cases of women’s prominent roles and achievements in development activities and organizations at the local level have also been highlighted by the media, NGO workers, and academics. Feminist academics who have played a key role in promoting women’s participation in local politics for a few decades signify an increasing number of women leaders at the grassroots level in different regions as a consequence of collaborative efforts among various NGOs and academics. Local women have developed self-confidence from their participation in training courses, seminars, and workshops concerning women’s development issues. Thereafter, they are encouraged to enter into community leadership at the level of assistant village head, then run for the position of the village head themselves. Furthermore, participation in women’s groups organized by government officials also fosters social and management skills, further encouraging women to participate in public life (Udsanee Wannithikul, personal communication with author, August 18, 1998; Nongyao Nawarat, personal communication with author, March 20, 1998). The emergence and development of women’s networks supporting participation in local politics in the North and Northeast during the 1990s, evidenced by a variety of local groups tackling different women’s issues, signify what has been achieved through collaborations between academics, NGO workers, and grassroots women leaders (Saowalak 1999). In addition; an increasing number of women have actively participated as leaders and members in most environmental movements and environmental programs in Thailand during the last two decades (Supachit 1997). Women, particularly those at the grassroots level, constitute a large part of the constituency in environmental and political movements and campaigns. It is noted that women are better at negotiating and resolving conflicts with government authorities in many instances. A conclusion derived from cases of women actively involved in environmental movements is that their focus is not gender inequality. They are concerned about resource-use conflicts and about the survival of their communities, which is closely associated with their roles as providers of household economic security (Sattri That Editorial Team 1996; Supachit 1997; Warapom 1999). However, within the context of gender discrimination and gender inequality, as well as structural hindrances, it is- obvious that women’s participation in public involvement has not increased without obstruction. Based on her longstanding involvement in development work, Srisawang Phuawongphaet points out that women’s participation in local development is one of quantity rather than quality, as they do not take part in decisionmaking processes (Daranee 1993). Likewise, Sanitsuda Ekachai remarks on the basis of her journalistic experience that women’s involvement in grassroots movements is predominantly limited to the role of supporter (Sattri That Editorial Team 1996) 219

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SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS This section gives an overview of images and situations involving southern women, both in relation to specific cultural contexts and to the development process in Thailand. In addition to drawing from studies and documents on southern women, my discussion is based on my interviews with twelve people, women and men, who have played an active role in advancing development issues and projects in rural and urban areas of both the western and eastern coasts of the South (see the list of names at the end of this paper). Ann Sa-idi et al. (1993, 84) note from their review of the literature on southern rural women in 1989, most of which is in Thai, that the number of studies is low. The quality tends to be uneven, with little attempt to contribute to the development of knowledge. However, it is commonly found that whereas rural women in the South play an important but supplementary role in the production of family income, they are also responsible for-managing family money, as well as being involved in informal activities and religious ceremonies. An overview of the situation ofwomen in the South can be drawn from scattered studies and information. To a great extent, southern women, particularly Buddhists, have been located in relatively similar social, economic, and cultural contexts, as well as having experienced a similar range of social, economic, and environmental changes, as those in other regions. They have been actively engaged in production activities, particularly rubber processing, small-scale fishing, rice farming, and service work. Meanwhile, having been socialized to be nurturing daughters and devoted mothers, southern women are predominantly responsible for housework, as well as for making an economic contribution to their parents (Suthivong 1992). In 1993, a research team from the Thai Development Research Institute (TDRI) organized action research projects for nine Buddhist and Muslim villages in Pattani and Nakhon Si Thammarat, for 146 women and 134 men to promote women’s involvement in community development. It was concluded that women have more limitations than men in their public expression and leading roles. Despite their equal input in community development activities, Muslim women are comparatively more constrained than Buddhist women in terms of their selfconfidence and participation, due to their inadequate experience, social acceptance, and education (Orapin 1994). All interviewees agree that the images of southern women are obviously different from those of other regions in the sense that southern women have, not been as tender, mild, and submissive as women in other regions. Such characteristics are also associated with southern men’s images of being assertive and harsh. They have more self-confidence and stronger personalities than those in other regions. However, apart from such personality differences, southern women are essentially in the same positions as other Thai women. 220

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Professor Suthivong Pongpaiboon attributes the predominant roles of women as wives and mothers to the impact of Indian (Hindu) and Chinese influences on southern culture (personal communication with author; February 8, 2 003). This notion can also be related to other scholars’ comments about the impact of traditional religious beliefs (Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian) on the local beliefs and practices of rural people, including those based on the concept of women’s inferiority (Amara 1997). Widespread recognition of the financial and labor contribution of women to their households, which is also evident in other regions, is reflected in the southern saying, “a ring is valued by its bezel, men by their wives.” Nevertheless, when key decisions were to be made, it was always fathers and sons who had the final say. Men also were responsible for dealing with public issues and maintaining the family’s prestige. It has not been until the last two decades that women’s public involvement has been socially accepted. Muslim women’s public roles have become obvious only within the last decade, and in the face of certain limitations and constraints imposed by men. To a greater extent, southern women’s public participation is noted by academics and NGOs involved in development projects. Drawing on their evaluation of the Program for Environmental Development of Urban Poor Communities, Pan-ngarm Gothammasam and Mana Chuaychoo (1997) identify the significant role of women leaders in community-based organizations in thirteen slum communities in Songkhla Province. An experienced NGO worker who initiated the Supplementary Occupation for Development Conservation in a southern village to promote local leadership in 1994-97 argues that the success of women’s groups was outstanding compared to other village groups, as women cooperated well and were determined to achieve their groups’ objectives. Their achievement significantly altered men’s discriminatory attitudes about women’s roles in community development, as well as boosting women’s self-confidence in relation to public participation (Aurasri Ngarmwittayaphong, personal communication with author, August 27, 1998). According to my own experience of promoting women’s groups in small-scale fishing villages in three southern areas, their leadership potential and strong concerns about the livelihoods of their communities have led a number of women to play increasingly important roles in campaigning for the conservation of their natural resources (Jawanit 1996). Ampom Kaewnoo (1998, 26) also notes that women in small-scale fishing families in the Andaman coastal areas, where community organizations have been set up by NGOs, play a leading role in village savings groups. According to a number of interviewees, southern women’s public involvement can be categorized into four types of activity. The first is based on women’s traditional responsibility for providing welfare and services to 221

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*

support the well-being of their communities. In the decades of development initiatives, such duties are transformed into women’s significant roles in savings groups and other social welfare-related groups. The second type of activity is initiated by government agencies to serve demands for development policies. A small number of group members tend to overlap and dominate in all community groups. These groups are criticized for their rigid top-down approaches to promoting women’s participation, which result in failure to achieve the empowerment of women as claimed. The third type of activity features an increasing number of local groups engaged in a variety of projects for supplementary income. Some projects are promoted and supported by government organizations, whereas in other cases, groups take the initiative in organizing themselves to solve financial problems. The final type of activity is associated with increasing natural resource usage problems caused mainly by burgeoning industrialization in the region. An increasing number of women play a predominant role in protesting and campaigning for their rights in regard to natural resource bases in their communities. In fact, such a categorization can also be applied to women’s groups in other regions. With reference to concepts of household resource profiles, 3 household service work, 4 and gender ideologies, it is concluded that the southern village women are not different from their sisters in other regions in terms of their participation in development. Warapom Chaemsanit (1999) concludes from her study that the northeastern grassroots women activists are motivated by their concern for their families’ and communities’ livelihoods and well-being to play a key role in environmental protests and social movements. It is noted that women villagers perceive themselves to be participating as “villagers” rather than “women.” The concept of gender equity is closely related to social equity in ecological, socioeconomic, and political dimensions. A study of village women who have been actively involved in development projects, undertaken by northern and northeastern NGOs, indicates similar motivation for women’s participation (Mattana and Wiboonsuk 1999). All interviewees note that for a number of reasons, women’s active involvement in the above-mentioned groups is vital to the development and sustainability of the groups. One reason is that whereas men tend to neglect their responsibilities in favor of drinking and gambling, women are inclined to devote themselves to their group duties. Moreover, as southern men have strong personalities with limited tolerance for conflict resolution, women have more perseverance and flexibility and better negotiation skills. Phikul Bureephakdee, a longstanding activist who was involved in grassroots movements for two decades, associates an increase in community conflicts with the elections of Subdistrict Administration Organization (pboto) members during the last decade (personal communication with author, February 7,

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2003). While men are socially fragmented by the conflicts, women tend to withstand the disintegration and sustain social networks for acting collectively in their communities. In fact, a number of NGOs and scholars identify women’s femininity as an asset in conflict management: Netdao Phaetkul (2001) discusses certain successful femininity-based strategies utilized by northern women leaders in dealing with conflicts in their slum development project. Nevertheless, Siriphom Khotawinon (2000) concludes about the limited degree of success for women actively involved in the Rasi Salai Dam protests in Si Sa Ket that although their gentleness could be of use in some confrontations with officers, it failed when the officers took violent actions to end the protests. A prominent Thai social critic, Nithi Eaosriwong, indicates thathistorically, it has been women, not men, who are skillfill in social management, including ' network-building, internal communication, and negotiation, due to their experience in providing for the livelihoods of their family members (2002). He relates the failure of local development at the oboto level, which is dominated by men, to the overemphasis on infrastructure construction without the support of social management from women. Moreover, an NGO veteran, Phitchaya Kaewkhao, concludes from her eighteen-year experience of working with grassroots people that in conflict resolution processes it is more likely for women leaders than men to maintain their integrity and public interest while dealing and negotiating with the powerful (personal communication with author, February 10, 2003). However, in spite of the greater degree of social acceptance ofwomen’s public involvement in different southern contexts, a number of men and women interviewees agree that the extent to which such roles are significantly recognized remains limited, even among social activists themselves. It is mainly due to the persistent gender ideologies prevalent in southern culture. In fact, such a notion can also be applicable to women in all regions. In conclusion, despite the images of being relatively strong and rough, unlike women in other regions, southern women have experienced similar social, economic, and environmental changes caused by the development process, as well as being influenced by the same gender ideologies of being wives and mothers. Their greater public participation is the consequence of the development of their prevalent responsibilities in providing for the wellbeing of family and community members, together with the dynamics of women in the mainstream of development activities at national and international levels.

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THE VILLAGES AND THE WOMEN V. This section illustrates the extent to which the above-mentioned issues of southern women are related to women in two villages in Songkhla and Phatthalung provinces. As in other rural communities in Thailand, the development process over the last forty years has brought about drastic changes in terms of environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of life in both Ban Khao Bua and Ban Tha Hin. Natural forests have been transformed into orchards, rice fields, and rubber plots. Road construction and electricity have introduced modem life styles, higher demands for cash, and an influx of information from the cities. Consequently, the once selfsustaining and isolated villages have become closely associated with the market economy and the state. While there are similar women’s development projects implemented by governmental agencies, some differences between the villages are summarized as follows. BAN KHAO BUA IN SONGKHLA PROVINCE

The village is located in the Songkhla Lake Basin, in Ko YaiSubdistrict of Krasae Sin District, in the north of Songkhla Province, at an approximate distance of one hundred kilometers from the provincial district. The village comprises about eighty households. The major source of income is derived from making rubber sheets. Most households also earn supplementaryincome from raising pigs, making thatches fromnippa palm leaves, and selling betel nuts. A number of community development groups have been promoted by government agencies, including a village savings group (klum om sap),a village public health volunteer group (klum osomo),and a village women volunteers’ group (klum sattri asa phatthand). Among six women featured in case studies, five have played leading roles in these groups. The other interviewee is one of two female members of the Subdistrict Administrative Organization (pboto). BAN THA HIN IN PHATTHALUNG

PROVINCE

The village is one of twelve villages of Tamot Subdistrict in Tamot District, about forty kilometers from the provincial district. The village is composed of more than one hundred households. It is located on the foot of the Banthat Mountain Range. Most households support themselves from rubber plots, fruit orchards, and rice farms on the fertile plain, through which four canals flow. Under the leadership of the abbot and monks of the Tamot temple, a group of villagers in the subdistrict have been organized into the council on Wat Tamot Ground (sapha lan Wat Tamot). The council is divided into four sections:, environment, social, cultural-religious, and economic. The council has played a significant role in encouraging public participation in community development projects, including forest conservation. In addition, Tamot is 224

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well known for its community groups, such as a farmers’ group, a forest conservation group, a housewives’ group (klum mae ban), and village savings groups in each village. The remarkable development achievements in lamot have consistently attracted various visitors to the community. Regarding four women featured in case studies, two are the leaders of housewives’ groups, whereas the others are active members of .the voluntary group for forest conservation. One was the head of klum mae ban for a few years. THE LEADING WOMEN

It is noted that during the last twenty years, although women in both villages have never been in formal leadership positions, their increasing involvement in the villages’ development projects is obvious. They play key roles in klum sattri asa phatthana, klum osomo, klum mae ban and klum om sap. The ages of the women range from thirty-three to sixty-five. Only one is single, whereas most of the others are married and have either teenage or adult children. Regarding educational backgrounds, only the single woman obtained a bachelor’s degree, while the others finished compulsory education. Additionally, some of them made an effort to further their studies by taking nonformal education courses after participating in the development projects for a while. Although women and men work equally hard in supporting their families, the women could also find time for involvement in projects. It is noted that only three women who work on their small plots of land can be categorized as poor. Meanwhile, the others tend to have their own rubber plots and/or run small-scale home-based businesses. The common reasons and motivations for their participation are mainly related to the improvement of their livelihoods and the betterment of their family and community members. Nevertheless, despite their leading roles, when asked whether they would run for a local election if the opportunity arose, only two of them aimed for formal leadership positions. All women have a wide range of kinship networks from which they can draw resources when in need. In addition, most of them are supported in their efforts by their husbands and other family members, and this helps them devote themselves to the activities. Although initially a few of the women were criticized by their husbands, they changed the men’s attitudes by proving that they could manage their time well and fulfill household duties before turning to development activities. THE PHENOMENON DEVELOPMENT

OF BAN KHAO BUA WOMEN’S INVOLVEMENT

IN

The following elaboration, which is derived from my observations and interviews in Ban Khao Bua, supports my particular analysis of southern women in development in the final section.

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Women’s Groups: Their Participation and Benefits Since. 1979, under the policy of the Ministry of Public Health, a number of men have been trained to provide basic public health information and services in their village. Subsequently, the Subdistrict public health official replaced the men with their wives or relatives, since the men were usually drunk and did not fulfill their duties. Since 1995, eleven Public Health Volunteers (osomo') have been appointed, with the chief being the only male member. With the responsibility of supplying basic information and services concerning health care issues, the osomo and their families are entitled to medical welfare services, and to involvement in certain social functions and ceremonies, including field trips organized by the district authorities. In 1997, klum osomo Ban Khao Bua was rewarded by the district authority for its highquality performance. According to group members who are also involved in other village groups, the experiences and knowledge they gain from their involvement in the group are most significant. A few members of the lowand lower-middle-class attribute their social skills in dealing with officials, as well as higher social acceptance from other villagers, to their role as osomo.In the early 1990s the osomo were taught a traditional folk dance (ram klongyao) by an official from the District Public Health Station, for the purpose of performing at district-level functions. This was the first time the village women had the opportunity to show their capabilities in public. A number of women talked with pride about financial rewards they obtained from some performances in social functions, and about requests to perform in ceremonies organized by the authorities, including the celebration of International Women’ Day described below. The celebration of International Women’s Day has been promoted by the Department of Community Development during the last decade. According to ’(district community development officials, it was not until 1995 that the Songkhla Provincial Office promoted International Women’s Day by organizing a provincial-level fair that required the cooperation of community development officials and klum sattri asa phatthana in all districts. The 1998 International Women’s Day fair was held in Hat Yai district on Saturday, March 7 instead of the actual date (March 8). All the group members were invited to perform, as well as to show local produce at the fair. The most active klum sattri in the Krasae Sin district was put in charge of the performance. Summoned by the group’s leader, three women leaders in Ban Khao Bua joined the dance group. After the performers agreed on a particular traditional dance, they spent every evening of the week prior to the day rehearsing. Two women leaders played key roles in the preparation process: Kum, the wife of the village headman in another village and the leader of the klum sattri-,and a dance teacher who is a teacher and a member of the klum sattri at 226

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the district level. They were aware that the day is celebrated in many countries to recognize the importance of women. The dance teacher told all the participants that it was necessary for them to take part in such a public event to gain more knowledge about income-generating activities and about how to take better care of their families. Kum had minimal information concerning the nature of the day or the program, but she managed to prepare the performance according to the official’s request, as he had been very supportive of the group by providing a rotating fund for its members. Consequently, it was necessary to help him in return. The three Ban Khao Bua women had no knowledge of International Women’s Day. Nevertheless, without asking permission from their husbands, they gave up working for one day to join the fair. They were not paid for this performance, unlike the klongyao dances they present at most social functions. They regarded volunteering in this manner to be a public contribution, and felt that all villagers should put a certain amount of their time and effort into making such a contribution. For Anchan, who is always tense from her heavy family and financial burdens, such an activity seemed to be a release. After finishing her daily tasks, and without time for dinner, she rushed with enthusiasm to join the dance group. She said, “it’s good to get out of the house for this dance. I can forget things for a while.” On the day of the performance, forty members of the klum sattri from the Krasae Sin District left home in the early morning, in group uniform, to take a bus to the fair, which drew approximately two thousand participants. The vast auditorium was packed with women in dark blue shirts and skirts, and the field was lined with booths selling craft work, food, and agricultural products from all of the districts in Songkhla Province. The director general of the Department of Community Development, who came from Bangkok to preside over the opening ceremony, emphasized women’s significant roles as mothers and family income earners. The governor reiterated the same message. Thereafter, the stage was occupied by a series of performances, most of which were dances and fashion shows. The participants spent most of the time in the auditorium enjoying shows and games, though some of them took the opportunity to go shopping in the market. The Krasae Sin dancers were very proud of their performance. They were also keen to observe how the other dance groups performed and dressed, and got some ideas from them for improvements. The fair finished in the late afternoon. The Krasae Sin women arrived home in the late evening, and two of them went on to work in the rubber plots throughout the night. In otherwords, traditional cultural constructs of women’s responsibilities, as well as of women’s femininity, are predominant in women’s development activities. However, irrespective of the objectives and the project achievements, the women seemed to benefit to an extent from their participation. 227

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Nevertheless, resources.

the level of gain may vary according

to the prevalence of their

Women in the Subdistrict Administrative Organization

(Oboto)

The oboto constitutes two bodies, the committee and the council. There are two female members, Ya and Sri, in the oboto to which Ban Khao Bua belongs. Ya, who is in her early thirties, is the Ban Khao Bua representative. After finishing her secondary education at a vocational college, she and her husband worked as employees in a factory for six years before moving to live on her well-to-do widowed mother’s land for a few years. After participating in the klum sattri, she ran for the first village election of oboto council members in late 1996, having been encouraged to do so at a workshop promoting women’s participation in oboto.(The workshop was organized by a nongovernmental program in order to foster women’s participation in local politics.) With support from the former village headman and from Ker relatives, including the assistant village headman, Ya was elected. In contrast, Sri, a fifty-year-old rubber laborer, has been involved in public activities and social functions, as well as development projects, for about fifteen years, despite her family’ s financial constraints and her husband’s initial discouragement. Her leading role in her village women’s groups seems to be well accepted. According to my interviews, both female oboto council members, on the one hand, acknowledge corruption and conflicts of interest in the oboto. Although they are discontented with the misconduct, they cannot intervene to eliminate it, so they remain silent and ignore such behavior. On the other hand, they consider themselves to be treated well by their male colleagues, and do not feel sexually discriminated against. The fact that both of them had to prepare for and clean up after a dinner party organized by the oboto to welcome the newly transferred district chief, without assistance from their male colleagues, did not upset them, as they consider it their responsibility. I also noted that Sri was extremely busy serving food and drinks at two conservation ceremonies to release fish fry into the lake. The events were organized by the Lake Conservation Club, of which she is the only female committee member. At the same time, the other committee members were dealing with high-ranking officials and influential guests. Moreover, neither woman seems to have any idea about the women’s development issues to be incorporated into the oboto projects. With an awareness of her limited power in the oboto, Sri contents herself with being cooperative and bringing resources to her village. Ya got a job as a temporary employee at the district hospital in 1998. She was so distressed at her powerlessness with regard to the conspiracy of the village headman and the 228

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other oboto members who were manipulating village projects that she decided not to run for the second election in the year 2000. It is obvious that both Ya and Sri play limited roles in the oboto,and therefore do not contribute to women’s livelihoods in their villages. In fact, according to action research conducted in two oboto in the central region by Chulalongkorn University’slnstitute of Technology for Social Development in 1997, when women members of the oboto councils are encouraged to prepare village development project proposals, their thoroughness and diverse perspectives enable them to bring in a variety of ideas, which are usually overlooked by male planners. Women are more concerned with providing the daily necessities to different groups in their villages, especially women, the elderly, and children (Institute of Technology for Social Development 1997). Likewise, Nithi Eaosriwong (2002) finds that oboto with a number of female members, rather than all-male oboto, tend .to take the initiative in introducing development proj ects that promote the well-being of community members. A number of differences and similarities between the two women council members can be identified. Although their positions are similarly derived from their social resources, the categories of the resources are not identical. Whereas Sri was elected because of her longstanding role in providing services for her home village, Ya won her election due to kinship networks, along with human resources derived from her educational qualifications. In this respect, their experiences are consistent with the research finding that members of the oboto councils are elected due to their attributes, including kinship networks, competency in particular areas, and long-term contributions to the village (Institute of Technology for Social Development 1997).

THE ANALYSIS OF WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT The analysis in this section of women’s involvement in the development activities is based on the women’s cases and other data. The issues can also be related to women in development in other regions of Thailand. First, a number of women play key roles in development activities as a result of familial relationships with formal village leaders, particularly the village headmen. Such a tendency is found in a study of more than two hundred local women leaders from forty-one provinces (Aphichart and Thephee 1984). It indicates that most women are family members of formal village leaders. A number of case studies are of village headmen’s wives who are expected to lead certain public activities assigned by the authorities, including women’s development projects. Moreover, the wives of local formal leaders are expected 229

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to accommodate official visitors to their villages in order to support their husbands* roles. Such involvement can be defined as a type of women’s household sendee work, as it functions to anchor the family in the community. Women’s prominent participation in public activities is of significance in enhancing their husbands’ social and cultural resources, as well as their own resources, though at different levels.5 Second, it is noted that most women who play a role in development activities have relatively high level of social and material resources at their disposal. As senior members of their large-scale kinship networks, they can capitalize on a high level of support and involvement from their relatives. Since activities demand time and financial contributions, it is unlikely that women who are restricted financially can leave their work in order to participate. Therefore, the extent to which individual women gain from development activities varies significantly in accordance with their own resources. Third, women’s involvement in development activities is mediated by cultural constructs of women’s housework and femininity. Most women’s involvement is in response to the demands of the authorities, and is related to reproduction work, such as preparing for and serving at social functions, cooking and making crafts for supplementary income, and dancing to enhance formal processions. Most projects tend to meet the objectives of the authorities rather than contributing to women’s development. However, some women participants find that such connections with the authorities bring new social, human, and cultural resources to them and their households. For the women, the opportunity to wear group uniforms and participate in formal ceremonies significantly distinguishes them from other villagers sand gives them a sense of pride. Through the projects, a number of women have acquired new skills and knowledge which not only are useful in their daily lives but also gradually build up their confidence and self-esteem. Some women spoke with pride of their new assets, including accounting and crafting skills and knowledge of health care, as well as development activities which they could share with family members and other villagers. Irrespective of what women gain from their involvement, their learning experiences are differentiated within the paradigms of development. Like the southern women, a number of northern women who play leading roles in the social investment fund (SIF) projects in urban areas have found that participating in different development projects with governmental agencies and NGOs enriches their social and management skills, as well as broadening their perspectives on public issues and social networks. Nevertheless, they never question gender discrimination or women’s experiences of being marginalized in the development implementation process (Netdao 2001). Meanwhile, leading women in the Rasi Salai Dam protest have gradually 230

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developed their understanding of development alternatives and their own “right” from their longstanding involvement in the environmental movement (Siriphom 2000). Fourth, it is obvious that unless they have resources at their disposal, only women in the late phases of their family life cycle can become actively involved in development projects. This is due to the fact that they are relieved from household tasks, particularly childcare duties, or their household work can be delegated to their daughters or daughters-in-law. Netdao Phaetkul also identifies this issue in her study of northern women involved in SIF projects (2001). Finally, it is possible that the experience of participating in village projects can lead women to further involvement in the development sphere. According to a number of development workers who have’ long-term experience in promoting women’s participation in local development and politics, members of women’s groups can be more easily engaged than other women because they have already obtained the relevant social and management skills from their group experiences, as well as self-confidence. In other words, such participation can be a significant initial step. However, the question of whether or not it will lead to less gender discrimination necessitates considering a wide range of factors and inputs from concerned parties.

CONCLUSION Corresponding with the general experience of women throughout Thailand, southern women’s public involvement has been significantly related to the dynamics of the development process in the country overall. Although the images of southern women are relatively different from those of women in other regions, all have experienced the same consequences of development policies, as well as being influenced by gender ideologies relating to their identities as wives and mothers. The extent of women’s public involvement in the South is also dominated by such persistent gender ideologies of Thai women. The elaboration of participation in development activities of the women leaders in both villages testifies to the complicated relationship between gender ideologies, women’s household resources, and the diversity of roles defined by social, economic, and age differences. Van Esterik (2000) relates an analysis of the position and condition of women to their ethnic and class differences within the domains of education, politics, and religion; with consideration of how the domains are differentially valued. I would like to conclude this paper with Molyneux's argument that For many feminists in the developing countries the important issues are how to develop feminist politics which can also promote a general project of 231

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social justice. This implies some commitment to the principle, of equality and to universal principles of citizenship, but in a way which does not presume an undifferentiated public with identical needs and interests (1998, 84).

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NOTES I would like to thank June Ferguson for editing my English, as well as led Mayer and Marlane Guelden for their comments. 1 . See Turton (1987), Warr (1993), Muscat (1994), Pasuk and Baker (1995), Pamwell (1996), Bell (1997), Ammar (1997), Bello, Cunningham, and Li, (1998), and ChaiAnan (1998). 2. See Thitsa (1980), Kirsch (1982), Keyes (1984), Turton (1987), Akin (1993), and Amara (1997). 3. Lewis and McGregor’s household resource profile approach considers a range of resources invested and managed to ensure households’ survival and advancement. Material resources include flows of income and stores of value; human resources incorporate age, gender, educational status, and condition of health; social resources constitute households’ relationships with the market, community, and state; cultural resources are based on the accumulation of status via cultural means; and natural resources encompass water, land and so forth (1993). According to McGregor, the household resource profile approach emphasizes the dynamic interrelation of economic and sociocultural dimensions of households’ coping strategies (1998). 4. Originally, Papanek (1979) introduced the concept of “status production work” by referring to the latent meaning of work. It can be of use as an analytic construct in the understanding of women’s and men’s work in the family context. The work includes women’s unpaid assistance to wage- earning men; unpaid social mobility efforts, such as direct “status politics” in the community; and the performance of religious rituals associated with family status in the community. Status-production work is a part of the social mobility process of the family or household unit. It is an option rather than a necessity for survival, and is undertaken only by those of certain class or income levels with sufficient control over scarce resources for family survival. Subsequently, Shanna (1984, 1986) substitutes the term “household service work," as her research findings in the northern Indian city of Shimla show that women’s work can help to maintain the class position of a household as well as further the formation of status groups within a class. The concept of'household service work can be applied to situations in which the household is a significant and relatively persistent unit of organization with a certain level of security. Women play a key role in constructing networks of neighbors, kin and patrons, contributing to their household welfare. Although they establish the relationships in their own right, they also cooperate in servicing their husbands’ networks. 5. According to Moore, kinship networks in many societies structure the basic links beyond the household and activate a variety of resources, ranging from succession to public position and from inheritance of goods and entitlements to various forms of loyalty, support, and mutual aid (1988). Similarly, in rural Bangladesh, due to the exclusion of women from direct access to major material resources, women’s relationships with family members as well as with other women are one of their most significant social resources, as mutual help among women is crucial to their everyday management of the household (White 1992, 89-91). A number of studies of urban households in America (Rapp 1991) and Mexico (Beneria and Roldan 1987; Lomnitz

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andPerz-Lizaur daily lives.

1991) also note that kinship networks are an important part of women’s

INTERVIEWS Airs. Ampom Somprasith

Director, Art and Culture Center, Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla (December 26, 2002). Ads. Aurasri Ngarmwittayaphong A non-governmental organization worker, Bangkok (August 27, 1998) Air. Wan Khimchan An informal leader of the Tamot Subdistrict group, Phatthalung Province (January 3, 2003). Assistant Abbot of Tamot Temple, Phatthalung Phra Khru Sangkarakwicham Province (January 3, 2003). Air. Pleung Khongkaew Poet/writer and social activist, Trang Province (January 1 1, 2003). Air. Somchettana Muneemonai Poet/writer and social activist, Trang Province (January 1 1, 2003). Lecturer, Faculty of Management Science, Ms. Udsanee Wannithikul Prince of Songkla University, and advisor of Club of Southern Women Leaders in six provinces (January 13, 2003). Coordinator, Songkhla Forum, and social Airs. Phannipha Sotthibandu activist (February 5, 2003). Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai Ms. Nongyao Nawarat University, (Afarch 20, 1998) Airs. Nurayeelan Bilhayeearbubaga Muslim woman leader from Yala Province (February 6, 2003). Muslim woman youth leader from Yala Ms. Wankanok Poh-i-taedo-oh (February 6, 2003). Airs. Phikul Buripakdee Advisor to Rak Khu Khud Group (an active local group in Sathing Phra District, Songkhla) and social activist (February 7, 2003). Prominent academic in the field of southern Prof. Suthivong Pongpaiboon Thai studies (February 8, 2003). Coordinator of Healthy City Project in Airs. Phitchaya Kaewkhong Southern Region and activist (February 10,. 2003).

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Darunee Tantiwiramanond, and S. Pandey. 1991. By Women, for Women: A Study of Women’s Organizations in Thailand. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia. ---------. 1997. New Opportunities or New Inequalities: Development Issues and Women’s Lives in Thailand. In Women, Gender Relations, and Development in Thai Society,edited by Wirada Somsawasdi arid S. Theobald. Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Errington, S. 1990. Recasting Sex, Gender, and Power. In Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, edited by J. Atkinson and S. Errington. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Institute of Technology for Social Development. 1997. Raingan Kanwichai Kansueksa Rupbaep LaeNaewthang SoemsangKlrwamkhemkhaengKhong Ongkan Barihan Suan Tambon [A report on the study of patterns and guidelines for strengthening subdistrict administrative organizations]. Bangkok: Institute of Technology for Social Development, Chulalongkorn University. Jawanit Kittitomkool. 1996. Women in Southern Thai Small-Scale Fishing Villages: Amidst Surging Wives.. Final report. Hat Yai, Thailand: Support Network for Women in Fisheries Project. ---------. 2000. Elephants Standing on Their Hind Legs: Women in the Changing Village Context in Southern Thailand. Ph.D. diss., University of Bath, U.K. Kanjana Kaewthep. 1994. EastMeets West: The Confrontation of Different Cultures in Thai TV Dramas and Films. In Gender and Culture in Literature and Film East and West: Issues of Perception and Interpretation, edited by Nittaya Masavisut, G. Simson, and L. Smith. N.p.: East- West Center, University of Hawaii. Karim, W, edited by 1995. “Male” and “Female” in Developing Southeast Asia. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Keyes, C. 1984. Mothers or Mistresses but Never aMonk: Buddhist Notions ofFemale Gender in Rural Thailand. The American Ethnologist 11 (2): 223 - 241. Kirsch, A. 1982. Buddhism, Sex-Roles, and the Thai Economy. In Women of Southeast Asia. Occasional papers, no. 9. Edited by P. Van Esterik. DeKalb, Bl.: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Kritaya Archavanitkul and Napapom Havanon. 1995. Situation, Opportunities, and Problems Encountered by Young Girls in Thai Society. In Qualitative Methods for Population and Health Research,edited by Benja Yoddumnem-Attig, Kritaya

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Archvanitkul, Napaporn Havanon, and Anthony Pramualratana. Salaya, Thailand: Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University. Lewis, D., and J. A. McGregor. 1993. Change and Impoverishment in Albania: A Report for Oxfam. Bath, U.K.: Centre for Development Studies, University of Bath. Lomnitz, L. and M. Perez-Lizaur. 1991. Dynastic Growth and Survival Strategies: The Solidarity of Mexican Grand-Families. In Family, Household, and Gender Relations in Latin America, edited by E. Jelin. London: Kegan Paul International. Mathana Phannaniramai. 1996. Changes in Women’s Economic Roles in Thailand. In Women and Industrialisation in Asia, edited by S. Horton. London: Routledge. Mattana Samart, and Wiboonsuk Bandid. 1999. Phuying Kap Singwaetlom; Chak Thatsana Lae Prasopkan Khong Ongkon Phatthana Ekkachon [Women and environment: From the perspectives and experiences of NGOs]. Bangkok: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation. McGregor, A. 1998. A Poverty of Agency: Resource Management Amongst the Poor in.Bangladesh. Paper presented at 5th Workshop of the European Networks of Bangladeshi Studies, April, Bath, U.K., University of Bath. Mills, M. B. 1993. We Are Not Like Our Mothers: Migrants, Modernity and Identity in Northeastern Thailand. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley. Moller, J. VW). Education,Gender,and Civil Society in Thailand. Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, July 4-8, Amsterdam. Molyneux, M. 1998. Analyzing Women’s Movements. In Feminist Visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy,edited by R. Pearson and C . Jackson. London: Routledge. Moore, H. 1988. Feminism and Anthropology.Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press. Muscat, R. 1994. The Fifth Tiger: A Study of Thai Development Policy. Helsinki, Finland: United Nations University Press. National Commission on Women’s Affairs. 1994. Thailand’s Report on the Status of Women and Platform for Action 1994. Bangkok: Office of the Prime Minister. Netdao Phaetkul, 2001. Botbat Phuying Chaoban NaiKanphatthana: Korani Sueksa Botbat Khong Phuying Nai Khrueakhai Chumchon Mueang. [The roles of village women in development: A case study of women in the urban community networks]. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Nithi Eaosriwong. 1995 . Pha Khawma Kap Phasin Lae Kangkengnai. [Men’s Lincloth, Women’s Saong-Like Lower Garment, and Underpants]. Bangkok: Matichon Publishing. ---------. 2002. Phuying Nai Oboto [Women in the subdistrict organizations], Matichon Weekend 1149 (August 2 6-September

administrative 1): 39.

Orapin Sopchokechai. 1994. Khrongkan Songsoem Lae Sueksa Sathanaphap Khong Sattri Nai Kanmi Suanruam Nai Kantatsinchai Nai Kanphatthana Muban [Project for the support and study of the status of women in participatory

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decision-making for village development]. Bangkok: Thai Development Research Institute. Pandey, S. 2002. Growth of Women NGOs in Thailand: Issues and Challenges. Paper presented at Sth International Conference, on Thai Studies, January 21-25, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Panit Boonyavatana. 1999. The Making of a Thai Woman. Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, July 4-8, Amsterdam. Pan-ngarm Gothammasam and Mana Chuaychoo. 1997. Raingan Kansueksa Pramoen Phon Khrongkan Phatthana SaphapWaetlam Chumchon Mueang Changwat Songkhla [A report on the assessment of the urban development project in Muang District, Songkhla Province]. Bangkok: DANCED. Papanek, H. 1979. Family Status Production: The “Work” and “Non-Wbrk” Women. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (4): 775-81.

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Parawell, M. 1996. Uneven Development in Thailand. Aidershot, U.K.: Avebury. PasukPhongpaichit, andC. Baker. 1995. Thailand: Economy and Politics. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. ---------. 1996. Thailand’s Boom. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. PasukPhongpaichit, Sungsidh Piriyarangsan, and Nuannoi Treerat. 1996. Challenging Social Exclusion: Rights and Livelihood in Thailand. Geneva: International Labor Organization. Rapp, R. 1991. Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes towards an Understanding of Ideology. In Rethinking the Family, edited by B. Thome and M. Yalom. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Saowalak Chaithaweep. 1999. Khrueakhai Sattri Thang Kanmueang Suan Thongthin: Korani Sueksa Khrueakhai Maeying Lanna Lae Chomrom Kamnan Phuyai Ban Lae Phunam Sattri Phak Tavsan-ok Chiangnuea [The network of women in local politics: The North and Northeast case studies]. Bangkok: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation. Sattri That Editorial 'learn. 1996, Phuying Chaoban Nai Thatsana Khong Sanitsuda Ekkachai [Grassroots women in the views of Sanitsuda Ekkachai]. Sattri That 11 (8): 1(4-13. I

Shanna, U. 1984. Family Status Production Work: What does it produce? Journal of Social Studies 2:74-94. ---------. 1986. Women’sWork, Class,and the Urban Households: A Study ofShimla, North India. London: Tavistock. Siriphom Khotawinon. 2000. PhuyingNai Khabuankan KhlueamraiKhnngPrachacbon Chaikhop: Korani Sueksa Fai Rasi Salai Muban Mae Mun Manyuen Song Lae Sam [Women in a movement of marginalized villagers: A case study .of Rasi Salai Dam, Mae Mun Manyuen village two and three]. Master’s thesis, Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasart University.

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Srisawang Phuawongphaet. 2000. Khrabuanyut Ying That Nai Sattdwat Thi Yi Sip Et [The strategic movement of Thai women in the 21st century] . Bangkok Women’s Foundation. SupachitManopimoke. 1997. Thai Women and Environmental Degradation: Gender Specific Impact and Social Role. In Women, Gender Relations,and Development in Thai Society, edited by Wirada Somsawasdi and S. Theobald. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Suthivong Pongpaiboon. 1992. Krabuankan Rianru Choeng Sangkhom Nai Khropkhrua Dan Botbat Ying Chai: Korani PhakTai [The processes of gender socialization -in family: Southern case studies]. In Krabuankan Rianru Choeng Sangkhom Nai Khropkhrua Dan Botbat Ying Chai [A report on the processes of gender socialization], edited by Subcommittee for Education, Occupation, and Culture; Bangkok: Office of the Prime Minister. Suwanna Kriangkraiphet. 1992. Sathanaphap Khong Sattri Thai: Adit, Patchuban, Anakhot. In Raingan Kan Prachum Samatcha Sattri Haengchat Khrang Thi Nueng [A report on the first national women’s forum] , edited by Office of Prime Minister and UNICEF. Bangkok: Amarin Printing Group. TheeranatKanchana-Aksom. 1999. Ying Chai KapKanPlianplaengThang Sangkhom [Women and men and social changes]. In Ying ChaiKap Kan Plianplaeng Thang Sangkhom, edited by Worawit Charoenlerd. Bangkok: Theeranat KanchanaAksom Foundation. Thewin Udsah. 1990. Saphap Lae Panha Kanphatthana Sattri Chonnabot Khong Ratfhaban Lae Ophocho [The state and problems of governmental and NGOs’ rural women’s development approaches]. Sattri That 6 (1): 72-76. Thitsa, K. 1980. Providence and Prostitution: Image and Reality for Women in Buddhist Thailand. London: Change International Reports. Thomson, Sheila. 1997. Making A Difference: Women in Local Politics in Thailand. Bangkok: Gender and Development Research Institute. Turton, A 1987. Production, Power,and Participation in Rural Thailand. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Uaypom Phanich. 1998. Phuying Kap Phasa [Women and language]. In Subcommittee for Education,Occupation,and Culture, edited by Sattri Sueksa. Bangkok: National Commission on Women’s Promotion and Coordination. Van Esterik, P. 1995. Rewriting Gender and Development Anthropology in Southeast Asia. In “Male” and “FemaWin Developing Southeast Asia, edited by W. Karim. Oxford: Berg Publishers. ---------. 2000. Materializing Thailand. Oxford, U.K.: Berg Publishers. ---------, ed. 1982. Women of Southeast Asia. DeKalb, Ill.: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University. Warapom Chaemsanit. 1999. Nak Kitchakam Phuying Chaoban: Wlthi Khwamkhit Lae Praden Kantosu [Grassroots women activists: Perspectives and strategies].

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In Thao Lang Yang Kao: Room Botkhwam Thang Wichakan Dan Sattri Sueksa, Sinith Sittirak. [Proceeding hind legs: A collection of papers on women’s studies]. Bangkok: Women’s Studies Consortium, Thammasat University. Warr, P., edited by 1993. The Thai Evmomy in Transition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, S. 1992. Arguing with Crocodile: Gender and Class in Bangladesh. London: Zed Books. Wirada Somsawasdi and S. Theobald, eds. 1997. Women, Gender Relations, and Development in Thai Society. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Women’s Studies Center, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University.

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PATHS TO A POSSIBLE SOUTH: THE DHAMMA WALK FOR SONGKHLA LAKE THEODORE

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In December of 1994, a small group of monks at a workshop in Hat Yai learned about various struggles that had arisen in 'connection with Lake Songkhla in the far south of Thailand. They were taken to Khu Khut, a community on the eastern shores of the lake, and told about multiplying shrimp forms, increasingly shallow waters, and industrial pollution in the lake. After some discussion, the monks decide to organize a “Dhammayatra,” a Dhamma Walk that would link the Buddhist values of simple living and respect for nature with a campaign to save the ecology of the lake. I have been learning about the walk since the spring of 1995 and .have followed its annual repetition until the time of this writing, August 2003. In that period there have been eight walks in the Songkhla Lake Basin, each with a different route. The walk has given rise to many offshoots in different parts of Thailand, and has even invited the attention of the central Thai government. Late in 2002, when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra asked his representatives to interview organizations involved in lake issues, the Dhamma Walk leaders were among the first they sought out for information, and proposals. 1 Ironically, not long after this meeting with government representatives, . the coordinator of the walk from the third to the eighth year (1998-2003), Itsara Jeamwitthayanukun, was arrested by police in a highly controversial incident at the J.B. hotel in Hat Yai. Villagers affected by plans for a ThaiMalaysian gas pipeline and gas-separating plant had gathered outside the hotel on December 20, 2002, hoping to hand a letter of protest to the Thai and Malaysian prime ministers who were meeting at the time. Police swinging batons suddenly charged the assembled villagers, mostly Muslim, and arrested twelve activists from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among them the Dhamma Walk’s coordinator. 2

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In response to this and other incidents of police use of force, Phra Kittisak, the monk who proposed and led the first Dhamma Walk and is now president of Sekhiyadhamma, the first sponsor of the walk, submitted a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office. On behalf of the monks and ordained women of Sekhiyadhamma, the letter advocated restraint and respect in the government’s dealings with the people. 5 Kittisak also traveled south three times to visit Muslim villagers beaten in Hat Yai by the police in order to hear their story and to show his solidarity with their right to express opposition to the gas pipeline, as well as to advocate a peaceful approach to resolving the conflict. 4 Meanwhile, Itsara, faced with frequent visits to lawyers and court appearances, felt she would not have time to' do the organizing for the walk. Her paying job as a coordinator for southern NGOs was time-consuming enough without lawyers’ consultations. It was decided the walk would not be held in 2003. At a subsequent meeting, however, one of the core group of Dhamma Walk organizers, Professor Ruengchai Tansakun of Prince of Songkla University, argued successfully that the walk should continue no matter how small and poorly organized it might be in the end. Early in May of 2003, communities in the lake basin received walkers from the eighth Dhammayatra for Songkhla Lake. In telling the story of the lake walk here, I want to focus on how sites of social action, can become important fields in which people try on new identities. I start with the general observation that as individuals discover what they can do in a given social field, they also reassess who they are. As they explore new roles for themselves, they reshape the contours of the social field of which they are a part. But how they do so is all about particulars —of place, time, person, and tradition. The lake walk reflects a unique encounter between a highly intellectual, socially critical, activist Buddhist movement and the problems surrounding an important identifying feature of the southern Thai landscape —Songkhla Lake. The walk is a kind of pilgrimage that maps social, natural, and spiritual possibilities onto that landscape. How does it do so? And what possibilities —and limits —does it bring into view? That is the story I wish to tell here.

PHRA KITTISAK'S

STORY

To the monks and lay people behind the Dhamma Walk, the event appears as part of a quest to understand how social and spiritual ideals can be realized at one and the same time. Phra Kittisak, a stocky monk in his late thirties —intensely focused, with a strong, expressive free, and eloquently irreverent —is a good example. Kittisak admired soldiers as a boy, but was puzzled when they began rounding up 242

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residents of his home village in Phatthalung Province west of Songkhla Lake. Kittisak remembers that the soldiers humiliated villagers, forcing even elders to wear signs saying, “I am not a Communist” as they followed orders to pick up garbage. Later, as a university student in the 1970s, he Joined the democracy movement in Bangkok, and subsequently became a campaigner in the South for various political parties. Kittisak had never been involved with Buddhist temple life, and fiercely disliked the ritualism of the temple. But a feeling of alienation from the dominant society and an interest in meditation led him to become a monk. -He was ordained at a temple in the city of Phatthalung, but quickly became tired of what lie described as the boring life of a city monk. He explained, “It’s pointless. You go out to chant at some ritual or another, take the money you’ve collected over time, buy a TV lie around watching it together, and on like this, just doing this and that.” After three months, he decided he wanted his lifestyle to reflect that of monks in the Buddha’s time, 'and invited three other monks to live in the forest with him. An experience of being lost for several days led to a realization he describes as a lesson from nature, that his hopes and dreams might come only to this —a death in the forest. This glimpse of death came to him as a great relief. He determined that he would not return to the city temple, and went instead to live at Suan Mokkh, the “Garden of Liberation” founded by the. great Thai monk, Buddhadasa Bbikkhu, in the southern province of Surat Thani. 5 At Suan Mokkh he had greater freedom than at his city mat, and he decided to stay with Santikaro Bhikkhu, a midwestemer from Chicago who led Suan Mokkh’s international dhamma center for men at Dawn Khiam. Santikaro had lived for many years in Thailand, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then, after ordination, as a disciple of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. 6 At Suan Mokkh, Kittisak’s social and political interests reappeared as part of what he saw as a spiritual quest. Actually, when I came to Suan Mokkh I was more interested in studying my inner life, spiritual things. But when! met Santikaro, because of his character and his interests, it was as if, even in your status as an ordained person, you could work for society. And if we could propose conditions under which one could work for society in a peaceful way, and with a spiritual dimension, it would help others too, especially social activists.

When Kittisak talks about his pivotal role in organizing the first Dhamma Walk, he speaks 1 with both pride and self-critique. On one occasion he described how his tendency in the past to be “hot”—quick-tempered, quick to react —was a form of suffering, and how, much to his dismay, it cropped 243

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up in the organizing of die walk itself, as when he had to work with NGOs. I discovered once I got involved that it was I who was not peaceful enough. When I got involved I was “hot” in the same way that the NGOs were “hot.” And I came into conflict with them, too. The Dhammayatra was a piece of work that tested me a lot in the first year and in the second. And I felt that if I can’t resolve this kind of thing, then I won’t be of much use to others or tomyself. So it made me examine myself a lot.

Kittisak’s narrative is similar to the stories of others who have played key roles in the creation of the Dhafnma Walk for Songkhla Lake over many years. It is characterized by self-examination, and it is focused on questions about the links between spiritual and social creativity. The Dhamma Walk has been for these individuals a principal arena in which to pose such questions. That they raise them at all links them with a worldwide trend in Buddhism known in academic and Buddhist circles as “socially engaged Buddhism.” 7 In fact, the story of the Dhamma Walk that emerges out of the life trajectories of these Buddhist activists is also part of the story of the ongoing evolution of socially engaged Buddhism as a transnational phenomenon. 8 IDENTITY

AND CULTURAL FORM

One of the main challenges in writing about the integration of personal and social transformation —a defining feature of socially engaged Buddhism — is that behind these terms lurk the confounding concepts of “self” and “society.” The difficulty is that “self” and “society” too easily appear as independent, seemingly solid, presumably known, and possibly permanent entities that are then brought into some relationship with each other. Buddhist writers and social theorists challenge this process of reification, or essentialization. 9 Writing an anthropological paper on a Buddhist movement, I find that I too face these difficulties. My approach here is twofold. The first is to try to retain a sense of narrative as I write about the walk and the individuals who created the walk.10 The second is to adopt the approach of anthropologist Michael Herzfeld, whose argument on reification is roughly as follows. Between the naive acceptance of national identities, say, as preexisting objects, and an “infinite regress” that deconstructs such identities in an unending detour, there is a third path— to accept the fact that we must use reifications in order to survive in the social world (Herzfeld 1997). The important thing is to study how reifications become part of a social strategy. So we should pay attention, for example, to how concepts of national identity are deployed by state officials as well as by ordinary citizens in conversation and in all the minutiae of everyday life. Such strategies make use of an interesting characteristic of cultural forms: 244

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their apparent rigidity and their actual elasticity. Herzfeld focuses on how social actors employ disparate strategies as they negotiate the meaning of the nation. Yet his ideas apply to the myriad ways in which identity-making can be at issue in the larger realm of social and cultural life. In the Dhamma Walk, the key cultural form in which “self’ and “society” are put up for question is the monkhood itself in its relation to a wider society, and, by extension, the role of the layperson who also embraces a spiritual goal and some conception of a proper relationship to the wider society. In the Dhamma Walk, these widely recognized cultural forms within Thai society —the monkhood and the Buddhist laity —are grappled with, explored, and tested, in the context of a cultural form that is itself marginal or liminal in character —a spiritual walk. The Dhamma Walk is a good example of how “control of cultural form allows significant play with cultural content,” as Herzfeld (1997, 2) has argued. It is important to recognize, however, that this “play” in the Dhamma Walk is surprisingly open-ended. 11 As Phra Kittisak’s words suggest, the dominant ethos of the walk is contemplative exploration. As a relatively new cultural form, the walk became an arena for trying on ways of doing things, for solving organizational and other problems as they came into view, and for glimpsing possibilities as they appeared. Furthermore, it is as if the Dhamma Walk as a novel social form were to reveal in its very unfolding the complexity of the project of joining personal and social transformation. The solutions to problems as they appear at many levels amount to partial and tentative trnswers to the question of who the walkers as Buddhist lay and clergy are, what their relationship to the lake basin communities ought to be, and what sort of place the lake basin might yet become. Tentative as they are r the answers have gradually given the walk a form, an internal design, and a way of presenting itself to the communities it meets. THE FORM OF THE WALK

Everything considered, it was perhaps not surprising that Phra Kittisak proposed a Buddhist walk around Songkhla Lake, and that a few lay activists had the same idea roughly at the same time. For several years, Cambodian monk Phra Mahaghosananda had been leading an annual walk for peace .in Cambodia to offer a concrete, nonviolent alternative to the factional politics of warring groups there. Mahaghosananda’s walk had grown out of his own interest in spiritual walks as well as his collaboration with Nonviolence International activists who had had abundant experience in organizing peace walks in the United States and elsewhere. News of these walks had filtered through to Thai Buddhist activists, and several monks and lay people had joined them.

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Early in 1995, an international peace walk in remembrance of the bombing of Hiroshima fifty years earlier had come through southern Thailand. Starting in Poland, this walk joined the Cambodian peace walk and continued on to Japan. Several Thai Buddhist activists had played leading roles in organizing the Thai portion of the walk, among them Phra Phaisan Visalo. Phra Phaisan ' lived at a forest temple in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum and was writing a book on the future of Buddhism in Thailand. 12 A graduate of Thanunasat University with a degree in history, he was deeply committed to a long-term project to revive the monkhood and its role in Thai life. Phra Phaisan argued that state efforts to control ecclesiastical structures at the end of the nineteenth century contributed to a long, slow process of emptying the monkhood of its original contents and removing temples from local control. He felt it was up to ordinary people to do the work of reviving true Buddhist spirituality alongside monks. A leading monk in the Sekhiyadhamma network, his own work focused on nature awareness, forest conservation, and nonviolence training. It was Phra Phaisan, leader of the 1995 Hat Yai training workshop for monks that addressed the problems of Songkhla Lake, who encouraged Kittisak to put forward his idea of an environmental walk around the lake. The Hiroshima peace walk was a vivid example of a form of practice for both monks and laypersons that, difficult as it was to organize, had a certain bold appeal. A contingent of walkers led by monks set off through the countryside after an opening ritual and orientation clarifying the aims of the walk to participants and representatives of local government and ecclesiastical bodies. Monks or others near the front of the contingent would beat a drum as a meditative focus, and walkers held banners indicating the purpose of their walk to anyone who chanced to observe it. Local temples and villagers received the sojourning monks and lay followers, and offered them food in the morning and before noon as a practice of the virtue of generosity, otherwise known as “merit-making.” The walkers stayed overnight in temples as well, the Spartan accommodations reminding them of the virtue of simplicity as part of a contemplative practice. Meetings held at the temples in the afternoon or evening explained the walk’s aims to local people, and local people could join the contingent for as long as they wished. The sight of monks walking long distances through the countryside is of course not new in Thailand. This is the main way in which an ordinary layperson might observe monks practicing asceticism for contemplative purposes (dbutanga in Pali). The Thai form of this word comes up perhaps most frequently in the phrase “doen thudong.” This phrase carries the meaning of a potentially long walking journey carried out as a discipline of living a simple, homeless existence and as a meditation on suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. During any time outside of the rainy season, but especially 246

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in the hot dry months of April and May, one can observe monks, sometimes alone, but often in groups of three or more, walking, usually barefoot, along the shoulder of a highway or smaller road. For some, the element of wandering alone without a fixed destination is foremost. But more highly organized walks are also known. Monks may receive recognition from ecclesiastical superiors for ordaining large numbers ofyoung boys as novices during the summer holidays. Some of these monks choose to take their novices on thudong-Vke. journeys, so that one may occasionally see fifty to one hundred boys in orange robes walking through the countryside with alms bowl in hand. Temples have also been known to organize pilgrimages —in some cases covering hundreds of kilometers —for committed temple followers in order to visit a well-known monk or pilgrimage site. Such pilgrimages often include monks and mae chi, as well as lay men and women.” In recent years, such pilgrimages may more often take the form of a bus or rail journey with only a small amount of walking required. It was perhaps the resemblance of the proposed Dhamma Walk to these various forms of Buddhist walks that made the idea not only appealing but in the end rather well accepted, at least in form, by villagers around the lake. Local villagers could accept it as a merit-making opportunity for both walkers and host villages. Its innovations —monks carrying banners, the beating of a drum, the campaign to raise awareness of ecological issues, the presence of foreigners —were also within the range of acceptability, for the most part. 14

THE EVOLVING SHAPE OF THE WALK In an interview at Suan Mokkh in September 1998, Phra Kittisak told me about discussions that shaped the first Dhamma Walk. Santikaro Bhikkhu and Phra Phaisan Visalo had been conducting trainings for monks in which they used a technique that applied the Four Noble Truths to any given social problem. The pattern of the Four Noble Truths that they applied to social problems was as follows: ! 1 . statement of the key problem (the inescapability of suffering); 2. analysis of the root causes (ignorance and clinging with attachment); 3. the positing of a state of freedom from the problem (cessation of suffering); 4. a description of what could be done to be free of the problem (the eightfold path). Santikaro and Kittisak proposed that a central aim of the walk should be to learn from the villagers themselves what the key problems around the lake 247

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MAP OF SONKHLA LAKE

SONGKHLA LAKE f ThateNoi 1 (Upper LafcJ,

Ranot

Khuan Khanun

Thaie Sap Taun Kang (Middle Lake)

Gulf of Thailand

PHATTHALONG KrasaeSin

•iSathing Phra Khu Khut Khao Chaison Bang Kaeo

Pak Phayun Tamot Singha Nakhon

iONGKHLA Thaie Sap Taun Lang (Lower Lake)

Khuan Niang

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Rattaphum ToChana,\ site of Thai-Malaysian \ gaapipeflne

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were, and to help synthesize what they learned into potential solutions. This method would also demonstrate for the villagers how Buddhist thought could beapplied to contemporary problems. 15 a PhraKittisak involved himself in on-the-ground organizing that took him to temples and villages around the entire lake in order to explain the purpose and form of the walk to villagers and to find out which temples might be willing to receive it. He and Santikaro engaged in a concurrent effort to recruit organizations that would act as sponsors alongside the Sekhiyadhamma network Kittisak also read voraciously, seeking out books and articles on the ecology, culture, sociology, and religious history of the lake region. A two-page brochure announcing the walk described its aims as follows: 1 . to stimulate the formation of a movement to conserve natural resources and the environment, through emphasizing network-type relationships, community, and awareness of local culture and knowledge; 2. to foster cooperation, and to seek ways of forming a religious network for the conservation of the lake; 3. to seek ways of coordinating cooperation among organizations and individuals in the area who have a similar kind of interest in the problem, with religious leaders as the coordinators and temples and religious institutions at the center; 4. to apply religious principles so as to resolve the problems in concrete ways. The second aim made reference to the hope that the walk would inspire monks to take an active role in conservation efforts around the lake. It also suggested the possibility of monks working together with Muslim leaders to address common problems. The third and fourth aims also used language that was intended to be inclusive of Muslim leaders around the lake, referring to satsanatham, that is “religious teaching,” rather than specifically Buddhist articulations of truth. , s The organizers did not intend for the walk to become the key vehicle of ecological and social change in the lake region. Rather, they envisioned it as a voice among various others already working for ecological awareness and sound policy. It was to be a voice, however, that pointed to the inner dimensions of ecological and social change. This emphasis, they felt, gave the walk unusual potential for fomenting cooperation among existing groups; galvanizing support, and achieving nonpartisan solutions. The first walk took place from March 17 to April 11, 1996, and covered some 350 kilometers as it circled the lake in a counterclockwise direction. The walk generated considerable interest, with the number of walkers fluctuating from only a handful to more than one hundred. Walker included 249

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monks and novices from around Thailand and beyond, NGO activists from Bangkok and the lake basin, young students from the South, university professors, and villagers.17 Numerous newspapers carried stories on the walk, and a radio station featured a call-in show and interviews with walkers that it aired on a regular basis through the course of the walk. The walkers collected a great deal of information on the problems affecting the lake. These included: a dramatic loss in marine life; a loss in the quality and quantity of lake water through siltation, industrial pollution, and shrimp farms; loss of wetlands to suburban sprawl and industrial estates; and a breakdown of the local community as lake basin residents turned more to factory labor for their livelihoods. In response to requests from local villagers in many communities, the walk organizers planned a second walk for the following year. The second walk lasted a full month, and covered some 450 kilometers, following a clockwise path around the lake starting from Ranot in the northeast. The first year, the walkvisited temples exclusively in small communities, but the second year, it passed through large towns and cities such as Hat Yai and Phatthalung. While Kittisak had worked around the clock doing nearly all the advance organizing for the first walk, in the second year the lake region was divided up into three sections. The task of advance organizing was divided between Kittisak, Itsara Jeamwitthayanukun, and a local monk who had been involved in conservation efforts on his own, Phra Mahacharoen. .This idea was very attractive because the key job of making local contacts would now be shared with valued allies: a seasoned NGO activist from the South and a local monk who had independently taken an interest in the lake’s ecology. A local monk’s involvement seemed to be a sign of the hoped-for effect of the walk in creating a network of concerned monks around the lake. In fact, however, difficulties and misunderstandings among the organizers nearly brought an end to the walk in the second year. When I joined the second walk in its last five days, meeting.Phra Kittisak for the first time in two years, I told him I was thinking of studying the walk as a production of socially engaged Buddhist circles in Thailand. His response was along the lines of: “Maybe you should rethink your plans.” Kittisak felt his partners in organizing had not done their work thoroughly. Poor estimates of walk distances had made for some grueling days in which walkers covered far more ground than they had been led to expect. Some of the walkers thought Kittisak ran the walk too much like a traditional Thai abbot, that is, making all the important decisions on his own. 18 This critique hurt him because of the tremendous effort he had put into the walk and because he viewed himself as a monk who took the values of democracy and egalitarianism seriously. Misunderstandings and conflicts also developed between Phra Kittisak and Phra Mahacharoen. Kittisak was an educated, well-read monk with a political organizer’s background and an interest in literature and the arts. Mahacharoen 250

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was a local monk who had done an effective job of building his samnak song (sangha institute) into a well-attended community center through promoting local festivals, a museum of local culture, and conservation awareness. 19 No one was more at home in local temples than he. But he lacked the trenchant critique of the monkhood that Sekhiyadhamma’s intellectual leaders discussed and wrote about. And he was a newcomer to the wide-ranging alternative inspirational sources that activist monks and lay people relied on. These sources included the writings of earlier generations of Thai radicals and of the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, and Gandhi. They also included contacts through writings or visits with spiritually oriented activist or alternative communities from around the world. Misunderstandings between Sekhiyadhamma-trained monks and local monks were significant because they raised serious questions about the possibility of inspiring a genuinely local network of activist monks. For the third walk, in 1998, Itsara Jeamwitthayanukun stepped in as coordinator. 20 This walk took a new approach to plotting a route; it was to begin at the watershed forests of the Utaphao River near the Malaysian border and- go north through the city of Hat Yai and on to the lake. The Utaphao was the most industrialized of the rivers flowing into the lake, with an estimated seventy-two rubber processing and other factories along its banks. Industrial effluent was recognized as a major source of pollution for the lake, as was the use of chemical inputs in farms along the river. By walking the length of the river, organizers hoped to highlight the connections between local activities in the lake basin and the future of the lake. The third walk covered some hundred and thirty kilometers and lasted only two weeks. The shorter distances meant that there would be more time for activities within the walk group and for meeting with villagers along die walk route. The in-group activities, an expansion on the practices of earlier walks, were designed to foster a relaxed and convivial atmosphere in order to explore themes of Buddhism and conservation, as well as to help coordinate work groups. Organizers of these activities had learned about communitybuilding skills and group leadership from a steady stream of trainings organized by Bangkok-based organizations like the Spirit in Education Movement (SEM). Often group facilitators or Buddhist leaders from outside of Thailand led such trainings. Meetings with local villagers were of several types. Most consistent were the morning and noon meals, at which monks in the contingent would offer a sermon, expected by villagers as part of the merit-making ritual. Likewise, villagers often expected some form of evening chanting. In the afternoons, or combined with evening chanting, were a variety of other kinds of activities. Often there were seminars on local problems, with invited guests from government agencies, local leaders, and university professors taking part. At 251

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one point in the third walk, we were told about conflicts over an earthen dam whose waters, it was said, would not be available to the villagers living near the dam. Having in mind a dam of small proportions, walkers were surprised to discover an immense, earthen dam perhaps a kilometer in length whose waters would flood acres of once-inhabited land. Our activities included a visit to the dam and a seminar in which villagers asked local government officials about the intended use of the dam and about their rights to the reservoir water. Like many seminars, this one raised larger questions about local participation in development planning. Rituals and religious practices played an important part in all aspects of the walk. There was often a short meditation session at 5:3 0 A.M. Then, upon setting out at dawn, walkers would recite a meditation on compassion, extending loving kindness to all beings encountered on the way and affirming our companionship in the process of birth, suffering, aging, and death. At the headwaters of the Utaphao River, monks led a ritual as they stood on one side of the narrow stream, while lay walkers sat together on the opposite bank just a few meters away. Like many rituals on the walk, this was an adaptation of a traditional ritual to new circumstances. The suep chata ritual (ritual to ask for a long and blessed life) was normally used as a blessing for elders, for example. Here it was employed to express gratitude to and ask blessings for the waters of the Utaphao River and Songkhla Lake. The pattern established by the third walk has remained the basic form of the Dhamma Walk through to the present. Every year there are modifications in theme, route, and walk activities. But the two-week walk covering some ninety to one hundred and fifty kilometers has become more or less customary. Also, walkers have come to expect that the walk will have several elements in addition to the walking and reception at local temples —meditation, in-group activities as well as daily work groups, activities with local villagers that may include expert commentators or government officials, and rituals for both the walking group and the larger collectivities formed as the walk comes through villages.

RETHINKING AIMS AND ROLES After the third walk, initiators and coordinators went through a serious reappraisal of the goals and the modus operandi for organizing the walk. Several things had become clear. The main thing was that hopes for the emergence of a network of religious leaders that could inspire and unite a grassroots effort to revive the ecosystem of the lake basin began to appear highly unrealistic. The walk over three years had successfully organized seminars

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with Muslim leaders on issues of conservation and religion. And subsequent years were to see events such as > the visit to Pa Ron in Rattaphum, who explained his “for elements” approach to natural, mixed agroforestry in the context of Islam. At times a few Muslim young adults would join the walk Yet the involvement of Islamic leaders beyond a few cordial encounters was made difficult by the clearly Buddhist symbolism of the walk 21 Not only were there no signs of a budding Muslim-Buddhist religious network in the lake region, but it had also become clear that no genuine network of conservation and reform-oriented monks was about to emerge there. People began to discuss this as only a very long-term possibility, and several argued that simply increasing monks’ level of cooperation in conservation activities was a more realistic goal. The radical vision of an engaged monkhood responsive to the grassroots rather than to a state ecclesiastical hierarchy was something the Sekhiyadhamma monks could enact in the walk itself; but bringing other monks into genuine and ongoing participation in this project was something else altogether. This was partly because of what the walk contingent saw as the unfortunate state of the monkhood, at least in some places around the lake. An article by Santikaro, for example, highlights the role of the walk as witness not only to economic and ecological problems in the lake region, but also to the state of the monkhood. Along the walk, we saw pathetic signs of decay: wats (temples) cluttered with garbage left over from festivals —the festivals put on by businessmen (not community members) who make big profits off the gambling and drinking (and give the v>at a percentage); monks hanging out all day with cigarettes drooping front bored lips, eyes gazing blankly; the vats’ crockery tossed into back rooms with no respect for the donors; many vats with just one octogenarian monk unable to look after the place, or to communicate with people less than half his age. (Santikaro 2000, 215)

Santikaro hastens to add that this was not the whole story. We also met local monks who were energetic and responsive to their communities. Ithelped that the ecclesiastical governor of Songkhla Province, his temple located in Hat Yai, firmly supported the walk. A tall, soft-spoken man, he addressed gatherings at opening ceremonies and other occasions, praising the involvement of local, regional, and foreign monks in promoting respect and appreciation for nature. It seemed, however, that the>social vision of the leading Dhamma Walk monks, their profound critiques of the monkhood, and the ethos of open experimentation within the walk, made it unlikely that many local monks would become genuine companions in creating the walk.

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Santikaro and other monks pointed out how busy monks became as they settled into leadership in a given temple. This, they argued, was a key impediment to monks playing a broader and more critical social role. In fact many monks who welcomed the walk contingent did so between appointments to chant at funerals or to carry out other ritual obligations. Some were glad to receive us but could not be present because of such obligations. In Santikaro’s view, this situation was partly due to lay society’s exploitation of monks. Lay people, he believed, often wanted to set the social agenda, however consumerist it might be, and then invite monks to legitimize it with their presence. He sometimes even criticized lay organizers of the walk for sharing this attitude, i.e. falling into the pattern of using the monks as ritual experts but making the important decisions themselves. On the other side of the equation, and a further problem in working together with local monks, was the power structure of most local temples. The general model of leadership centered on the abbot, who often held nearly absolute power within temple walls. He could make decisions about most if not all issues relating to the temple, sometimes with little consultation or oversight from others. It was also notunusual, monks told me, that an abbot would share information about his decisions only when absolutely necessary, in a way that kept power in his hands. This sometimes impinged in small ways on the walk, as when an abbot assured the walk organizers that local people would host the walk, but then failed to communicate his decision with enough time or to enough people to enable adequate preparations. The abbot’s power to approve of the activities of monks and mac chi under him also meant that we sometimes heard reports of ordained men or women from different parts of Thailand who wanted to join the walk but were prohibited from doing so by their abbots. All of these were reasons for Dhamma Walk leaders to seriously question the feasibility of creating a network of conservationist and socially progressive monks around the lake. But questions also emerged over the desirability of even the Sekhiyadhamma monks being the actual organizers and leaders of a project as big as the Dhamma Walk. Some felt that monks were poor organizers, on the whole. They had never been trained for that role. Others felt that monks in the Dhamma Walk had done as good a job or better than lay organizers in some cases; the problem was more that it was expecting too much of monks to do the on-the-ground organizing for an entire region. Furthermore, Sekhiyadhamma monks were busy in their own way. Many of the more intellectually inclined monks, for example, had writing or translation projects. Other monks had community projects that required their constant attention. In view of all these limitations, a group of monks and lay people that by then identified themselves as the core working group of the Dhamma Walk 254

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decided in September 1998 that the walk was no longer to be thought of as a project owned by monks. Itsara would be the new official coordinator, and she and an assistant would receive a stipend that would set them free from other work- obligations. A key aim of the walk would be to experiment with ways in which monks and lay people could work together on common, largescale, social projects. How this was to be done in practice would be discovered over time. While lay people should be the ones to request monks’ assistance in addressing the needs of a locality or a region, monks should not be expected to simply provide a ritual presence in activities or projects prepackaged by lay activists. Monks 1 provided a crucial understanding of the spiritual dimensions of activist projects and activist lives—a dimension that everyone felt made for an ethos and a way of working together that was refreshing and at times profound. This dimension also made monks themselves a source of unique social projects and visions; PEN KLANG AND THE LIMINAL NATURE OF THE WALK

In spite of the various critiques and lowering of goals that took place between the third and fourth Dhamma Walks, there was a feeling that the walk had done some things very well. Foremost among these was that it seemed to create a new kind of public space that allowed novel things to happen. For example, one night while the third walk contingent was staying at WatNa RangNok, downstream from the city ofHatTai, it rained heavily. Early the next morning, nearly everyone except this researcher, who was busily writing fieldnotes, witnessed large numbers of dead and dying fish floating down the Utaphao River. Local people said this happened every time it rained. The reason, they said, was that many of the seventy-two factories along the river took advantage of the rains to let- accumulated wastewater into the river. In response, representatives of the walk drafted a letter in the name of the walkers and sentit to all the factory owners along the Utaphao River. The letter pleaded with the factory owners to help make the lake basin a livable place for succeeding generations. It treated the factory owners as potential allies, asking them to care for nature as part of engaging in right forms of livelihood. Professor Ruengchai, by then a member of the core group, commented on this letter while expressing his view that the walks had accomplished something very positive. The first two walks, in his opinion, made people all over the country aware of the issues facing Songkhla Lake. The letter from the third walk was an example of something that went beyond raising awareness of problems: When we finished the third Dhammayatra we sent out a letter, more than a hundred, to factories, to the governor, to people involved. And this was not a 255

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bureaucratic letter. This was a letter in which monks . . . in which every expression bespeaks the monkhood. This is a new pattern that comes out and has an impact on society and confronts people who have certain kinds of duties. And it comes out into the public realm, at least in a narrow sphere. Whether or not it has results we don’t know, but I think it must have some effect, at least on the people who read it.

His phrase, “every expression, bespeaks the monkhood,” encapsulates precisely what the walk organizers hoped the walk itself would be—an expression of the monkhood. The key feature fhatmade the walk an expression of the monkhood, in the view of many of the monks and others, was the stance of the walk and individual participants vis-a-vis the communities and problems of the lake basin. The phrase used most often to describe this stance was “pen klang’ —”to be neutral,” not showing partiality towards one group or another. This is perhaps one of the expectations that 'many Thais hold most strongly about “good” monks, that they not engage in factional battles associated with narrow interests. However, at a September 1998 meeting, Phra Kosin, a monk from Ko Samui and a key leader of the third walk, put forward an interpretation of this phrase contesting the idea that in order to be“klang’— neutral, impartial — one had to be uninvolved. On the contrary, true impartial knowledge of the world that transcended the distortions of selfish, partial views was a kind of knowing that grew out of “direct contact with reality.”22 And this was precisely what the walk was about—a direct, face-to-face contact with all the realities of the lake basin region. Openness and impartiality of views were both the tools that made genuine contact possible and the products of this contact. These qualities let not to inaction but to a kind of action that could be compassionate and deeply rooted for being grounded in direct personal knowledge and commitment. Almost everyone agreed that the klang nature of the walk gave it a unique role in the saga of the lake basin. In practice it often meant listening to local people speak out about their experiences in connection with the lake as a natural resource and as a place to live. During.the fourth walk, for example, there were vociferous critiques of local officials who seemed unwilling or unable to ensure that a duck feed factory on a canal adjoining the lake would use its water treatment facilities. 23 As a result, many villagers in the area had given up on what had once been an abundant source of subsistence and smallscale commercial fishing. The forum, occasioned by the Dhamma Walk’s visit but organized by the villagers, provided a chance to discuss possible ’ nonviolent solutions to the problem. The impartial nature of the walk was particularly important in light of the fear local residents sometimes expressed of local power brokers and political 256

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bosses. Sangop Chusong, a train station master in a small town near the lake and a core participant and thinker in the Dhamma Walk group since the first walk, told me that the public space opened up by the Dhamma Walk was very unique, because the monks and other walkers did not have vested interests in particular outcomes. He told me the story of how, encouraged by the new constitution of 1997, he had campaigned for an open public forum in which all the candidates for the position of Tambon Administrative Council in his area could present their programs. He was tired of local political bosses repeatedly putting up their own people. Two or three others had begun the project with him, but by the end both dropped out of the organizing because of threats to their fives. One of them attended the forum, which was reasonably successfill, but left early so as not to be ambushed along the highway as he made his way home. For Sangop it was the safety and neutrality of the public sessions resulting from the Dhamma Walk that made it a precious opportunity. This klang stance, it seems to me, is something that arises out of the liminal nature of the walk and walk group. Much of what the Dhamma Walk achieves, in fact, can be linked to its unusual status as something that moves through the social landscape of the South but is not owned or controlled by any one locale or institution within it. This gives walkers substantial freedom for selffashioning —trying out ways of being lay and ordained together, for example. It also creates the potential for exploring new forms of relationship with local actors and, in the process, instantiating an alternative vision of the South. What makes the Dhamma Walk a liminal activity? In short, three things: (1) a key feature of the monkhood is that it is widely perceived to be outside the social structure in important ways; (2) an important feature of spiritual walks and pilgrimages is their potentially fluid position vis-a-vis the social landscape through which’ they move; and (3) the Buddhist movement that produced the walks is itself on the edges of mainstream Buddhism in Thailand. Van Gennep (1960), an anthropologist who pioneered the study of rites of passage, used the term liminal to refer to a phase of life cycle rituals in which one was in between social statuses, having left an earlier status and not yet entered the new.one. Victor Turner, Van Gennep’s student, used the concept of fiminality to talk about phases (and later even institutions) within the social process that somehow stood outside of the normal social structural constraints of a given society (Turner 1969, 94-130). During liminal phases of rites of passage, people were often divested of markers of identity and difference, sometimes even literally stripped of clothing. In such circumstances, Turner argued, the common ground of humanity between fellow initiates or participants in a ritual marking change in life status could come to the fore. This experience of shared, undifferentiated human-ness he called “communitas.” Turner argued that with increasing complexity and specialization in social life, certain institutions had developed more or less 257

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outside of social structural constraints in order to realize “communitas” as an everyday feature of life (1969, 107). Interestingly, Turner believed both the monkhood and pilgrimage are such institutions. 24 It is not my aim to subject Turner’s thesis to a thorough critique here. It needs to be said, however, that various researchers contest his thesis on pilgrimage, arguing that often pilgrimages reinforce status or ethnic differences (Sailnow 1981; Eade and Sailnow 1991). Liminality and “communitas” seem to be better understood as potential features of pilgrimage that come to the fore under certain conditions. Likewise, while the monkhood may be perceived as outside the social structure, its very existence relies on a complex interdependence with the surrounding society. Furthermore, its ideal of freedom from the selfish pursuits and involvements of the wider society may be very questionable in practice. This is precisely what the Dhamma Walk organizers, resolute critics of the state of the monkhood in Thailand, argue.25 It is thus quite significant that the Dhamma Walk manages to set up a social space that- is both relatively free of the power structure of the monk’s establishment, and relatively free of any local, regional, or national political hierarchy. In other words, it would seem that the liminal potential of the monkhood and the liminal potential of walking for spiritual purposes were both deliberately sought out by the organizers of the walk. This, I would argue, is characteristic of circles of socially engaged Buddhists in Thailand, who seek such relatively unconstrained social spaces in which to explore doing ' something new.26 The international links of socially engaged Buddhism are also very important in establishing relative freedom from local ecclesiastical or political strictures. At the concrete level, the very presence of foreigners on the Dhamma Walk lends to its liminal nature and helps create the resultant freedom to experiment. It requires no special gift to observe that at the level of popular culture the current attitude of many Thais toward Americans and Europeans is one of great interest. This is particularly evident among young adults, but is present in people of all ages. The fact that there were foreigners on the walk gave a certain authority to the walk that it could not have had otherwise. Without asserting that this authority is well placed, I would simply argue that the presence of foreigners generated interest and a willingness to forgive. 27 If it were only Thais coming through local villages, the expectations of compliance to local standards would likely be much higher. The power differentials of this encounter may seem to be tilted quite heavily toward the foreign side. In most cases the non-Thais who join the walk are economically far more privileged than their village hosts. However, the fact that the walk comes under Buddhist auspices — that is, the foreigners come to visit as part of a Buddhist enterprise —tilts the power relationship back in 258

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the other direction. Furthermore, among those foreigners are monks who claim discipleship with the best of the Thai monkhood. In this way the mixed Buddhist and foreign auspices of the walk give a sense of authority to the environmental aims of the walk. It was not uncommon for a villager or local teacher to say that.seeing foreigners as part of a Buddhist walk concerned with the fate of the Songkhla Lake basin made them think again about the value of the lake’s ecosystem, something they had come to take for granted. ' Finally, what do the foreigners come to the walk expecting? Usually they want to learn about Buddhism, Buddhist social action, environmental issues, and Thai or southern Thai culture. Their expectation of value from the walk experience gives them, too, a forgiving inclination. They assume correctly that they have much to learn, but may well assume a rationale or clarity of decision from Thai leaders in areas where this clarity does not yet exist. It seems to me that this mutual willingness to learn decenters authority and helps create a social situation that is liminal in at least some of the senses that Turner had envisioned. 28 FREEDOM FOR SELF-FASHIONING

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Thai participants, especially younger adults, often commented on the egalitarian nature of lay and ordained relationships within the walk. ‘In one evaluation, a young woman said that normally it is the monks who speak and others have to listen. 29 She enjoyed being invited to share her thoughts and have even the monks listen to her. In fact, activities within the walk group often involve a circle formation in which each participant has the chance to respond to a single question. An example of such a question in a closing circle for the day would be, “What did you learn today?” or “What was something that impressed you about the events of today?” Small group sessions also often require that everyone speak up or participate in some way. These groups are deliberately designed to mix monks, mae chi if present, and lay men and women. Often the walk group frees a decision of some kind, and sometimes this decision is brought to the whole group. For example, on a particular morning, should the monks and mae chi go on alms rounds, thus supplying food for the whole walk contingent, or should some other arrangement be made? In this way, walkers have the chance to genuinely affect the shape of the walk by. coming up with solutions to particular problems. 30 Mae chi who joined the walk were sometimes given roles they rarely if ever would have had outside of the walk environment. If monks were to go on alms round and share the received food with the walk contingent, for example, mae chi would be invited to receive alms as well. While this happens in parts of Thailand, depending on the relationship of mae chi to the surrounding countryside, it is not that common. 31 259

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Skits were a major form of entertainment as well as reflection on environmental and Buddhist concerns within the walk group. Here a question that occasionally came up was whether it was appropriate for monks and mae chi to be performing in skits. The question was notusually pursued in a serious way, because many of the monks in particular were outstanding performers. Santikaro, for example, who had occasionally led seminars for the walk group on the role of the International Monetary Fund in the 1997 economic crisis, was also capable of playing the role of a heartless CEO of a transnational corporation very convincingly, much to the delight of his audience of walkers and villagers. Some of the Thai monks performed very effective caricatures of traditional monks. In one case, a southern monk played the role of the abbot of a local temple who would rather not have received the walkers. Playing up his most rural and most southern accent, he had the southerners laughing uncontrollably as he politely turned the group away: “Well, you could sleep in the graveyard, I guess.” On one occasion, however, the walk group met serious resistance to the performance of skits at a temple known for its austere practices. Faced with either giving up the skit idea or having to walk on to the next temple earlier than expected, the walk group decided to pack up and move on to the next temple. There, in a faint echo of a former skit, the group chose a spot well removed from the main temple buildings —the temple graveyard. The tension between the urge to do something new and the desire to communicate successfully with a larger society, particularly with the villagers who were the hosts and potential allies of the walk group, has been in some ways the key dilemma of the walk Some participants doubt whether the walk has met this challenge, suggesting that the walk in the last few years may have grown routine. The walk group has often resisted the pressure from local temples to conform to local practice, as when a major historical temple (and tourist attraction) asked if the walkers shouldn’t all wear white. But some walkers have also wondered if in the effort to create a good image the walk has not become too austere. Discussions after the third walk on the role of music in the walk contingent resulted in a decision to ban all forms of musical activity unless it was part of a formal group activity. Questions about appropriate dress also came up from time to time and became part of a set of rules subsequently handed out to all new participants. It is possible that such decisions have kept away some, especially young adults. Some walk leaders argue, however, that these decisions are not based on external expectations but only on what is appropriate given the form of the walk as a Buddhist practice. The temples and communities that received us were by no means homogenous in their perspective on the walk or walk activities. On the one side was wholehearted respect and generosity. 32 On the other side of the 260

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t spectrum were monks who refused to have us at all, or only welcomed us after much discussion, as in die case of an abbot who was the disciple of Achan Cha. 35 This diversity, of course, played a role in mapping future walk routes.

HOW THE DHAMMA

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The liminal nature of the walk creates a certain space for creative exploration within the walk group; That same liminality, combined with the moral authority of the thudong, the institutional authority of Suan Mokkh, the blessing of the ecclesiastical governor of Songkhla, the support of Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai, the presence of foreigners, and the relative openness and humility of the Dhamma walkers as guests, also opens up the ambit of possibility when it comes to relationships with the communities of the Songkhla Lake basin. ’ The first major contribution of the walk, Phra Kittisak and other leaders felt, was that it helped create an image of the lake as an entire region. Interestingly, the walkers discovered and confirmed on several occasions that the lake communities once had a strong sense of connection —a sense of a unified region —by virtue of the feet that trade and transportation occurred almost exclusively by means of the lake. Transportation by roads and the increasing salience of administrative districts had gradually created stronger identifications with local interests. In the first two walks that circled the lake, walkers learned in feet that disputes over proposed dams or responsibility for the pollution of the lake tended to involve demonizing other communities around the lake. One thing the walk did was to present a community of travelers who could relate the perspective of people from other parts of the lake in nonconfrontational seminars and meetings. 54 On the grounds of this kind of contribution, Kittisak has proposed more than once that at some point the walk should circle the entire lake again. This feature of the walk suggests an interesting possibility —that the walk in the lake region helps create an “imagined community” at the level not of a nation, as in Benedict Anderson’s work, but of the bioregion defined by the lake basin. 55 The walk’s role in doing so is quite unusual in that it involves such a high level of actual contact with the members of that community. In a sense it is the case that having begun with an imagined bioregional community the walk for Songkhla Lake set out to transform it into a face-to-face community. The seasoned walkers who have attended the walk year after year have in fact had direct contact with a very large number of communities around the lake. 36 From the point of view of local communities, the walkers may represent not only the outside world, of which many of them are indeed members, but also—as sojourners through the lake basin—the region as whole. 261

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This is what Kittisak and others have suggested is an important contribution of the walk. It is also, perhaps, what prompted Prime Minister Thaksin’s government to request a meeting with the Dhamma Walk about lake issues. The walkers have also used this strange insider-outsider status to achieve certain modest goals. One example would be the sprawling garbage dump in Phatthalung Province that local communities complained was fouling the air and water. As a result of Dhamma Walk members meeting with municipal officials in 1996, this dump was redone to meet minimal community and environmental standards by the time the second walk passed through. The walk is often a stimulant for and participant in local environmental actions. Opening khet aphayathan, areas in which hunting and fishing are prohibited, is quite common in the walk’s history. 37 Forest ordinations, though less common, have also occurred. In one such ordination during the 1999 walk, a large tree in a mountain forest was draped in a monk’s orange robes to help symbolize the villagers’ desire to make the forest off limits to logging. Down the hill a ways from this ceremony, a mae chi gave up her white tunic as part of what walkers believe was the first known ordination of a tree as a mae chi. Itsara has said on a number of occasions that such activities reinforce the aims and boost the morale oflocal environmental groups.These groups have often become official sponsors of the walk as well. All such activities project an image of what the landscape of the lake basin could be, both in the sense of its natural contours and the way in which communities dwell within that landscape. But there is more to the story than a purely ecological agenda. A major part of the Dhamma Walk’s relationship to the local communities has to do with a persistent interest in the region’s past as well as in local knowledge and culture. While attempting to be neutral in its relationship to different actors within the social and natural ecology of the region, the Dhamma Walk makes a concerted effort to listen to and encourage the ordinarily unheard perspectives of the cbao ban, the local villagers. The walk’s investigation and affirmation of local knowledge and culture has the important political goal of strengthening the villagers’ sense of pride in their own traditions. Those traditions, everyone agrees, are rapidly disappearing. Yet they could, many of the walkers feel, be a viable and sustainable alternative to the government's large-scale and technologyintensive approach to development. While most villagers seem skeptical, many do object to the top-down nature of many government projects in their areas. Competition between traditional and modem methods of production, can be the source of great privation and intense conflict, as in the small-scale fisherfolk’s blockade of Songkhla’s harbor in protest of commercial anchovy fishing in 1 999. Such conflicts occur not only between traditional and largescale commercial producers, but also between villagers themselves when they choose to align with conflicting sources of livelihood —shrimp farms and i 262

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lake fishing. The Dhamma Walk’s role has been to ask persistently, “What were things like in the lake area forty years ago?” In so doing, the walk raises questions about the desirability and necessity of state-led developments that are seen as the source of large-scale ecological destruction. The walk often involves a kind of casual ethnography that is partly about local cultural history, but often also about old political struggles that are vividly remembered in some of the communities. Itsara spent five years in the jungles of the South with the Communist Party of Thailand following the return of military power in 1976. This was for her, as for many contemporary Buddhist or NGO activists, an important radicalizing as well as sobering experience. Whenever the Dhamma Walk group has gone through a community with links to the guerrilla movement of the late 1970s, the walkers ask villagers to recount what transpired at that time. These encounters, along with the routing o f the walk to reflect contemporary struggles, combine to sketch a sort of people’s history of the South and to create a space for solidarity with grassroots struggles. In the fifth walk in 2000, for example, the walkers stayed at a fishing village that had been the center of organizing for the blockade of Songkhla’s harbor. The blockade in the end was not successful. It disbanded in response to intense pressure as well as political promises made to the fishermen —promises that were hot kept. Ruengchai Tansakun and quite a few walk supporters and participants; especially among NGOs, had been deeply involved in the dayto-day negotiations between traditional fisherfolk and police or provincial or national authorities. They had witnessedthe hardships of the men in the two hundred boats tied together in the port and their families encamped on the shore. On occasions, some had stayed up all night in negotiations. This struggle left a deep impression on those who had been involved. On the basis of the Dhamma Walk organizers’ experience with the fisherfolk, it seemed fitting to show support by passing through that village. One irony of the accumulated ethnography of the South achieved by the Dhamma Walkis that only tiny portions of it are ever organized, much less put in a form that will reach a larger public. This is true in spite of the feet that a number of walkers have written about their experiences on the lake walk in Thai, English, Danish, and other languages, and in spite of newspaper articles and the reports of Dhamma Walk coordinators. Also puzzling is the break that occurs in the conversations and discussions started in innumerable communities but not carried further unless the walk chances to pass that way again. AtKhlong Wong, for example, we engaged in a fine discussion of the feasibility of nonviolent methods of protest. But there was no ongoing effort to work with this community on solving their problem with the duck feed factory. There are some practical reasons for this state of affairs, including lack of resources within the walk group and lack of agreement on how best to make 263

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the walk a genuinely supportive presence for local villagers. In addition, the Dhamma Walk,core organizers have reiterated that the walk’s role is not to solve the problems of the lake but to foster the kind of relationships and understandings that will encourage and enable a collective effort to solve those problems. Proposals and attempts to turn the Dhamma Walk into a long-term, year-round program that would explore the potential of Buddhist perspectives to address lake basin problems have not gone far. The key impediment has been a strong wish not to turn the Dhamma Walk into another NGO that is responsible to a set of funders; rather, it should be a ngan bun, that is, a work done out of generosity and voluntary participation. The contemplative focus of the walk may help explain why many walkers take in large amounts of information without feeling the need to refine it for public consumption. It also helps explain a kind of activism that is not urgent about the results of the work because the work itself is so manifold —from selfcultivation to stopping pollution —and because the form of the effort is seen as integral to discovering solutions.

THE METAPHOR

OF MEDITATIVE

JOURNEY

A Dhamma Walk participant in an ordinary day’s journey may be prompted to reflect not only on the southern past, conflicts over natural resources, indigenous knowledge systems, and the beauty or devastation of the natural landscape, but also on the evening’s skit performance, the allocation of leadership within the walk, personal relationships with other walkers, and whether he or she will find time to wash clothes before running out of clean ones. Needless to say, this can be exhausting for participants from time to time. Nonetheless, the most readily and consistently praised strength of the Dhamma Walk for Songkhla Lake is the profound experience it provides for walkers. While some walkers have serious doubts about whether the' walk offers something of lasting value to the villagers who receive the walk with such generosity, most affirm that those who walk for any length of time will have a worthwhile experience. 38 An important source of this affirmation is the contemplative ethos that the walk has developed in its eight years of existence. This ethos also helps explain the walk’s continued ability to draw participants in spite of the clear limitations on its ability to resolve the multiple problems of the lake basin. The contemplative ethos of the walk is something that, I believe, shifts the center of gravity of the walk away from particular forms of concrete achievement to the ongoing interface between the individual and the manifold experiences he or she may encounter in the course of the walk.

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Walking meditation is well known in many Buddhist traditions, and this understanding of the walking itself has been present from the first year. Walkers are encouraged to use each step, or each breath, as the starting point for mindfulness. This perception of the walking portion of the walk as meditation has actually been strengthened over the years, by making silence while walking the accepted norm, for example. The practice of meditation in designated periods, however, is only the most obvious sign that the entire walk is framed in contemplative terms. Like thudang, the walk emphasizes the meditative nature of the journey as a whole. Phra Kosin’s interpretation of the walk as direct contact with reality made possible by impartiality of view, for example, is directly parallel to meditation instruction. In insight meditation, one is directed to pay attention to the actual frets of the mind and body as they occur, and to observe them dispassionately. This practice holds that by observing but not holding on to or pushing away sensations, thoughts, and feelings —that is, by developing equanimity —one becomes free from the habitual desires and avoidances that unconsciously direct one’s individual and social existence. The ideal monk or layperson extends this self-observation to all he or she encounters in the rich and challenging environment of the walk. How could desire or aversion not arise in the midst of fifty to one hundred people doing their best to organize life together on a 24-hour-a-day basis while seeking to comprehend, let alone resolve, the problems of a region? And how does the ideal monk or layperson engage desire and aversion when they arise? Comments from participants on what they have gained personally or what impressed them on the walk often mention the virtues that in Buddhism are the key aids to self-knowledge. “I have learned to become patient.” “I feel deeply moved by the generosity of the villagers.” This extension of meditative practice into the full range of activities involved in a walk for the environment is of a piece with the interpretations of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who argued that meditation and the Buddhist virtues could be practiced in the midst of a life of work in the world. Similarly, Luang Pho Thian’s form of meditation, practiced by a number of the leading monks in the Dhamma Walk, emphasizes mindfulness in the midst of movement as an ongoing characteristic of the life of a spiritual seeker. The liminal nature of the walk, however, means that it is not an ordinary day at work but rather an unpredictable passage through an at least partially unknown landscape. This may introduce new dimensions into contemplative practice. Like a meditative retreat, the walk removes customary distractions and routines. Unlike a retreat, however, it plunges the walker into intense contact with a complex world. To core Dhamma Walk organizers and seasoned walkers, this uncertainty in engagement with the wider world is most

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promising. It contains the profound hope that meditative calm, patience, and service in the midst of an encounter with a highly complex social and natural world can create something new and fresh. That newness may show up at any level of the self’s engagement with a wider world —from discovering how to enjoy the dishwashing detail, to exploring alternatives to state-led industrialization of the South. The walk’s contemplative focus on the selfs engagement with a wider world assumes a genuine striving to achieve concrete social and ecological goals. The bulk of discussions in the Dhamma Walk core group and in evaluation sessions in fact address the question of how to be effective allies to villagers in reversing ecological destruction. With a contemplative focus, however, concrete social and ecological goals come to be seen as provisional, and relative to the plethora of personal and social factors that bring particular goals to the fore at any given time. In this way the walk resists the pressure toward heated defense of solidified social goals and positions at the same time that it rejects passivity. The exploration of this middle position perhaps shares something with Michael Herzfeld’s middle path between reification and nihilism, in which reifications come to be seen as necessary but provisional social strategies. We must believe them, but we ought to be aware, and critical, of the work we do in believing them. This perspective suggests that when assessing the Dhamma Walk for Songkhla Lake one must consider outcomes at many levels—-its effectiveness in cultivating personal understanding, in reshaping the meaning of the monkhood and laity, in ameliorating violence and ecological destruction, and in affecting state policy. 39

CONCLUSION The Dhamma Walk for Songkhla Lake is a form of Buddhist practice that developed out of earlier kinds of Buddhist walks. Its ongoing evolution has reflected the conviction of its creators that Buddhist monks, in partnership with lay people, should seek to create spaces within society for the simultaneous pursuit of spiritual and social knowledge, and spiritual and social outcomes. In the search for such spaces, the creators of the walk have made the most of the liminal nature of the monkhood and of pilgrimage, lb a certain extent, that liminal space has*allowed for innovations in lay and ordained roles, particularly in the creation of egalitarian relationships. Monks’ involvement in conservation has also become more widely accepted through the walk. The freedom and effectiveness for social and spiritual experimentation in the space opened by the walk still has limits, however. It is the grappling with these limits that has governed the walk’s dynamic since it began in 1996. 266

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The walk is inspired by the vision of a South characterized by grassroots participation in determining the ecological and social future of the lake basin. As distant as this vision may seem, the effort to find a way toward it is, for many of the Dhamma Walk participants, a particularly promising place to cultivate the virtues of patience, service, impartiality, and self-knowledge. As personal as their effort is, it is likely to be framed increasingly by large-scale state initiatives and their consequences —the struggles over the ThaiMalaysian gas pipeline that led to the arrests of activists, and the newly organized Committee for the -Development of the Songkhla Lake Basin, in which three Dhamma Walk organizers participate as people’s representatives.

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NOTES 1. Following this meeting, early in 2003, the Committee for the Development of the Songkhla Lake Basin was established trader the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiytidh. For the first time in the history of such efforts, nine grassroots leaders and four academics were included along with representatives of government- ministries in a 39-member committee. Among the thirteen nongovernmental representatives are three members of the Dhamma Walk core group: Dr. Ruengchai Tansakun of Prince of Songkla University, Narit Duangsuwan, Coordinator of the Project for the Development of Small-Scale Fishing Communities of Songkhla Province, and Phikun Buriphakdi, leader of the We Love Khu Khut Group, 2. Those arrested included activists working on issues of traditional fishing communities, agroforestry, and consumer rights. Among them was the walk’s assistant coordinator for five years, Surat Saejung. Their case was still pending as of August 2003. 3. Sekhiyadhamma (“appropriate training in dhamma”) is an organization formed in 1990 to bring together socially concerned monks and mae chi for discussion, mutual support, and joint action. Mae chi are women who take 10 precepts and follow a monastic lifestyle. While the status of mae chi as lay or ordained is disputed, Sekhiyadhamma monks and mae chi express their stance on the issue by using the term nakbuat, or “ordained person,” to refer to both monks and mae chi. 4. On his first visit (December 2002), Kittisak went to Lan Hoi Siap to learn about the situation first-hand and to encourage the villagers. On the second visit (January 2003), he led a workshop with other monks and a Christian leader on “meditation for the non-use of violence.” On the third visit (June 2003), he joined Muslim and Christian leaders in submitting a letter to the provincial governor and the commanders of the assembled military and police forces asking them to refrain from the use of violence. 5. It is not surprising that Kittisak would have chosen to go to Suan Mokkh. Buddhadasa’s radical rethinking of Buddhism had made Suan Mokkh a haven for intellectuals seeking meaningful interpretations of Buddhism as well as alternative Buddhist paths to social change from the 1960s until Buddhadasa’s death in 1996. 6. Santikaro is an activist who credits Buddhadasa Bhikkhu for much of his own understanding of the inner dimensions of social change. See Santikaro Bhikkhu (1996) for a portrait of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and his conception of Buddhist social engagement. 7 . There is no single agreed-upon referent for “socially engaged Buddhism” in Thai. Perhaps the most commonly used expression issatsanaphuea sangkhom,“religion for society,” though this is quite easily interpreted too broadly. Monks who build hospitals with donated funds, for example, are certainly engaged in social action of a kind. But the term as it has come to be used in scholarly literature and by Thais who advocate social engagement in English-speaking contexts emphasizes awareness and critique of social structures and work for radical change. For this reason, when Thais ask about my research I often say that I am studying that group of Buddhists in Thailand who apply Dhammic principles to the critique and transformation of society. 268

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8. For a scholarly introduction to socially engaged Buddhism and to key figures within this movement, see Queen and King (1996) and Queen (2000). For studies of Buddhism and ecology see Tucker and Williams (1997), Kaza and Kraft (2000), and Sponsel and Natadecha-Sponsel (2003). 9. Questioning the nature of the self is central to Buddhist philosophy. A set of articles in the winter 1993 issue of Tricycle entitled “Dharma, How Green Can It Grow?” provides good examples of attempts to address the relationship between self and society specifically in reference to environmental action. 10. Narratives of course are a principle tool of reification, though an attempt to include discordant voices and sufficient everyday detail may help ameliorate this eventuality to some extent. 1 1 . 1 emphasize the open-ended nature of this play with cultural content because this is a remarkable trait of those involved in producing the Dhamma Walk. Herzfeld (1997, 2) appropriately notes “the uses of cultural form as a cover for social action.” In the case of the Dhamma Walk’s creators, it seemd more a case of discovering what a given cultural form can yield in the way of possibilities for social action and spiritual practice. This is true, I believe, even though the Dhamma Walk monks are guided by strong commitments regarding the role of the monkhood, for example. 12. This book was completed and published in 2003 under the title Phuttbasatsana Thai nai anakhot:naeonamlae thang ok chak•wikrit [The Future of Thai Buddhism:Current Tendencies and the Way Out of the Crafr] in Bangkok by Sotsi Saritwong Foundation. For an earlier statement in English of this book’s thesis, see Phra Phaisan Visalo (1999). 13. Phra Somboon, a Sekliiyadhamma monk who followed the Dhamma Walk’s lead by organizing a forest fire awareness walk around Somphot Mountain in Lop Buri, had participated in walks all the way to Chiang Mai and back along with a number of temple followers. 14. Foreigners, normally five to ten percent of the walk contingent, included Santikaro Bhikkhu, other monks and novices from North America, Europe, Australia, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka; journalists; social and environmental activists living in Thailand; meditators from Suan Mokkh’s programs for English speakers; university students; and researchers like myself. 15. While the Hat Yai workshop where Kittisak proposed the Dhamma Walk took place within a Buddhist framework, Kittisak notes that hewasinspiredand emboldened by the strong activist role of the Muslim leaders at the Khu Khut mosque. “The Muslim leaders in Khu Khut were very clear about the problems of the villagers and of the lake, and they were involved in finding solutions. It struck me that monks in the area could be similarly involved.” 16.1nthiswaythewalkwastrueto Santikaro and Kittisak’s trainingatSuanMokkh under Buddhadasa, who argued for a radically universalistic conception of religious truth. 17. PhraMahaghosananda, leader of the Cambodian Peace Walks, spoke to walkers a few days after the start of the first Songkhla Lake walk. 18. Michael Herzfeld argues that such accusations along with self-defense by the accused are a key idiom through which power is negotiated in Thailand today. His

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view suggests that this sort of conflict, here between young lay activists and a monk, is not at all peculiar to socially engaged Buddhist circles, but is in fact quite common in many areas of contemporary Thai life (personal communication). 19. An established residence for monks that has not requested or received certification by the state as an official temple is referred to as a samnak song. 20. Itsara’s new role was a result of her own organizing experience, her wish to take on activism with a spiritual dimension, and Kittisak’s decision to take on a less prominent role as he became more involved with other projects. 21. Questions recurred over the years as to the desirability of a purely Buddhist walk. This issue was seriously raised after the flood of Hat Yai in 2000, in which many people died, both Muslim and Buddhist. Proposals for a radical rethinking of the walk generally failed for two reasons: (1) the feeling that monks played an important role in the walk, and that the walk should remain true to the vision of its founders, the Sekhiyadhamma monks; and (2) while this vision could incorporate anyone who agreed with the general aims of the walk, it was highly unrealistic to expect Muslim clerics and communities to join in a religiosocial activity in which monks played a leading role. Making monks insignificant to the walk, on the other hand, would basically mean bringing an end to the Dhamma Walk and creating an entirely new entity. 22. In Thai, samphat kbwamching. 2 3. Villagers living near Khlong Wong told us that while many factories had installed water treatment facilities, as per government regulations, the owners tried to cut costs by not turning the treatment facilities on. When villagers complained to government officials, the officials would notify the factory owners of the date of their next inspection. Upon the inspectors’ arrival, the treatment facilities would be switched on. But within a period of weeks or less, the treatment facilities were once again shut off. 24. See Sponsel and Sponsel (1997) for a discussion of liminality as an attribute of the monkhood in Thailand. 25. Dhamma Walk organizers and Sekhiyadhamma monks are not alone in their critiques of the Thai monkhood. A survey of one month’s worth of issues of Nation or Bangkok Post would be enough to drive this point home. 26. Socially engaged Buddhists’ search for such social spaces is perhaps reflective of an era in Thai society very much characterized by this search —an era initiated formally by the 1997 constitution. 27. 1 believe the walk has entailed a process in which villagers grant some license and authority to walkers based in part on provenance from beyond the region. At one level this is perhaps nothing more than a willingness to see and to listen, an openness to novelty based on the interest of many Thais in foreign models and ideas, especially when these come under the auspices of a national or Buddhist organization. At another level, it is rather common, not only in Thailand, for people to grant a degree of authority to a person or group that can claim international status or origins. This is even more true if the person or group holds a place of prestige in the local cultural universe. I do not make judgments here about the benign or adverse effects of this inclination to grant authority based on foreignness; nor do I assume itis characteristic of all Thais in all situations. I only argue that this inclination often gave the Dhamma Walk a degree of freedom in trying out new things.

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28. The very small number of Muslim walkers over the eight walks, on the other hand, points to the limitations of the liminal sphere created by the walk. Muslims who joined as walkers primarily did so on the basis of close friendships or membership in sponsoring NGOs. ' 29. Evaluation of the walk experience was a regular part of walk activities. It occurred almost daily through solicited comments, in a usually highly emotional meeting at the end of the walk, and in written evaluations also at the end or before a person left the walk. 30. The high level of openness to individual initiative could become a problem. At times a monk who knew very little about the aims- of the walk would opt to give a sermon, inadvertently misrepresenting the walk to the community. Some felt that the attempt to be too open, or to include too many perspectives, watered down the impact of the walk. This may have been one reason that Santikaro and Kittisak proposed, at different times to lead a walk of only ordained men and women or of only individuals committed for the duration of the walk as a spiritual practice. 31. On one walk, some of my southern friends noted with admiration the youth and peaceful radiance of a mac chi who had joined the group. This mat chi proved to be highly independent, self-reliant, and interested in philosophical questions. She invited the foreigners to discuss Buddhism and Christianity and presented her views on Buddhist doctrine with great confidence. On one occasion, the monk leading the ritual part of the morning meal asked this mae chi to give the sermon. 32. At one temple, for example, the abbot forgot to tell local people that we were coming through, leaving some fifty tired walkers without a noon meal. As it happened, an ordination ceremony was taking place at the temple, and the family and friends of the ordained — perhaps feeling simple compassion or taking our presence as a good omen —shared their food with the entire contingent. 33. Achan Cha was a monk in the austere forest tradition of Achan Man. Achan Cha is well known for his spiritual writings and for his establishment of a disciplined monastic tradition vibrant enough to spread to centers in various parts of Thailand and the world. 34. The walk also facilitated local leaders’ exercise of this role. Villagers in Kau Yai, on the eastern shore of the lake, for example, were interested in a project to build a bridge that would connect their community directly to the western shore of the lake. A leader from Kau Yau in the southern portion of the lake was invited to attend a seminar in Kau Yai during the fifth walk to warn of possible negative effects of a bridge, based on Kau Yau’s experience of overexploitation of resources and increased commercialization of island culture after a bridge connected that island to the mainland. 35. Anderson argues that the imagined community of the nation supplanted religious communities as a primary source ofidentity, while Herzfeld (1997, 5) notes that the processes of imagining Anderson points to are applicable to various kinds of collectivities. 36. Given the size of this community, even for seasoned walkers the walk is perhaps not more than a very vivid spur to the imagination of a community of whose members they have only met a small proportion. 37. These are normally set up at the request of local monks or villagers, and in cooperation with them. 271

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3 8. Yeshua Moser, a seasoned organizer of peace walks in Asia and North America, argues that this imbalance in the effects of walkers and hosts is an inescapable feature of walks as a form of collective action (personal communication). 39. The relative weighting of such varied outcomes in planning and assessment is itself a source of disagreement and struggle within the Dhamma Walk leadership and walk contingent.

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REFERENCES Dharma, How Green Can It Grow? 1993. Tricycle 3 (winter). Eade, John, and Michael J. Sailnow. 1991. Introduction to the Illinois Paperback. In Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, edited by John Eade and Michael J. Sailnow, ix-xxvii. Urbana and Chicago: University ofUIinois Press. Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Culturallntimacy.SocialPoeticsin theNatian-State. New Ifork and London: Routledge. Kaza, Stephanie, and Kenneth Kraft, eds. 2000. Dharma Pain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism. Boston and London: Shambala. Phra Phaisan Visalo. 1999. Buddhism for the Next Century: Toward Renewing a Moral Thai Society. Think Sangha Journal: An Occasional Journal of the INEB Think Sangha 2 (winter): 71-99. Queen, Christopher, Publications.

ed. 2000. Engaged Buddhism in the West. Boston: Wisdom

Queen, Christopher S., and Sallie B. King, eds. 1996. Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New %rk Press. Sailnow, Michael. 1981. Communitas Reconsidered: Pilgrimage. Man 16: 163-82

The Sociology of Andean

Santikaro Bhikkhu. 1996. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu: Life and Society Through the Natural Eyes of Viodness. In Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, edited by Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King, 147-193. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ---------. 2000. Dhamma Walk Around Songkhla Lake. In Dharma Pain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, edited by Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft, 206215. Boston and London: Shambala. Sponsel, Leslie E., and Poranee Natadecha-Sponsel. 1997. ATheoretical Analysis of the Potential Contribution of the Monastic Community in Promoting a Green Society in Thailand. In Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams, 45-68. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ---------. 2003 . Buddhist Views of Nature and Environment. In Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Westem Cultures, edited by Helaine Selin and Arne Kalland, 351-72. Boston: Kluwer Academic. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and Duncan Ryuken Williams, eds. 1997. Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds,Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monica B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK CONSTRUCTION OF THE BABA CHINESE BUSINESSES IN PHUKET SULEEMARN

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STUDIES OF THE CHINESE ART

IN THAILAND:

THE STATE OF THE

Historical evidence which establishes the emergence of the Chinese in Siam during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially relating to their accidental discovery of lodes on their journey between Nakhon Si Thammarat and Phuket, leads to the general belief that the Chinese had firmly settled in the south of Siam before the early European arrivals (Gerini 1 905 and Blythe 1941, cited in Skinner 1957,1-2). Several factors helped the Chinese to expand their roles in the. early Ratanakosin era: the expansion of Southeast Asian maritime trade, the greater significance of Penang and Singapore as main ports of the region, the discovery of lodes and the continuous flovy of Chinese laborers, as well as a close relationship between the founder of the Chakri Dynasty and the Fukien merchants in the South and in the Malay Peninsula. The Chinese role in local politics, consequently, became intensified (Phuwadon 1987, 90). In the nineteenth century, the Chinese were tin mine operators. Chinese immigrant laborers continually came to Phuket. In 1884, there were more than forty thousand of them. Besides working in mines, the Chinese also contributed to the state in other areas: acting as collecting agents of tax and duty, as well as revenue from gambling, opium, and spirits, which yielded about 40 percent of the state income from all of the Phuket mines. With profits from mining and foreign trade, the South became economically significant, and the central government interacted with these Chinese in such a way as to serve the mutual interests of both parties, economically and politically, while pursuing a centralization policy (Skinner 1957, 110-1 1). The study of Chinese communities in Southeast Asian countries has been of great interest, especially after World War II. A chain of important events 275

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happened in China: the transition from the Han’s Ming dynasty to the Mahchu’s Qing dynasty, the democratic revolution of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1911, followed by Mao Tse-timg’s Communist liberation, which toppled the Kuomintang’s regime before 1949. These events resulted in the conditions that drove a large number of Chinese out of their country to settle overseas. A concept has been developed to give a clear picture of the Chinese diaspora in that changing context. Instead of being regarded as adventurous sojourners to other lands, who would eventually return to their motherland in China, they are now considered “the Chinese permanent settlers” who integrated themselves into the adopted countries’ cultural, socioeconomic, and political context. The issues to be studied, as a result, focus on the problems of intercultural and interethnic relations in order to project how the overseas Chinese society was “established.” At the same time, the concept of cultural relativism enhances the historical perspective and the factors inhibiting or supporting the Chinese immigrants’ process of assimilation. According to Cushman (1989, 222), one of the most important studies on the Chinese in Thailand is Skinner’s Chinese Society in Thailand (1957). Cushman concludes that Skinner expanded his discussion to cover such issues as cultural assimilation and transcultural and transethnic marriages, as well as pointing out religious conditions, government policies, and the Chinese’s integration with Thais. The later studies of the Chinese and the Chinese capital (see Hewison 1981; Krirkldatand Yoshihara 1983; Suehiro 1989) show continued applications of the concept of cultural assimilation, but they are interpreted and decoded to explain more about the role of overseas Chinese economic cooperation in the Thai economy. After 1950, there was a new movement to study the Chinese from the Thai government’s perspective, especially with the introduction of the nationalistic policy and the concept of ethnicity to explain and debate whether the Chinese were assimilated or integrated into Thai society. There were also arguments on “the degree of’ Chinese-ness, “Thai-zation,” identity indicators, criteria of Thai-Chinese, characteristics such as the mixing of Chinese dialects with the Thai language, the Thai-Chinese beliefs, way of life, and choice of marriage partners and associates. Examples of works on these issues are Double Identity: The Chinese in Modem Thailand (Coughlin 1960) and Chinese-Thai Differential Assimilation in Bangkok: An Exploratory Study (Boonsanong 1971). These studies indicate that the analyses of the number of the Chinese based on the concept.of nationalism became less important than those based on social, cultural, and political perspectives as the Thai-Chinese population increased. In the study of the Chinese in Thai society, the ethnic identity has, therefore, been examined and analyzed using various complex concepts.

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These issues were studied at several levels as the National Economic Development Plan approached the end of the 1970s. An interesting work on trade and foreign relations of the Sino-Thai economic alliance is Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1 652-1853 by Sarasin Viraphol (1997). This study records arguments on “the Chinese” who settled in Thailand and played important roles as merchants; tax collectors, holders of monopolies, government officials, or middlemen who helped shape the relations between Thailand and China. Besides the above-mentioned work, concepts in political economy were applied in the study of the Chinese in Thailand during this time. Such concepts changed the historical discourse in the analysis of the new social system, especially in the study of the Thai economy. A very prominent scholar in this area is Chatthip Natsupha, who stimulated a number of interesting theses. Under this conceptual framework, “the Chinese” refers to “the monopolycomprador capitalists” whose profit hinged on the nobility’s power, those who exploited others through the. use of their positions as tax-collectors, holders of monopolies, or capitalist-noblemen. Although the Chinese later became the middle class in Thailand, their position was weak and they had to ■rely on those in authority. Without their own political power, they needed to Join forces with the nobility and the king for mutual benefit (Nithi 1988). In the development era, the Chinese played an important role in the Thai economic development process, both by “creating” and “collecting” the capital. This is because they were part of the world capitalistic system, which absorbed the labor and the resources from Thailand, and at the same time linked the ruling class to this system. Most of the studies regarding this issue are theses, such as The Government Policies on the Chinese in Thailand (24752500 b.e.) (Phuwadon 1976), Thai BureaucraticCapitalism (1932—1960) (Sangsit 1980), The Origin of.the Capitalist Class in Thailand (2398-2453 B.E.) (Sirilak 1982), and Opium Tax and the Thai Government’s Financial Policies (2367-2468 b.e.) (Supapom 1980). Another work on the Chinese is Politics of Siam Chinese: Political Movement of Oversea Chinese in Thailand in 1924-1941 (Murashima 1996), translated by Worasak Mahatanobon, which depicts the Chinese in the course of ideological change in mainland China under the Japanese threat which expanded into the East Asia War. This situation split the Siamese Chinese into two groups: those who opposed Japan and those who did not agree with the Japanese but still maintained contact and some economic relationships with Japan. An important work that challenges Skinner’s study and introduces a social and political perspective on the Chinese is “Pigtail: A Pre-history of Chineseness in Siam” (Kasian 1994), who gives an interesting analysis of “the Siamese Chinese,” “the Chinese,” and “Chineseness.” Taking the pigtail

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as the symbol of “Chineseness in Siam,” he says that it has multiple meanings that vary according to the context. Indicators, according to the author, involve more than the pigtail symbol. Criteria other than those Skinner used to define the Siamese Chinese are the tax imposed on Chinese residents before 1910, die official census before 1904 and 1909, the granting of tides to leaders of Chinese communides, the Chinese’s acculturation in Thai society, and the consequences of the abolition of the pigtail after.1910. Skinner considers the pigtail as the symbol of Chinese-ness in multiple contexts. First, on the relationship between the state and the Chinese, the state used the pigtail as the mark of a Chinese immigrant in the official survey and the control of the Chinese population. Second, on acculturation, one’s view of his own pigtail signaled his degree of acculturation. The main problem here is whether the pigtail owner’s view is the same as the government’s. Kasian thinks that Skinner believes both the government and the man with a pigtail to consider the pigtail as die symbol of Chineseness; the government distinguished the Chinese through the pigtail and external characteristics, but in fact, the pigtail marked the- Chinese identity, an abstract quality. Kasian finds the explanation of acculturation through the pigtail to be inadequate as it excludes political and economic factors that determined the existence of the pigtail. With emphasis on only the cultural factors, according to Kasian, one tends to overlook certain relationship between the state and the pigtail owners. Illustrating this point is the fact that some Chinese commoners or leaders who were granted tides as “Chinese deputies,” chao sua (Chinese millionaires), or kromakam chin (Chinese councilors) still kept their pigtails even though they now belonged to the Siamese nobility. On this point, Nithi Eaosriwong (1986, 16-17) suggests that the criteria to differentiate the Chinese were unclear even before the legal stipulation about the definition of the Chinese. Even those with official sealed threads to mark their being Chinese (phuk pt) were not necessarily “Chinese,” as Thais chose to keep pigtails and wore these sealed threads in order to avoid being recruited for obligatory service, or to have the right to smoke opium. Nithi, therefore, proposes the concept of chek as “the third space" to identify the Chinese and the Chinese descendants in Thailand. Among the studies of the local Chinese, those about southern Thai Chinese focus on their role in Thai economic development. Examples are Phuwadon Songprasert’s The Evolution of Chinese Capital in Nakhon Si Thammarat (1986) and Chinese Capital in the South: An Analysis of the Case DuringAbsolute Monarchy (1987). Besides analyzing the importance of the Chinese capital, the author discusses its uniqueness, which originated from three factors: the melting pot of the local history, the overall economic and political changes, and the social evolution of the neighboring countries, particularly Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, which had certain impacts on the capital-accumulating process 278

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of the southern Thai Chinese (1987, 89). Basing his analysis on an economic and political conceptual framework, the author points out that the basic characteristics of the economic and political structure of the South created the trilateral relationship which helped the royal court, the local rulers, and the Chinese capitalists to cooperate for mutual benefit (1987, 91) “The Development of Modem Businessmen in Southern Thailand,” another work by Phuwadon Songprasert (1989), gives a rough sketch of the Phuket capitalists’ economic and social development, especially the mining business group during King Chulalongkorn’s reign and the post- World War II period. These businessmen were depicted as emerging, growing, and perishing according to the well-known saying, “A family can maintain a business for only three generations.” (Phuwadon Songprasert 1989, 175). Several old mining families are mentioned, such as “the Hongyok,” “the Bunsung,” “the Wanit,” “the Upatisaring,” and “the Ganthawee.” The mining business run by the Ganthawee family became the largest such organization in the South (Phuwadon Songprasert 1980, 179). In The Singaporean Capital: The Monopoly of Thai Para Rubber and Tin Markets (1992), this same author discusses the Ganthawee family’s role in the transnational mining and pararubber business while examining how the family represented the Baba Chinese mine owners’ identity and business patterns. During the last, decade, several biographical studies were conducted on the immigrant Chinese who became “Siamese millionaires” of .remarkable economic influence in Thailand. Inspired by family relationships or writing as tributes to the deceased at their funerals, or simply as social history, the authors recorded the experiences and lessons of these personages or their families. Examples are the study of the Wanglee family in Dut Nava Klang Samut [As a Ship in the Ocean], a book in memoriam for Suwit Wanglee’s •cremation, by Chamnongsri Ratanin Hanchenlak (1994); Thanasap Sapphaibun’s Rua Chiwit Chao Sua LuatMangkom Trakttn Lamsam [The Life Barge of a Dragon-Blooded Millionaire of the Lamsam Family], which is a study of the life and thoughts of Tiam Chokwattana, the creator of Saha Phattana Phibun Group (2000); and Chak Kulee Thung Banlang Bank: Thana Rachan Chin Sophonphanit [From a Laborer to the Banking Throne: Chin Sophonphanit, the King o f Money], a biographical study of Chin Sophonphanit, an important Thai banker, by Sathian Chanthimathom (1999). The early groups of Chinese capitalists stayed in the central region and represented the capital in the financial sector, more supported by the government (as in the cases of the Wanglee, Lamsam, and Sophonphanit families) than those in the agricultural sector. Other biographies record social history, such as Prawat ChiwitKhongHia Kuanglam [The Life Story of Hia Kuang lam] by Amphon lamsuree (1994) and the story of the struggles of Lee In long, an important figure in a transnational para-rubber industrial 279

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business called Tek Bee Hang, described in Chak Kulee Klai Pen Yak Yai; Kan Tosu Chiwit Khong-Racha Thurakit Yang Lee In Tong [From a Laborer to a Great Giant: The Struggles of Lee In Tong, the King of the Rubber Business] by Peng Chao Yang (nd). However, academicians pay little attention to these kinds of works as they have limited access to data and often rely only on official sources. A notable point is that in these studies of the Chinese, their capital, and their society in Thailand, the central purpose is to examine the Chinese monopoly capital groups who worked for mutual benefit with the Thai ruling class. Very few researchers have focused on the “other” Chinese who existed outside of or were indirectly dependent on the state-supported economic movement. This is particularly true of the Chinese who lived far from the state’s power center and advanced through trading enterprises with no direct support from the state. (Nithi Eaosriwong 1984). Furthermore, attention needs to be given to Chinese descendants who five all over the country if we are to understand the diverse experiences resulting from their integrations, negotiations, and adaptations within each local context and the economic and cultural flux. While the Chinese compradors and financial capitalists, most of whom are associated with Bangkok, seem to be in the research limelight, little is known about other groups of Chinese in Thailand. How were their existence and growth affected by state policies and practices, as well as their interactions with Thais and foreigners? What was their adaptation and acculturation like? A pertinent example is the Baba Chinese in the south of Thailand, who were closely linked to the Chinese at the Strait ofMalacca and developed a unique identity deriving from the cultural integration of the western, Chinese, and local Malay civilizations. The above arguments have two implications that will be used for the conceptual framework in examining the Baba Chinese in Phuket. First, the Phuket Chinese have their own historical experience in Thai society rather than sharing the common experience of the Chinese either on the mainland or in any other location. Their past experience produced their distinct identity, found only in the south of Thailand. For example, the Yonya (female Chinese . of the Strait ofMalacca) wear batik sarongs and lacy English cotton blouses, eat Fukien food, and speak the southern Thai dialect mixed with Fukien Chinese. Outside of these conditions, they are nonexistent. Representing one of the main elements of contemporary Thai society, the Phuket Baba Chinese are a crucial part of the town’s middle class in all regards, including culture, experiences, background, status, and economic and political roles. The second implication is that Chinese-ness can be considered a product of the nationalizing process in the absolute monarchy or under the military dictators who intended to found their nation on ethnocentricism, or defined 280

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Thai identity on the cultural .basis of the nation-state while considering any different culture as “the other.” Under these circumstances, “Phuket Chinese” is a newly created identity to be disguised in the changing context. In such a framework, this study attempts to determine the reality from the available data, making the following assumptions. First, the social reality seen or presented comes from the definition produced by a particular society through its interaction with the state, the world, its local community, and the family of the definers. Definitions of the reality, therefore, vary according to an individual’s standpoint and interests. Second, the study of the Phuket Chinese needs to focus primarily on their perspectives, views, and standpoints, and on what gave their lives meaning within the context of Thai society. This meaning and the adjustment to the economic and business roles are the result of interactions, learning, and symbolic signification which involves constant negotiations, compromises, integration, and modifications of definitions. But under what conditions did these penniless alien Chinese settlers, whose real life was in Thailand, define their situations, strive, adjust, compromise, .disguise, learn, and manage their relationships, especially in the marketing world over the borders between Thailand and Penang, Malaysia and Singapore while the state authority was approaching? In the following discussion, “a capital group” has other meanings than those associating with monetary capital, the fluctuating numbers in the stock market, or exploitative capitalists. This study aims to examine the relationship network in. the establishment of the Baba Chinese identity, which affected the business patterns and development of the Chinese tin mine manager-owners who represented the driving force of the southern capital group in Phuket. Their business identity was constructed from social relationships based on the Baba Fukien Chinese culture. The special emphasis of the inquiry is on the Ganthawee family, their emergence during the reign of King Chulalongkorn, and their development up to 1984.

METHODOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF MEMORY During data collection, several questions arose about the appropriate method of searching for the most accurate information, and about the factual basis of the information. In digging deep into the past to construct a narrative, various traces were found: black and white photographs, objects used in everyday life, tools used in production, rumors, legends, or just memories or the imaginings of different social groups who created and told stories about places, fights for interests, love, sorrow, and way of life of the people in the past. The researcher found that many important source persons were gone or nearly so, together with their memory and accumulated knowledge of the 281

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bygone days. She had to pass through their memory, mentality, experience, character, and personality during their narration of the memory which was sometimes lost or selected, or at the same time, repeated a legend about the people in the family. Man makes history; likewise, the Ganthawee family, the product of history, also creates the history of a Chinese group in Thailand. They, however, also attempted to learn and modify' historical conditions; this resulted in both success and failure recorded as part of the Baba history of Phuket. This study is an attempt to analytically search for information and to find layers of meaning of the past so as to link it to the present. The investigator started with a search through old photographs and personal documents. Then, inquiries, talks and interviews of related people were conducted to identify key persons, their developments, the roles of each family member and relevant people. Nurtured by the social context and framed by the structure of the power relationship to which each belonged, these people took part in developing rules, patterns and series o f explanation to construct the Ganthawee’s identity. The history derived from memory narrated by the informants was presented through the point of view of the researcher who examined the past accounts from the present standpoint. Her mission was to compile these vignettes and selectively present or reconstruct a story, that is, to write a history with the present retrospection based on the available data so as to pave a way for others to search further and verify.

DIASPORA, THIRD SPACE, AND HYPHENATED IDENTITY Chinese diasporas around the world began in their social and cultural context, and were conditioned by the local politics and geography. Here, the Chinese diasporas established themselves, adjusted, and negotiated so as to maintain their existence. Many of them tried to make their communities proper third space for their purposes amidst the power dynamics of various native groups who had their own political patterns in their fight for, or effort to create, the third space, which moved along the temporal dimension. During the time when die social structure changed as a result of the mining economy of the colonists who followed the lodes and came to Siam, the Phuket space was open to the Chinese from Penang and Singapore to settle. As immigrants, they had to rely on the locals’ resources and cultural capital, and they combined these with their Chinese-ness. In fact, hybridity is a common characteristic in every culture, as it is a product of longtime historical confrontations involving cultural inequality and struggling forces. Wherever the members of a dominant culture strategically control those with different cultures, the latter will be overpowered and integrated into a new culture on the basis of the relationship between the diaspora and the local culture. In such a context, 282

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hybridity leads to interest in theory and policies, while no concern is given to life, actual cultural practices, economic and political relationships or the social identities of the immigrants who are involved in globalization. This is because “the diaspora is usually made noticeable through the production and existence of international capitalism,” a macroprocess which led the Chinese diaspora to provide the immigrant labor in America and Southeast Asia (Nanyang) during the last two decades. Their position as aliens in Thailand implies marginality, already decided by the central authority, mixed with the local southern culture. As a result, the Phuket Chinese were called both chek, the word the central authority used for the Chinese in Thailand, and baba, the name they gave themselves. This word refers to the Thai-Chinese born of Thai women and Chinese men in Phuket, mostly of Fukien ethnicity, and influenced by the Strait of Malacca civilization. They developed a unique identity derived from the cultural integration of the western, Thai-Chinese, and local Muslim civilizations (Ee 1996). The Baba Chinese in Phuket were generally involved in transnational tin mining and trading in the Strait of Malacca context. The diaspora here refers to the Ganthawee forefathers, led by Gan Chupian from T’ung-An, Fukien Province. After their settlement, these Chinese immigrants blended their own culture with that of the new land. The result of the assimilation is the third space, which is neither of the former two. In other words, the third space ofPhuketrefers to the immigrants’ new condition: the outsiders who are neither Fukien people from China (as the Phuket Fukien dialect is not intelligible to the Fukien people on the mainland China) nor Thais. They are a new breed of Chinese, the sum of the negotiation influenced by the Baba Chinese in Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and mainland China, as well as the natives. This transnational culture contributed to the mine owners’ business success because it helped with their access to information, labor, and lines of political authority that conferred economic benefits and resources, as well as the transnational movement of capital within the same ethnic group under the Thai government’s efforts to assert control. At the same time, these , Phuket Baba Chinese employed the system as a tool to get laborers to help the mine owners’ production on the basis ofpatronage or kinship relationships, which helped lessen violence caused by conflicts. What, differentiates the Baba Chinese mine owners in Phuket from those in other places is their business patterns and expansion, as well as the transformation of production, which depended on experience and skill as well as business relations fostered through kinship and shared ethnicity. After they adaptedto become another type of Chinese who could move as far as their capital extended, their identity also changed during the negotiation for new conditions. These .business patterns and their development will be pursued in the following study, which highlights the dynamism in the perspective of the Baba Chinese. 283

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK SUCCESS

BEHIND BABA CHINESE BUSINESS

The period examined here, covering two generations of the Ganthawee family, is from 1897, when Gan Chupian, the family’s founding father, settled in Thailand during King Chulalongkorn’s reign until 1984, when Chaisin Ganthawee (the third son of Gan Chupian) ended his company presidency. This period can be divided into three phases. The first is the creation of Chin Teik by Gan Chupian. The second is the founding of the Ganthawee Brothers Company Limited by Chaileng (Panya Ganthawee, the first son of Gan Chupian). The third phase is the expansion and the move toward modem industry led by Chaisin, the third son of Gan Chupian (who graduated from Shanghai during Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s period). If the genesis of a family —its existence and expansion —are only a matter of number, then biological procreation is the rule in developing every human family. In fact the family existence and expansion are acculturated, as vividly illustrated in the case of the Ganthawee clan, which has assumed a prominent economic role in the social history of Phuket, developing a local business kingdom to achieve national and finally transnational status. Their cultural significance lies in their being “Phuket Chinese.” The space that hosts the two cultures underlies the hyphenated identities; the Chinese-ness and the Phuket Thai-ness. This hybridity, called “Baba Chinese” by those at the Strait of Malacca, came from the Chinese immigrants who assimilated themselves into the local way of life and married Phuket women whose backgrounds were closely related to those of the Baba Chinese in Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and many other cities on the Malay Peninsula. The resulting cultural integration can be traced back to at least three sources: the mainland Chinese culture, Malaysian culture (Chinese-Muslim culture influenced by western culture adopted by the Baba, especially from Penang), and the culture of local Phuket Thais. The Baba Chinese culture that many Chinese immigrants such as the Ganthawee family adopted was distinctly Phuket style. (The town was then the crossroads of the Chinese from Penang, Malacca, and Medan, as well as those immigrants from mainland China.) It is insufficient to consider the economic and political structure as the only key to an opportunity to become merchants or great capital groups. The pattern of emergence, existence, and expansion did not occur in every Phuket Chinese family; some could move up while some could not, or else rose and slipped down again. The crucial condition was very likely a social and cultural one. In each relational system, the outcome of an adaptation or negotiation was a hyphenated identity that moved toward the assimilation of the shifting Phuket Baba Chinese into the new context during the mining period. A thorough understanding can come from an investigation into the interactions of groups 284

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of people with diverse cultures and definitions of the situation, in order to discern the conditions under which they adjusted themselves or created negotiating power to maintain their family ground. The study reveals that the Ganthawee group grew from mining and agriculture with relational layers of diverse cultural perspectives. The first layer is their Baba Chinese membership: the intrarelationships of the Ganthawee family members who married, befriended and associated in business with Baba Chinese. Five of the six sisters-in-law of Chaileng’s generation were all Baba Chinese mine owners’ daughters. The second layer is their Fukien Chinese circle, which provided the context for their work as well as their life. Here they could find their friends, relatives, colleagues, and employees, all of whom frequented the same places and enjoyed the same type of food and way of life, which was then closer to those in Penang, Singapore, andTaiwan than those in Bangkok For example, their manpower and capital were those of this region. Their articles of clothing also shared similarities. (The Phuket Chinese’s shoes were embroidered in Phuket and made into shoes in Penang.) Ceremonies such as weddings were alike. The increasing centralization of power, especially after World War II, and the government’s anti-Chinese policy affected the economic and financial bases in Phuket, as well as regulations. The Ganthawee group gradually extended its base to Bangkok. The key conditions that led to this shift were the gateways to certain socioeconomic and political opportunities that were perceived after working strategies were developed to build the business from an ordinary self-made family enterprise into a Thai leader in mining and rubber. It is found that the Ganthawee group has built up and maintained its network through at least three channels: regional, national, and local. The first is the gateway to the Southeast Asian region, especially during the imperialistic period, when ore was expensive in die world market. The Fukien Baba Chinese in Malaysia, Penang, Singapore, and Indonesia had a very intense relational network with the foreign economic base in Penang. With their close connections to Penang and Singapore associates and Baba Chinese agents, they used their Mandarin Chinese and the Fukien dialect to conduct an ore trade with westerners. This indirect western contact gave them valuable technology and knowledge. They could fix' foreign market prices of ore and rubber as well as form business information networks that increased their opportunities. Such in-depth linkages and their shared experience brought secure and continuing business benefits and reduced future risks. "Yet maintaining this situation was not easy; it required trust and certain common codes of practice which transformed Phuket into “Little Penang.”The second gateway opened to the state, and their connection at this level gave them the business negotiating power to have a say about both local and national regulations. Against the backdrop of increasing centralization brought 285

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about by King Chulalongkorn’s reforms, the Ganthawee group attempted to develop a comprehensive mining business: obtaining mining concessions, operating different types of mines, trading in ore, and owning ocean-liners for wholesale trade in Penang and Singapore in order to avoid state intervention. However, they have kept a good relationship with the state because they currently need to deal with the state even more extensively in mining and international business, now that the traditional agricultural business is inadequate. The third is the gateway to the community through the relational network of local officials, village heads, villagers, and relatives. In everyday practice, the Ganthawee group lived with these people and paid attention to all types of.relationships with them. They skillfully managed the company system and put more emphasis on community members and community leaders than politicians at the national level, for the agricultural business is tied to its locality and its market in Penang and Singapore. A family group with the Phuket Baba Chinese hyphenated identity requires five major conditions to establish itself and to expand its business through the three channels described. These conditions, as outlined below, are the Ganthawee family’s special cultural capital.

ASSIMILATION THROUGH THE NETWORK OF THE WOMEN’S FAMILIES In the past, the gender sphere was clearly divided according to each gender’s assigned labor. Traditionally, women in the family took care of housekeeping and child rearing, quite separate from men’s work. Women’s familiar zone was the home and related matters: housework, clothing, childcare, and cooking, as well as informal home economic activities such as food production and processing. This arrangement can be seen in the Ganthawee family. The Chinese immigrant Gan Chupian was married into the family of his wife, Tang-O. As the oldest son-in-law, he supported his wife’s poor family by starting the Chin-Teik store, which traded in both ore and groceries. Gan Chupian had eight sons and two daughters: Chaileng, Ngekki, Ngekhua, Chaitee, Chaisin, Chaihui, Chaikhim, Chaikee (who died at age seventeen), Chaikeng and Chaihuai. When his youngest son was only seven months old, Gan Chupian died, leaving his oldest son Chaileng, twentythree years of age, to support the family. Chaileng was at that time in Huai "iot, Trang Province, working as an apprentice to his father’s friend in the rubber and mining trade with Malaysia. He had to return home to continue his father’s work at the Chin-Teik store while trying to find additional work He later went to Kantang with Chaitee to start another business, while Chaisin 286

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I and Chaihui sold sweets made by ,their mother and the two elder sisters. Clearly, the female members of the family laid a substantial foundation: lifegiving, maintaining their tradition, bringing up children, and enhancing their quality of life. What Tang-O repeatedly preached to her children was esprit de corps in the family —to be like a bundle of bamboos that, once tied together,* cannot be broken. Related points she emphasized were: if a conflict arises in the family, minimize the big one and eradicate the small one; don’t take out “the fire” from home nor bring in “the fire” from outside (i.e. don’t tell others our family problems and don’t talk about others’ problems at home); and the elder siblings must take care of the younger ones, while the younger ones must respect the elder ones. These precepts influenced the way of thinking and practices of the Ganthawee family so much that other people considered the family “the model of unity among brothers and sisters.” Besides the emphasis on family devotion, Tang-O taught her children to solve their problems as soon as possible. She also considered thriftiness a very important value, and saving money the key to the accumulation of capital for bigger trade. She trained her children to be hardworking. Chaileng and Chaisin often said to their children that there was much money along the road. Both of them worked without holidays. On weekends, they took their children with them to oversee the work at the mines and the rubber plantations. If the children slept in the car, their parents would wake them up to observe things on the sides of the road. Chaisin loved traveling by car, considering it an opportunity to find new ways of expanding business. Their poverty in childhood united the siblings in their effort to make their family the shared production unit. Their mother, Tang-O, was responsible for building up the family’s consciousness of their common goal. She treated her children fairly (i.e. her sons and daughters were equally important), and grandchildren as well (i.e. those from her sons were the same as those from her daughters). As long as she was alive, everyone could live in “the main house,” and receive an equal share of benefit. The justice that her children enjoyed strengthened the harmony among the Ganthawee family members, while their firm belief in gratitude helped enhance their family structure: the younger must obey the older, children must obey their parents, and wives must obey their husbands and their mothers-in-law. The Ganthawee women were responsible for cooking and for processing fruits for additional income. To maintain family harmony, the matriarch TangO taught her daughters-in-law not to be chin kao kui, the Phuket Fukien word referring to the wife who encourages her husband when they are together at night to follow a wicked course. The implication is that one should deal with conflict openly during the day rather than? being incited to suspicion, which can lead to disharmony. It is noteworthy that Tang-O was determined 287

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to eradicate any family conflicts or troubles to achieve peacefulness; she acted as a judge or a peacekeeper for her children and their wives. In this main house lived Tang-O’s mother, who was well attended upon by her daughter until her death at age ninety-four in 1960. One can find here generations of the clan living together under certain traditional rules that governed these multirelational layers. Every day, every family member at this living complex came to the main house for meals provided by the women: first, a special set of food for children, then another set on a round table for the brothers who had to go to work for the family company. The latter generally had their meals together so that they could share information or discuss business matters. The women ate last, washed the dishes, and did all the housework. Even when the family became well-off, they still joined in activities such as sewing ore bags, bunching up rambutans for sale, pickling sato beans (Azadirachta indicd),shredding coconut meat, and making coconut ' oil. These activities went on all the time at the ore-drying ground, where the women and children worked together while handing down stories or knowledge from one generation to another. This ground, in the back of the common main house at 18 Yaowarat Road, therefore can boast of numerous stories of many generations. When Tang-O passed away in 1969, Udomlak, her daughter-in-law from the Thongton family, assumed the important role of overseeing the transmission of traditions, together with Chaisin, who was then the leader of the family and the Ganthawee Brothers Company Limited (Chaileng or Panya Ganthawee died in 1967 in Penang, where he had worked since 1958 to build up a major business base.) In the past, the Ganthawees conducted business in the communal company system called kongsi in the Thai Chinese dialect, which refers to an organization with a headquarters where the Ganthawee brothers worked together with their subordinates. All the sisters-in-law prepared the lunch to be delivered to everyone at the headquarters. This demanding responsibility made these women appear calm, sober, and tough. Besides being in charge of the main household and its members, Udomlak, the family matriarch after Tang-O, was responsible for the family ceremonial functions. The most important one was the arrangement of the ceremonies at Khao Bong 1 on Tomb-Sweeping Day in April, which is the family reunion day. After this, she had to cake care of the ancestor altar at the main house and provide food for all the family members, relatives, dependants, and guests. Generally the clan leaders thought of their family as an organization of smaller family units; they never limited things to their own immediate family. In the Ganthawee clan, it is clear that women were an important mechanism behind business success and the transmission of the Phuket Baba Chinese culture.

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OF THE BABA CHINESE BUSINESSES IN PHUKET

BROTHERHOOD The brotherhood among Tang-O’s seven sons was another significant factor in the Ganthawee business group’s rapid growth, and can be divided into three phases. The pioneering phase was under the leadership of Chaileng and Chaitee. When Chaileng was nineteen, his father, Gan Chupian, sent him to be apprenticed to Ma Yian, Chupian’s friend who engaged in rubber and ore trading with Penang firms. This was because Chupian found the Chin Teik store’s ore business too limited to bring wealth. After his father’s death four years later, Chaileng'returned home to run the store. At this time, Chaitee had to go back and forth between Bangkok, Kantang (a district in Trang) and Phuket in order to run a trade of dried betel, rice, and sugar. The journeys were very difficult at that time, and sometimes, he had to travel by junk to Penang. As this was hazardous and yielded little profit, Chaileng consulted his mother; about a plan for his brothers’ better education so that they could improve their work prospects while returning to their Chinese roots. As a result, Chaisin and Chaihui were sent to study in Shanghai, and Chaikhim went to study in Penang, and later in Hong Kong. These three brothers were active during the second phas'e: consolidating. The sixth brother, Chaikee, grew up during the nationalism period, and therefore had to study in Bangkok. He died at age seventeen. The two youngest brothers, Chaikeng and Chaihuai, belonged to the third phase of their family business: stability. Chaihuai grew up in Bangkok and was the only brother who graduated from a school in the United States. With his degree in economics from Boston University, he returned home in 1956, during a period when Thailand was being influenced by the United States. Guided by some high-ranking police officers, Chaileng told his youngest brother to work in the police department. The central propelling force of the Ganthewee business expansion was in fact this brotherhood —the teamwork and unity that formed a strong human resources foundation. The expertise of each brother helped to quickly extend the family’s empire to several provinces. Before World War H, the income came from Chaileng and Chaitee’s work: an opium den in Phuket, sawmills at Huai Yot, distilleries in Songkhla, Phuket, Ranong, and Chumpon, and the trade of various goods between Bangkok, Kantang, and Penang. They were sometimes supported by their wives’ relatives. Occasionally they failed, being cheated by relatives or friends, or mistreated by government authority, but their family was always the reliable crutch and social monitor, admonishing the brothers who caused problems. Mistakes or failures served to bring the brothers together in their attempts to overcome obstacles or to survive. The significant turning point for the family came during World War IT, when Chaisin and Chaihui were called back home from Shanghai. Chaikhim, who 289

SULEEMARN N. WONGSUPHAP

was studying dentistry in Hong Kong, had to bring Chaihui home because the latter was applying to be a Chinese volunteer soldier in the war. Chaikeng was also told to return home from Penang. Chaileng then gave his brothers assignments fitting each person’s expertise, and put them in charge of their businesses at their various bases, which were expanded to other countries. A significant characteristic of the Ganthawee brothers was their ability to combine specializations through teamwork With his brothers, Chaileng planned business policies and made important decisions, while the lively and gregarious Chaitee was on the lookout for business opportunities as he could relate very well to people of all levels and knew what businesses should b e the focus. Being conscientious, Chaisin was in charge of the family’s major operations and oversaw fieldwork in the mines and rubber plantations. Chaihui, on the other hand, was responsible for financial and personnel management, as well as marketing. His acumen in speculating on rubber and tin ore prices, it has been said, helped the Ganthawee business to earn an enormous fortune. Chaisin and Chaihui looked after their bases in Phuket, Trang, Ranong, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Surat Thani, among other places, while Chaikhim, the sociable coordinator who had a good command of Chinese, Thai, and English, was in charge of their operation in Bangkok, and later in Penang. During the company’s transition from a traditional organization based on agriculture and mining to a modem business, however, the key manager was Chaikhim. As for the two youngest brothers, Chaikeng was responsible for their spare parts store, while Chaihuai ultimately became Police Colonel Chaihuai Ganthawee. The transition from the work of nine brothers and sisters to the Ganthawee business group occurred gradually. In 1958, Chaileng opened a new base in Penang, beginning with mining. Then their famous land development project, called “Gan Chaileng Park,” offered houses and condominiums. They also made an investment in the United Malaya Bank. During this time, Chaileng assigned Chaisin to the leading position in Thailand so that the former could devote himself to extending the family empire to Singapore and Australia. When Chaileng passed away in 1967, Chaisin needed to take charge of the entire family business. Between 1958 and 1984, the Ganthawee business reached its peak, especially in mining and rubber, and was developed into various types of enterprises. The third generation of children began to be trained by the senior officials. In fact, these children’s education had been planned by Chaileng and Chaisin: they studied in fields relating to the family’s work, such as economics, business administration, finance, mining, rubber technology, languages, accountancy, and new technologies. The locations of their schools were as varied as their fields ofstudy, including not only Bangkok, Penang, and Taiwan, but also the United States, Europe, and Australia. When

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NETWORK

CONSTRUCTION

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BABA CHINESE BUSINESSES IN PHUKET

these graduates returned home, the Ganthawee group could boast of human resources of highly varied specializations. While the family customs had to be observed and the rmal business decision had to be made by Chaileng or Chaisin, consultation always came first. Such authority based on brotherly love and attempts to maintain fair treatment helped lessen the rigid rules and conflicts within the family. Regarding work matters, regular meetings and discussions were often held among the brothers and the inner groups of the working corps, which included relatives and trusted subordinates. Their usual practice was that they had lunch together every day to discuss business problems. This harmonious family relationship ingrained in their culture was expressed in Chaisin’s letter to his brother dated September 16, 1978, when their family encountered a crisis. The following is an excerpt: We brothers have shared our joys and sorrows from the very beginning. We have never limited our attention to only our benefit, nor have we ever cared who had to work more; we always think those who make more effort kindly sacrifice themselves, and those who are wiser can give help or advice to the others, and none ever minded. The younger have always listened to the older and cooperated in building up our company. What we own now comes from our constant efforts: some had their breakfast in the afternoon or their lunch at dinnertime. We underwent hunger and utmost patience and exercised extreme care so that very little of our labor would be lost in vain. Before doing anything, all our brothers would discuss and took heed of every comment; we tried to find information and carefully pondered to prevent unnecessary waste. Just like going tb a battle, we have to study the other side’s strategy and our own, as well as our strengths and weaknesses, then prepare our fight so that we can always win. With such thorough preparation and confidence, if we still fail, we usually can solve the problem in no time.

RELATIVES AND BONDS The relatives were another important base of support for the Ganthawee family business. The establishment of this base came from ties to eight large families directly relating to the Ganthawee descendants. Their blood relatives include the following families: Totheekha, Wongsuphap, Thongton, Phonthawee, and Thawomwongwong. The relational distance and order, however, determined the families’ rights and the degrees of trust they would enjoy in the Ganthawee Brothers Company Limited regarding assignments of authority, investments, and personnel development. During Chaileng and

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Chaisin’s time, their relatives took precedence; even when these relatives made mistakes, the bonds were never broken. Attempts were made to encourage people to be part of the family, especially through marriage, which in turn led to business ties. An example is the relationship with the Totheekha family of Chaileng’s wife. After Chaileng’s marriage, his father-in-law became the manager of a distillery run by the Ganthawee group and his brother-in-law was in charge of an opium den in which Chaileng helda share. Likewise, the Thongton family sold estates, rowhouses, and mining enterprises, as well as selling their stocks to the Ganthawee company in order to obtain quick cash. Being relatives facilitated negotiations and avoided some conflicts. With these ties, the Ganthawee company could find trusted manpower, as the ties were guarantees in themselves. This network consequently served as significant cultural capital in the brothers’ enterprise while giving them trusted representatives to help expand their business empire.

FRIENDS,

ASSOCIATES,

AND CONNECTIONS

Besides family ties, other special relationships were formed, as evidenced by joint investments with friends, mostly of the same last name and speaking the same dialect, lb start a mine requires a substantial investment, a good relationship with government officials, effective labor management to minimize production costs, and cooperation, as well as great care to reduce all risks. Hence, a special friendship was formed between Gan Chupian and Koylibo Ekwanit. This relationship was extended to the next generation: when Gan Chupian passed away, Kongseng of the Ekwanit family helped the Ganthawee children in many ways, including lending some money and suggesting'possible enterprises. Such friendship that led to the flow of information, business opportunities, and assistance during difficult times was that between the Ganthawee family and the Metallurgy Department officers and village heads, and even members of parliament at that time. Another example of such friendship can be seen in the case of Wat Prompen, who once worked in a foreign mining company and later became a good friend of the Ganthawee family. Chaileng and Chaitee invited him to work for their company and entrusted him with mining concession work. This capable old friend of the family was an asset to their mining business. He also advised Chaileng to make the business a registered company in 1 949 under the name “Ganthawee Brothers Company Limited,” which implied the seven brothers’ joint ownership. Clearly, their friendship as well as patronage relationship created new or better enterprises between the associates.

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PATRONAGE

OF THE BABA CHINESE BUSINESSES IN PHUKET

AND THE NETWORK

OF FOLLOWERS

Besides their network of relatives in the higher circle of-the working staff, which could guarantee investment risks, the Ganthawee Brothers Company built up another firm network: that of their subordinates. The relationship between the brothers and their supporting staff was grounded on the patronage 2 that extended to their followers, 'who could always rely on the company even regarding family matters. Similar to the ties the brothers established among their own relatives, this relationship has been cemented through years of the patrons’ benevolence. Commonly called nai hua? (literally “master-head”), the Ganthawee business chief saw to the followers’ well-being: their children’s education, their housing, their own rubber plantations, their care during illness or old age, and even their death. To achieve this bond, Chaisin once told his children to keep the following basic rule of personnel management: “When our children have something to eat, their children will also. When our children have education, theirs also will.” With benevolent staff management and centralized leadership, the chief was the sole evaluator and distributor of benefits. His order was the rule governed by the moral code and justice. The chiefs kind acts, such as visits to sick subordinates and special financial support for those in need, helped strengthen the master-follower relationship, for the master’s power came from the followers’ gratitude and respect and resulted in the latter’s devotion to work. Consequently, the chiefs treatment of followers as relatives helped lessen the rigidity of the patronage relationship. Such treatment, in fact, can be further seen in their references to each other. The chief called his close subordinate ko, which means “big brother.” Moreover, Chaisin compared the management of people to the cone-shaped cover of dishes: the lifter of the cone is the controller, and the higher he lifts it up, the wider the area at the bottom of the cone. Therefore, the leader should be farsighted and keep his field of vision twenty steps wider than that of the followers in every direction. Besides attempting to understand his people, he should encourage them to work, learn to compromise, and be a good model fot everyone so that all can work toward the company’s mission. OBSERVATIONS NETWORKS

ON THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF MULTIPLE

A powerful means to build up cultural capital is through the establishment of various types of connections: those with close relatives or distant ones, with friends, and with supporting staff. These connections help expand the social networks that are crucial for a growing business, for such related associates or subordinates can be trusted since they have been examined or evaluated at 293

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least once before being accepted into the network. For example, in the past, marriage was a matter decided by the family elders after careful consideration. The resulting approval was a guarantee of the new family member’s qualities and at the same time a social sanction of the marriage. Obviously, marriage was not the couple’s private business, for it involved a relationship between two groups of people, each with their own social network For wealthy families of prominent social status, the traditional screening process was very rigorous. The qualifications of the couple were not enough; both parties had to satisfy the social conditions set by the families. The cultural capital accumulated through the relational system can yield expertise, useful information, businessopportunities, and more. Like a spider whose plentiful food depends on the wide web it spins, a family whose relational networks are extensive can thrive and achieve business growth and expansion. Besides, the overall network can serve as a safety net to keep the failing members from falling into disgrace. The central thread that unifies everyone within this network is the gratitude toward family: everyone feels obliged and committed to the family duties. The sons knew they were responsible for their family, to be ordained as Buddhist monks for their parents’ sake, or to pay foil attention to their education in order to enhance the business that the earlier generation had founded. The daughters knew they had to take good care of their mothers and everyone else in the household, as this traditionally was considered their important task in return for the kindness they had received from the elders. This concept of reciprocity of good deeds provided the .basic cultural capital of the patronage relationship. Besides being a method of creating cultural capital, forming reciprocal relationships could strengthen connections beyond one’s family and beyond one’s generation. It is found from the case study of the Ganthawee clan that there have been three patterns of connections. The first pattern is based on connections with other families through marriage. For example, sons of the Ganthawee family married daughters of the Thongton and the 'Ibtheekha family. The second is based on connections between different lines of the Ganthawee brothers. For example, Chaileng adopted Chaisin’s son, who then called his uncle Chaileng “father” and called his own father “uncle.” Such a practice strengthened the ties between members of the same clan and extended these ties to the next generation. The third pattern reflects family members’ connections with dependants. In order to keep some subordinates within the family, they adopted the subordinates’ children and brought them up as foster children or as housekeepers in some cases. When good employees died, the masters sometimes adopted their children. These three types of behavior fostered relationships both within and between families. The ties with dependants, of course, were based on the patronage principle.

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Another method for enhancing this relational network was carried outthrough cultural transmission: informing, consulting, and discussing, both among those of the same and of different generations. Chaisin often wrote to his children and to nephews and nieces, and told them to write him every other week from abroad. This was to instill the elders’ thoughts, knowledge, and aspirations in the younger generation, to advise and train them to be the new “master-heads.” For the Chinese immigrant who came to Phuket to try his luck and begin a new life, Gan Chupian’s settlement required the human resources that he found through marriage with a local woman. By building up a relational network through his wife’s relations, he could establish himself: creating his home and family, making a living, bringing up children, and developing his social status. Thus, he forged his Phuket Baba Chinese identity, the hybrid family and culture for his descendants. The Ganthawee family’s assimilation into the Phuket Chinese identity, was in fret culturalization through the mother’s family line and women’s forces. Although the Family Name Act had been proclaimed in 1913, during King Vajiravudh’s reign, the influence of the Chinese tradition regarding married women maintaining their maiden names could still be found. Also', an important factor that facilitated, the family’s assimilation was the early death of the founding father; this forced the children to be more exposed to the local Chinese identity rather than the mainland Chinese s one. Furthermore, the Strait Chinese influence from Malacca, Penang, and Singapore helped form the Baba identity of the Phuket Baba Chinese, as seen in their cultural patterns relating to marriage, food, rituals, language spoken at home, and daily activities. An important example of this is the funeral, which the Phuket Fukien Chinese, especially the mine owners, held in grand style. The huge log coffin was carried by many people, since the number of carriers was considered an indicator of the dead person’s great deeds performed for others during life. Another relevant concept was their consideration of Phuket as their own motherland, while other Chinese immigrants believed they should be taken back to China for burial. Assimilation into the Phuket Chinese i dentity was thus implied in the burial of Gan Chupian, the Ganthawee family’s founding father, at Khao Lom graveyard in Phuket.

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NOTES This article is a part of my research, “The Genealogy of Chinese in Southern Thailand: Looking Through Gantawee Family and their Business Empire” which was supported by Thailand Research Fund through theMedhi Vijai Awuso of Professor Suthiwong Pongpaibun, published in 2001. 1. Bong means “tomb” in Fukien Chinese (Noppadon 1999). 2. A patronage relationship originates from unequal access to resources, prestige, wealth, knowledge, or opportunities. Those with limited access need to build up relationships with those with more access. Such reciprocal relationships (which give more benefit to the patron) are based on the principle of gratitude and repayment of kindness: the patron has to be kind to the dependants as he relies on their labor. (See Nithi Eaosriwong’s introduction to Chao Chao Ban: M. R. Akin Rabibddhana’s Collected Articles, edited by Paritta Chalermpaw-Koanantakool.) 3. The term nai hua usually refers to a mine owner-manager.

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REFERENCES Amphon lamsuree. 1994. Prawat Chiwit Kbong Hia Kuang lam [The Life Story of Hia Kuang lam]. Bangkok: Media Press: Boonsanong Punyodyana. 1971. Chinese-Thai Differential Assimilation.™ Bangkok: An Exploratory Study. Data Paper no. 79. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. Chamnongsri Ratanin Hanchenluck, Khunying. 1994. Dut Nawa Klang Samut, A Memorial to Suwit Wanglee’s Cremation, Oct. 8. N.p. Coughlin, Richard. 1 960. Double Identity:The Chinese in Modem Thailand. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Cushman, Jennifer W. 1984. The Chinese in Thailand. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Ee, Khoo Joo. 1996. The Straits Chinese: A Cultural History. Amsterdam: Pepin Press. Hewison, Kevin J . 1981. The Financial Contemporary Asia 1 1 (4): 395-412.

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Kasian Tejapira. 1994. “Pigtail: A Pre-history of Chineseness in Siam.” In LaeLo d Lai Mangkorn, by Kasian Tejapira. Bangkok: Khob Fai Printing Project. Murashima Eiji. 1996. Politics of Siam Chinese: Political Movement of Oversea Chinese in Thailand in 1924-1941. Translated, into Thai by Worasak Mahatanobol. Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University. Nithi Eaosriwong. 1984. From a Marginal State to Monthon Thesaphiban: The Decline of Phuket’s Old Power Group. Thammasat Journal 13 (3): 78-97. ---------. 1988. The Chinese, the Key Factor of Change. Silapawattanatham 9 (4): 3748. ---------. 2000. Krung Taek, Phrachao Tak Lae Prawatsat Thai. Bangkok: Phikhanet Printing Center. ---------. 2002. On “Politics” of History and Memory. Bangkok: Mathichon. Noppadon Kittikun. 1999. Kham Chin Kham Thai Nai Phuket. Phuket: Patong Offset Press. Paritta Chalermpaw-Koanantakool, ed. 1997. ChaoChao Ban: M. R. AkinRabibadhana’s Collected Articles. Bangkok: Thammasat University. PengChao Yang. n.d. ChakKuleeKlaiPen YakYai;KanTosu Chiwit KhongRacha Thurakit Yang Lee In Tong (From a Laborer to a Great Giant: The Struggles of Lee In long, the King of the Rubber Business]. N.p. Phuwadon Songprasert. 1976. The Government Policies on the Chinese in Thailand (2475-2500 B.E.). Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. ---------. 1986. The Evaluation of Chinese Capital in Nakhon Si Thammarat. Vol. 4 of History and Archeology ofNakom Sri Thammarat. Bangkok: Krung Siam Printing.

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---------. 1987. Chinese Capital: An Analysis of the Case during Absolute Monarchy. Political Economics 6 (32) (October 1986-March 1987): 89-106. ---------. 1989. The Development of Modern Businessmen in Southern Thailand. Political Science Newsletter. 11 (November 1988-April 1989): 175-81. ---------. 1992. The Singaporean Capital: The Monopoly of Para Rubber and Tin Markets. Bangkok: Asian Studies Institute, Chulalongkorn University. Sangsit Piriyarangsan. 1980. Thai Bureaucratic Capitalisml932-1960. English Language Program, Thammasat University.

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Sarasin Viraphol. 1997. Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade. Cambridge: Harvard University /Council on East Asian Studies. Sathian Chanthimathom. 1999. ChakKulee Thung Banlang Bank: Thana Rachan Chin Sophonphanit [From a Laborer to the Banking Throne: Chin Sophonphanit, the King of Money]. Bangkok: Matichon. Sirilak Sakkriangkrai. 1982. The Origin of the Capitalist Class in Thailand (2398-2453 B.E.). Bangkok: n.p. Skinner, G. William. 1957. Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical-History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Suehiro, Akira. 1989. CapitalAccumulation in Thailand, 1855-1 985. Tokyo: UNESCO. Supapom Charanpattana. 1980. Opium Tax and the Thai Government’s Financial Policies (2367-2468 b:e.). Master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University. Thanasap Sapphaibun. 2000. Rua Cbiivit Chao Sua Ltiat Mangkom Trakun Lamsam [The Life Barge of a Dragon-Blooded Millionaire of the Lamsam Family]. N.p.

298

PARADISE AT YOUR DOORSTEP: INTERNATIONAL BORDER FLUIDITY. AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION AMONGST KELANTAN'S THAI COMMUNITY IRVING CHAN JOHNSON

THE MIRACULOUS WAND Jalan Hospital is a busy two-larie thoroughfare that slices through Malaysia’s Kelantanese Thai village of Ban Bo On. Some ten kilometers to the north, along the banks of the murky Ta Ba River, lies the Malaysian border town of Pengkalan Kubor, the official gateway to the southernmost district {amphoe) of Thailand’s Narathiwat Province. Occupying a dusty space by the side of the asphalt artery is Phi Rak’s unnamed cafe. An unassuming little place frequented by chickens, stray dogs, and an occasional family of noisy guinea fowls, the coffee shop is a node in the everyday experience of many villagers. In the cool dawn hours Buddhist monks from Wat Nai, the larger of Ban Bo On’s two temples (swt), file silently by on their route back to the temple after having completed their alms round through the village. Phi Rak’s wife, Ke Nui, never fails to spoon freshly cooked rice into their bowls. Within its pastel blue wooden interior decorated with postered sketches of Phi Rak’s favorite long-haired phuea chrwit' singers, Ban Bo On’s villagers sip tea and coffee sweetened with condensed milk while exchanging the latest in village news and community gossip. 1 Students in their pressed uniforms jostle for Ke Nui’s delicious fried noodles and curry, which they take with them to the two Malay secondary schools just down the road. “So will you be going to Nakhon with Na Chao Di?” inquired Ke Nui as I sat gazing at the traffic that zipped along Jalan Hospital. “I’m not sure yet,” I replied, knowing very well that Na Chao Di suffered from bouts of forgetfulness ever since his motorcycle accident. His health was complicated by hypertension and diabetes, which made him weak and feint. Na Chao Di had spoken to me of his planned visit to an old temple tucked 'away on a hill somewhere in the middle of Nakhon Si Thanunarat’s vast rice fields. He anticipated traveling there with a group of friends from Phron, a Thai 299

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Buddhist settlement just across the Ta Ba. Notwithstanding its isolated and seemingly inaccessible location, a large number of Ban Bo On villagers had endured the seven-hour road trip north to the unassuming temple and returned with incredible stories of its sacred potential. Hundreds of people were said to throng the wt throughout the day and night. 2 They included not only Buddhist Thais and Chinese but Muslim Malays from Thailand’s southern provinces. Like Na Chao Di and his friends, everyone went there in the hope of being cured of some form of physical affliction. Here it was claimed the blind regained their sight, the dumb learnt to speak and the lame walked effortlessly. “They say the road leading out of the temple is littered with the wheelchairs and crutches of the once crippled as they walked out on their own,” marveled Phi Ruen one evening while we watched a Thai television broadcast of Italy playing Ecuador in the 2002 World Cup. A short wooden stick which villagers respectfully called mat thao kayasit,the miraculous wand, bestowed the remarkable recoveries. The wand was believed to have been derived from a magical khilek tree that had sprouted in the temple’s courtyard. 3 Such was the temple’s repute that the Malaysian villagers' of Ban Bo On and other Kelantanese Thai settlements were chartering buses and minivans from the Thai border towns of Ta Ba (Takbai) and Su-ngai Kolok to drive them to Nakhon Si Thammarat. The high demand for transportation to Nakhon Si Thammarat led a number of enterprising Ban Bo On residents to take on the role of tour guides and drivers to the southern Thai province. Throughout the week, they would shuttle back and forth between Nakhon Si Thammarat and Kelantan, their personal vehicles packed with anxious patients, the narratives they produced, and the presents they brought back for friends and family in Malaysia? In this paper I will illustrate how-Kelantan’s Thai villagers construct and articulate discourses of ethnocultural identity for themselves by producing and participating in networks of mobility. Through using the pseudonymous village of Ban Bo On as an ethnographic case in point, I explore the social dynamics by which villagers are agents in negotiating objectified notions of international territoriality emanating from both Malaysia and Thailand. Border crisscrossings are a significant facet of everyday experience for the Thais who live so close to the frontiers of sovereignty, yet it has received only faint attention from scholars of Kelantanese Thai society such as Golomb (1978), Kershaw (1969), Mohamed Yusoff Ismail (1993, 2000), and Winzeler (1985). Mobile practices involving the transnational flow’of people, media images, ideas, and so forth allow Ban Bo On’s social actors to produce a subjective and bounded space within which discursive performances of an autonomous and indigenous selfhood are actively constructed and perpetuated. These agency-centered narratives of identity celebrate a local 300

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understanding- of cultural exceptionalism —one that is unique to their historical experience as Buddhist Thais living along the peripheries of a predominantly Malay Muslim Kelantan set within a modern Malaysian nation-state. Contestations over the meanings implicit in Malaysia and Thailand’s essentialized national discourses of identity and cultural citizenry are played out by Ban Bo On social actors within this space. Framed by the context of bordered crisscrossings, these Thai villagers innovatively manipulate and manage their own interpretations of what identity means through engaging with the embodied representations of morality and immorality that emerge out of the interactive experience of travel. In effect, the Kelantanese Thais of Ban Bo On and other Buddhist villages in the state generate their own essentialisms through their mobility, exemplifying what Clifford (1997) has rightly called “traveling cultures.” I begin my analysis by discussing the production of the border from a historical perspective. In particular, I will focus on the development of roads as an essential element in the consolidatory practices of national territoriality. Roads bring the geographically distant border and its various political and cultural imaginings into the village and are the main conduits through which crisscrossing networks ply.

JOURNEYS AND HISTORIES Kelantan is the northernmost state on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. To the north lies Thailand, separated from Kelantan along the deepest sections of the Kolok and Ta Ba rivers. Although one of the largest states in the peninsula, with a land mass covering 14,929 square kilometers, Kelantan’s population has historically been centered along the rich alluvial floodplains of its northern frontier. Kelantan was incorporated as an Unfederated Malay State by the British in 1 909, but remained largely isolated from British policies of economic and political expansionism. The state thus maintained its predominant Malay Muslim agrarian base and was unaffected by the largescale immigration of Chinese, Indians, and Indonesians that characterized the social demographics of the Federated states. 5 According to the Department of Statistics’ Population and Housing Census for the year 2000, Malays Muslims who were Malaysian citizens accounted for 814,7 59 individuals out of 864, 1 1 5; or 94.3 percent of the total population of Kelantan. 6 Ethnic groups in the census are classified according to a national system of ethnic pigeonholing which Shamsul (1996, 477) termed “authority-defined” identities. 7 One was either Malay, “other Bumiputera” (i.e. aboriginal nonMalay), Chinese, Indian, or an “other.” 8 Despite the powerful rhetoric of Thai indigenism articulated in some quarters of the Malaysian Thai community, Thais are officially boxed into the ethnic rubric of “other” and 301

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thus no exact numbers are provided in the recent census for Kelantan’s Thai population. In order to tabulate the approximate number of Kelantanese Thais, I averaged out the number of people in Kelantan’s “other” category (10,748) with those listed as practicing Buddhism (11,03 1). These Buddhist others totaled 10,889 persons, or 1.2 percent of Kelantan’s population, the most probable estimate of the number of Thais in the state. Most Kelantanese Thais live in the administrative district (jajabari) of Tumpat, where thirteen of the state’s twenty-four primarily Thai settlements (tow) are found. More dispersed Thai communities are situated as for south as Besut, along Terengganu’s northern boundary with Kelantan. 9 With a total population comprising some two hundred and fifty individuals living in one hundred and twenty-eight households, Ban Bo On is one of the largest Thai settlements in Kelantan. It was once a nucleated community of closely spaced wooden houses separated by rice fields, coconut groves, and subsistence gardens. Ban Bo On’s contemporaiy economy is a complex quilt of agricultural production and urban employment. Wet rice is no longer cultivated in the village largely due to the failure of Kelantan’s green revolution in paddy some forty years ago, 10 coupled with the cheap and easy availability of tastier longgrained rice from Thailand and a more lucrative market for vegetable and leaf tobacco. Ban Bo On men and women are also employed as mechanics, construction workers, waitresses, store assistants, nurses, teachers, policemen, and customs officers throughout Kelantan and in other Malaysian states. 11 The affluence generated in the village through urban employment and intensive market gardening of commercial vegetables is obvious and ostentatiously displayed. Almost every Thai household in Ban Bo On now owns a refrigerator, telephone, television (the most popular being the 29inch flat screen models), VCD player and hi-fi set. Many families possess personal computers and a number of the village’s young technologically savvy residents are avid Internet chatters. 12 Perhaps the most obvious displays of accumulated wealth in Ban Bo On and the surrounding Thai villages are the large brick bungalows that have mushroomed throughout the rural landscape. They are often .two or more stories high and complete with the latest furnishings, air conditioning units, and marble flooring. 11 Ban Bo On comprises three separate residential sectors bridged by two wide double-lane roads. Jalan Hospital and Jalan Bandar Tumpat link the village with the nearby market town of Bandar Tumpat, the state capital Kota Bahru, and the international border at Pengkalan Kubor. It is along these roads that Ban Bo On villagers travel via buses, taxis, minivans, motorcycles, and cars to visit kin and friends in the culturally similar villages of southern Narathiwat Province on the opposite bank of the Ta Ba. Along these asphalt highways, residents journey to land settlement schemes in Thailand, to their jobs, schools and markets, and to the famed Nakhon Si Thammarat temple 302

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to be miraculously healed by the curative powers of the wand. The roads also facilitate movement in the opposite direction; rice smugglers use. them to transport their loot to markets across Kelantan, Buddhist monks from Thailand enter Kelantan’s Thai villages, and villagers from Narathiwat Province’s settlements travel to visit their Malaysian friends and relatives during ritual celebrations. In her analysis of road mythologies in rural Nigeria, Masquelier (2001) noted that to the Hausaphone Mawri, roads materialized the traumatic conditions of modem living through maintaining a memory of colonial exploitation and the forced disruption of indigenous boundaries of cultural space. Ban Bo On’s roads do not carry with them such terrifying histories. They have been mobile spaces along which both positive and negative images of ethnocultural identification have traversed. Roads have been die interstitial spaces integrating the past with the present by facilitating the movement of social actors within traditional kinship networks extending throughout Kelantan and into Narathiwat Province’s Thai villages. H The roads brought Ban Bo On residents to the aquatic margin of the Ta Ba frontier and made movement into and out of Thailand a much more frequent practice than it had been in the past. But increased mobility across national borders also brought with it a newly imagined discourse of immorality that penetrated deeply into the lived realities of Ban Bo On’s Thai population along these roads. 11 Just before World War H, a number of Kelantanese Thais had purchased land holdings in various parts of Narathiwat Province. These early settlers were attracted by the cheap and large amounts of cultivable land in and around the districts of Tanyong Mat, Su-ngai Padi and Mueang. These investment projects were used for rubber and fruit tree cultivation, which supplemented the owners’ agrarian cash income in Kelantan. The largest-scale immigration of Kelantanese Thais into Narathiwat Province occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, when numerous villagers enthusiastically took up land resettlement schemes in the forested areas of southern NarathiwatProvince. These schemes were in fact government-initiated communes (nikhom) that anticipated opening up the furthest peripheries of the province to settlement and economic development. 16 The Thai government hoped that threats to national, security in the form of rural banditry and communist insurgency, which thrived in the no-man’s land of the southern border zones, would be reduced if these areas became populated with law-abiding citizens. 17 Despite their political status as Malaysians, Thai Buddhists from Kelantan were allowed to participate in nikhom schemes and were rewarded with token Thai citizenship, a privilege that only a few of the earliest nikhom settlers accepted. 18 Most preferred to remain Malaysians, and traveled freely between their home villages in Kelantan and their rubber plots and fruit gardens in the communes. 303

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The nikhom promise of new land lured a large number of Kelantanese to the agrarian projects, and village clusters of Kelantanese Thais soon emerged in and around Waeng District and Sukhirin District. Malay Muslims from Thailand’s southern provinces and later migrants from the impoverished northeastern region of the country were also granted nikhom lands in the area, and new frontier communities often were comprised of settlers from both ethnic groups. Nikhom schemes were glossier in theory than in practice. During my stay in Ban Bo On and my travels through present-day nikhom settlements, villagers constantly related to me the hardship and suffering which the earliest schemes entailed. The pioneer settlers faced severe difficulties. Settlement and farm plots had to be cleared by the settlers themselves using the most basic of tools. This was an activity that was both backbreaking and dangerous. Moreover, the material allowances offered by the Thai authorities were too little to meet even a minimum standard of living. The majority of these earliest Kelantanese immigrants left the projects in, disgust, their cleared and semicleared plots being transferred on to later settlers, who were most often close kin or friends. Wild animals from the surrounding forests, such as tigers, bears’ and elephants, were a threat to the safety of settlers and to their gardens. But even more dangerous was the threat of banditry. Bandits regularly kidnapped, murdered, and extorted money and rice from already povertystricken villagers. Rampant corruption in the Thai police force made some villagers take the law into their own hands. These powerful images of suffering articulated through the recollection of early nikhom settlement molded a specific Kelantanese Thai perception of Thailand.This was a Thailand that was fraught with danger and hostility; a place that was best avoided when possible. The movement of Kelantanese Thais across Narathiwat Province’s southern margin did not emerge as a result of the consolidation of the Malayan-Siamese border in the early twentieth century. The cultural and linguistic affinities between Kelantan and Narathiwat Buddhist communities meant that cross-border mobility had been an ongoing process before the production of the political jural frontier in 1909. What the frontier did create however, was a new notion of sovereignty and its representation in symbolic form in what was at one time a coterminous cultural zone. Even before the colonial practice of border demarcation, politically motivated social actors from both Kelantan and Siam had been journeying into each other’s territories. 1’ Until the mid-eighteenth century Kelantan and the northernmost Malay states (Kedah, Perlis, and Terengganu) had enjoyed a period of relative autonomy free from Siam’s politicoterritorial maneuverings. This sometimes was punctured by scattered moments of domestic court intrigue and occasional civil unrest from the neighboring 304

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states of Terengganu to the south and Siamese-controlled Pattani to the north (Roff 1974, vi-vii). 20 By the nineteenth century, Kelantan had been brought into an assemblage of Siamese vassal polities (mueang'), each with its own class of Malay elites. Local tutelaty rulers were obliged to recognize Siam’s political suzerainty through the triennial tribute of gold and silver trees (bunga mas dan perak) to the Bangkok court via a representative in Nakhon Si Thammarat. In return for their purported allegiance, Kelantan’s Malay rulers received Siamese tides and military support. Malay and Siamese political elites regularly visited each other’s centers of power, thereby reinforcing an established pattern of commensurate rulership pillared upon ethnocultural and geographical distance. 21 Most historical treatises on the politics and ethnology of the Kelantanese segment of the Malayan-Siamese border focus on the Malay majority while neglecting the existence of Thai Buddhist villages in the vicinity. For instance, no mention of either indigenous Kelantan or Narathiwat Thai groups occurs in the nineteenth-century Siamese-authored chronology of.Kelantan’s royal history (phongsawadan Mueang Kalantan) (Wyatt 1974). The Hikayat Seri Kelantan, a Malay reading of the state’s chronicle compiled in the early twentieth century, similarly does not mention the existence of Thai Buddhists in Kelantan. This is an interesting textual omission given the dose relationship the community had with the Malay ruling dass in both the precolonial and early colonial periods. Kershaw (1984, 47) pointed out that Thais were often incorporated into the Malay rajadom through their service as “mahouts, medical specialists, manora (southern Thai dance drama) performers and, in all likelihood, as appointed nai ban, ‘headmen’ (penghulu in Malay) of the large Thai villages.” 22 The sodal bond that tied Thais to the Malay court were anchored in the latter’s ceremonial status as the patrons of Buddhism in the Muslim state. Yusoff (1993, 33n) noted that Tuan Senik, a contender for the Kelantanese throne during the civil war of 1839, had written to the Bangkok court complaining that “Siamese people and monks in Kelantan were being ill-treated by his rival, Tuan Besar.” By so doing, Tuan Senik had hoped to secure Bangkok’s support for his political agenda based on appeals to shared symbols of ethnocultural identification between the Siamese court and the Kelantanese Thais vis-a-vis Buddhism. Narathiwat and Kelantan Thais played an important role in Siam’s political imaginings of the southern frontier. Wat Choltarasinghe in the Chehe District of Narathiwat Province, along the banks of the Ta Ba, was used by the Siamese polity to justify its claims over the province, which the British had hoped to possess as a district of a newly mapped Kelantan. The Siamese argument was simple. Bangkok officials asserted that the area on which the temple stood was testimony to the presence of living Buddhism and hence the furthest extent of Siamese cultural influence in the peninsula, lb place the temple 305

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within the borders of British Muslim Kelantan would be a threat to its religious sovereignty (Wanipha 1992, 89n). The Siamese argument met with British approval and the Ta Ba river was agreed upon as the legitimate boundary between the Buddhist kingdom of Siam and the Malay Muslim world of the British Unfederated Malay States to the south. What was not considered, however, was the fact that similar temples existed on the opposite bank! Population statistics for the region in the pretreaty years are few. Asaad Syukri (1971) points out that there were at least fifteen thousand Thais living in the Ta Ba area prior the signing of the treaty. His figures are probably derived from Graham’s 1907 report that lists the number of Thais in the region as being fifteen thousand, served by forty temples. Graham’s preborder figures include Thais living on both sides of the river (Winzeler 1985, 69). 25 The consolidation of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty in 1909 established a permanent border between British Malaya and an independent Siam. The distinct boundary was mapped at the deepest sections of the Kolok River and its la Ba (Tabal/Tak Bai) tributary a year later. This effective watery divide has remained the border to the present day, with episodic interludes of Japanese and Thai expansionism during and immediately following World War H. 24 In spite of the incessant policing of the international border by the Thai and Malaysian governments in the form of immigration and police checkpoints, naval patrols, and military command posts, the margin between both nation-states remains in practice an ambiguous and fluid zone. Residents on both sides easily and frequently cross the frontier. At some places, the Kolok River is so shallow that villagers walk across its exposed sandbars, transporting with them the goods, ideas, and narratives that emerge from the interactive encounter between citizens of both nation-states. To understand the meanings generated by these cross-frontier journeys we need to analyze the role of kinship and history in Kelantanese Thai society.

LASTING KINSHIP BONDS As with Nishii’s (2000) observations on the Sam Sam of Kedah, indigenous Kelantanese Thai conceptions of local history were not concerned with first origins. 25 Rather local historical epistemologies celebrated the movements that occurred within already settled communities. No one I spoke to in Ban Bo On could recall the origins of their village except to say that “it was very old indeed.” Most politely dismissed my question on origins, replying matterof-factly that they didn’t know. Some brushed the question aside, preferring instead to speak of Jiving histories such as kinship networks and their augmentation through travels to nikhom communes, or vacation tours to visit temples in northern Thailand. Ban Bo On residents thus expressed a powerful 306

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emotional sense of spatial localism. In their minds, they were firstand foremost Kelantanese (khon'mueang lantari), and origins were therefore unimportant. Kershaw (1984, 47) observed that “the Thais’ strong sense of being native to Kelantan . . . stemmed in the first instance from the sheer longevity of their presence, which exceeded not only individual recollection but ‘tribal memory?” Although I agree with Kershaw’s interpretation regarding the ancestral presence of the Thais in Kelantan, I believe that their seeming deemphasis on attempting to secure myths of origin is a result of a different historical emphasis, one that locates the remembered past not in situated places but in mobile genealogical reckoning. Traditional Kelantanese Thai social history was reckoned by and through kinship. It was the personal memories of individual people rather than the history of the community per se that was emphasized, in the everyday conversations I had with my Ban Bo On friends. A community consisted of individuals who were intertwined in webs of kinship that extended beyond the village they originated from. Kinship was expressed in the ability to trace real and imagined genealogical connections through an association with named persons, living and dead. Many of Ban Bo On’s older residents were able to articulate elaborate kinship charts stretching back several generations to illustrate their exact relationship with other members of the community within Ban Bo On and with individuals living in other Thai and Chinese settlements. Where the exact genealogical links were blurred, shared memories of being ancestral kin sufficed as important indicators of sociality. A person without kin was someone who could not trace genealogical relationships to anyone else. This person was a social outcast, someone to be pitied in his sad and lonely condition, since it was to one’s kin rather than the community of villagers in general that one turned for support in times of need. Kinship was the catalyst behind the social mobility that villagers emphasized in their discursive constructions of history. It was constantly expressed through the reciprocal attendance at social and ritual events such as at weddings, ordinations, house warmings, temple fetes, and funerals. The feasting and communal work parties associated with these large-scale events are arenas for the celebration and renewal of village social history through the mobility emphasized in kinship networks. Similarly, ritual celebrations in Kelantanese Thai villages often involve the participation of Thais from across the border. The very popular vacation and pilgrimage tours jointly organized by Kelantan’s Buddhist temples and travel agents in Narathiwat Province, which brought Kelantan and Narathiwat villagers through Thailand’s sacred geography, were also sites for the articulation and maintenance of kin ties. It has been this cultural emphasis on the maintenance of kin ties that has encouraged movement back and forth between Narathiwat Thai villages and 307

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Kelantan. These mobile practices have been facilitated by the development of modem infrastructure technologies on both sides of the river. The joint Thai and Malaysian government-operated ferry service that plies the Ta Ba every twenty minutes -facilitates the transport of passengers and produce between both nation-states, as do the smaller trawlers. 2” A rising standard of rural affluence in Thailand and Malaysia has meant that more people can now afford to own motorcycles, minivans, and cars which drive right onto the ferry’s floating iron tarmac. The border is linked to villages on both sides by a complex system of large and small paved roads. Busses and taxis service these asphalt arteries and collapse older imaginations of spatial distance between villages and the Ta Ba. Before the introduction of modem modes of transportation, Kelantanese Thais rarely ventured across the Ta Ba, even though the cultural acknowledgment of shared kinship was strong. 27 Spatial distance was measured by the time it took to walk to a location. The arduous barefoot journey from Ban Bo On to the closest Thai settlement in Narathiwat Province was about six hours. In order to reach villages and market towns further north, travelers had often to pass through tiger-infested jungles. Even nikbom communes were largely inaccessible until about ten years ago, when paved roads replaced the muddy tracks that linked the pioneer village communities together and the threat of rural banditry largely abated. The cultural importance placed on ensuring the perpetuation of historical kinship was crucial to Kelantanese Thai constructions of personhood. It was this concern with kin that led many Kelantanese Thais to listen attentively to Hua Rung Luk Thiing (“early morning” luk thung). The two-hour musical request program is broadcast over Narathiwat’s “Amazing Radio” station (FM 99.1) each morning from Monday through Friday. 28 Hosted by the Tumpat Tak Bai-speaking DJ, Lung Chai, the show not only plays popular evergreen luk thung favorites but also serves as an aural notice board for Kelantan and Narathiwat Thais to announce upcoming weddings, cremations, temple festivals, market days, and so on. According to the rhetoric of territoriality articulated by the modem nationstates of Malaysia and Thailand, the Ta Ba frontier is a situated and uncontested place. It clearly delimits the furthest extremities of both nationstates and is objectified as a thick line on topographical maps. The border, as Donnan and Wilson (1994, 3) point out, attempts at the symbolic confinement of its citizens through celebrating a discourse of political difference and cultural exclusion. Nevertheless, a historically validated cultural identification across national borderlands has prevented these state discourses of national distinction from being total. In Kelantan, despite the political-jural ossification of the border zone via displays of emblems of citizenship (e.g. immigration checkpoints, passports, border passes, identity cards, tourist placards, and time zone differences) local residents regularly and easily crisscross the Ta 308

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Ba. This is done either legally with passports and border passes, or illegally by filing unassumingly past immigration officers or by boarding the small long-tailed speedboats from less-policed segments of the river. 29 To facilitate their ease of movement between the two countries, some Kelantanese (Thais and Malays) possess two identity cards, one for each. A Thai identity card (bat prachachori) could be easily procured by bribing Thai officials in Narathiwat or registering a birth in Thailand with the help of a relative or friend who was a Thai citizen. Due to their participation in the aforementioned nikhom communes, a number of Kelantanese Thais have been issued Thai citizenship. Although they were officially supposed to surrender their Malaysian citizenship upon receiving Thai nationality, most did not, preferring instead the ease and convenience that transnationality and “flexible citizenship” afforded in practices of cross-border mobility (Ong 1999).

MORAL AND IMMORAL SPACES Perhaps the most frequent Thai cross-border travelers during Kelantan’s colonial period were Buddhist monks. Before the introduction of the Thailanguage Buddhist examinations (nak thani) in British Kelantan in 1949, it was a common practice for Kelantanese monks to journey to Wat Choltarasinghe in Chehe or to Wat Tuyong in Pattani to sit for the standardized examinations. 30 The examinations (sop sanam luang) were —and to this day still are —run by the Bangkok ecclesiastical examination council (mae kong tham sanam luang) under the direction of Thailand’s Ministry of Education. 31 Examination scripts are prepared in Bangkok and brought to Kelantan by its monk representatives. These senior monks attend to the formalities of the examination, which include participating in the opening ceremony on the first day of the examination period and select invigilating. 32 The nak tham exams are reflective of the longstanding historical relationship the Kelantanese Thai order of monks (khana song lantari) has had with Thailand’s monastic establishment. In 1908, Than Khru Kiu, the abbot of Wat Ban Nai, a short distance from Ban Bo On, received his appointment to the ecclesiastical rank ofpAra khru with his corresponding duties as “the chief monk of mueang Kelantan” from Thailand’s King Chulalongkorn. In a royal correspondence (chot mat het) detailing King Vajiravudh’s 1915 visit to the southern Thai administrative groupings (monthon pak tai), it, was stated that Than Khru Kiu was among a delegation of fifty monks who welcomed the king at Wat Choltarasinghe (Wanipha 1992, 5). Ecclesiastical titles and appointments to religious office within the Kelantanese monkhood are today still obtained from Bangkok’s Department of Religious Affairs (krom satsana), a practice that had its incipience in Mongkut’s sangha reforms in the nineteenth 309

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century (Tambiah 1970, 78). On the wall of a Ban Bo On temple’s preaching hall (rang tham) hangs a large framed but faded photograph of the temple’s late abbot receiving the traditional insignias of his office from King Bhumibol on the occasion of the king’s birthday in 1970. The picture is a celebrated reminder of the associations Kelantan’s small Thai community bore with the center of Thai Theravadan authority in faraway metropolitan Bangkok. During cremation festivities for the abbot in 1997, numerous printed reproductions of the picture were distributed as nostalgic mementos to wellwishers. Almost every household in Ban Bo On now possesses a copy of the photograph, .which takes pride of place on home altars and forms a powerful visual signifier of village and ethnoreligious identity. Thailand’s role in managing the affairs of the Kelantanese monkhood is largely institutional. The actual process for selecting monks for seigniorial positions (samanasak) remains in the hands of the local monastic establishment. For the selection of the chief monk of the state (chao khana rat), the chosen candidate’s appointment first needs to be endorsed by the Malay Muslim sultan of Kelantan, whose Jawi-scripted seal legitimizes the position. Only then does the candidate receive his formal appointment from Bangkok There is thus a close relationship between Kelantan’s Muslim court and the local Buddhist clergy. Yusoff (1993, 38) rightly acknowledges that “the sultan of Kelantan, who is the titular head of Islam, thus also plays a role similar to that of the Thai monarch, that is, as a protector of the Buddhist religion (phutthasatsanupathampok).” It is nevertheless the Thai ruler’s ceremonial relationship with the sangha in Kelantan that is celebrated in popular representations, in part, I believe, due to the perceived ethnocultural commonalties between the rural Kelantanese Thai and the BangkokBuddhist court. But this was a relationship that was structured upon the formality of pomp and protocol, and was unlike the social interaction the Kelantanese monkhood displayed with Muslim benefactors, which was based more upon established ties of friendship and clientalism. During my stay in Kelantan I heard of many stories about how Than Khru Kiu and his successor Pho Than Khron made regular visits to the sultan’s palace and of how the sultan was a personal friend to both monks. Farrer (1933) documented a 1918 incident in which Kelantanese Thai monks were invited to conduct a purification ceremony (cha rueri) at the palace under the sponsorship of Kelantan’s Raja Muda. 33 Villagers never spoke of the Thai monarch on such intimate terms. His symbolic position, like that of the bustling city he inhabited, was too far removed from the everyday world of the Kelantanese. He was therefore never spoken of as a “friend” (phuean) of the monks or the villagers. The abbot of Ban Bo On’s temple spoke to me with a hint of pride about how his temple had been visited by “even the sangkharat" (the head of the Thai national sangha and the monkhood’s representative of the king himself). 310

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Invitations are often extended to senior monks from Thailand to attend Kelantanese temple festivals as guests of honor. With the consolidation of Thailand’s model of ecclesiastical administration, the Kelantanese monkhood has been incorporated into Thailand’s eighteenth precinct (phak sip paet). The present chief monk of Kelantan and his deputies are therefore obliged to attend the precinct’s monthly meetings (prachimi) to discuss developments within the Thai sangha and the problems it faces. This year’s meetings revolved around the ongoing issue of the influx of corrupt Thai citizen monks into Malaysia and the methods of policing them. The matter was called to public attention by widespread reports in both the Thai and Malaysian press of “fake” Thai monks (phra ploni) entering Malaysia as part of quick get-rich schemes. These schemes played upon the lack of a national sangha administration in Malaysia and the ease with which gullible Chinese patrons, unfamiliar with the practices of Thai Buddhism, could be cheated of their money by so-called monks. This public perception of a deteriorated Buddhism across the border, despite the glittering symbols of Buddhist royalism celebrated in the formalism of ritual protocol, has entered into Kelantanese Thai imaginings of Thailand as a place of danger and societal decay. This was expressed to me one hot March afternoon by Khun Dam, a thirty-oneyear-old monk at Ban Bo On’s temple. Comparing the political climate of Thailand with that of Malaysia, Khun Dam observed: In Thailand, you can get away with murder without having to suffer the death penalty. That is why there are so many murder cases there. But just try that in Malaysia and see what happens! The commandos would immediately arrest you and you would be hung to death. Thailand does have the death penalty but it is rarely enforced, especially on murderers. Death is inflicted only on drug dealers. If you murder, you can get away with just some years in prison. Then they release you or you pay your bail and you are set free. The violence Khun Dam associated with Thailand was represented as a corruption of a Buddhist moral space. Thailand was an ambiguous locale of contradictory meanings. On the one hand it represented to Kelantanese Thai social actors the proper performance of Theravadin institutionalism. Ban Bo On villagers flocked to Thailand on pilgrimage tours to sacred temple sites or to be cured of physical ailments by magical wands. Monks traveled there to receive education, honors, and appointments to office. This utopian image of a pristine form of Buddhism existed side by side with images of lax monks and a hided religious morality. Negative images of Buddhist perversion entered Ban Bo On through the daily Thai news on television, in newspapers, and in personal narratives heard from friends and relatives in Thailand. With a hint of seriousness in his voice, Khun Dam spoke with abhorrence of the corruption that plagued the monkhood in Thailand and contaminated Malaysia’s moral innocence: 311

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z J’

Thai [citizen] monks are a lot worse than Malaysian monks. There was a case I had watched on the news of a monk who raped and murdered a girl in a paddy field. The girl’s arms and feet were bound with either his robes or his belt. I don’t' know which one he used. Malaysian monks would never do a thing like that. But people get the wrong impression of us since the monks from Thailand committed the offense. They associate us with Thai [citizen] monks. Like when this Malay man said to me, “aloh! tok rajojahat" [oh my God, what evil monks]. His impression of monks was shaped by. the news reports he had seen on television.

One reason for the influx of such negative stereotypes into Ban Bo On is the village’s closeness to the Thai border. From the wooden shelter (sala) in front of Phi Rak’s coffee shop, one can board a bus or share a taxi to the international border at the Ta Ba River. Here rice, cattle, drugs, motorcycles, and prostitutes merge with fresh vegetables, counterfeit designer clothes, dried fish, fruit, pornographic VCDs, pork, and so on in a plethora of crisscrossing activity that never seems to stop on either bank. Even in the evenings when the nation-state is symbolically sealed off through the 6 P.M. closure of the immigration checkpoints, movement continues. Smuggling is rampant across the porous border zones. Cattle and rice are smuggled from Thailand at night to waiting Malaysian vehicles and sold throughout Kelantan. Thai rice is in such high demand in Kelantan that the Malaysian, government has prevented its unlicensed importation in order to protect the domestic rice sector. The large profits to be reaped through rice smuggling have led to the emergence of an* underground industry. These are the rice “projects” which involve a complex network of Thais and Malaysians on both sides of the Ta Ba working hand in hand with corrupt police and customs officials to ensure that the Kelantanese demand for Thai rice is met daily. Night is also a time when eager young Kelantanese men, Thai, and Malay alike, seek out the sexual services of Thai girls at the many bars that have sprung up in and around the Ta Ba market and Su-ngai Kolok, a short distance away. As a result of Kelantan’s strict Islamic administration, thereis’a dearth of entertainment venues in the state, and many Kelantanese look to Thailand as an affordable sexual paradise where they can engage in vices prohibited at home, lb some of my friends in Ban Bo On, visiting the bars in Thailand either for drinking alcohol or seeking the intimacy of young northern Thai girls was a symbolic rite of passage. It was a taste ofwhat nonchalant manhood meant according to certain of its definitions, which these teenage schoolboys both anticipated and feared.54 The dread came from the looming threat of AIDS, a silent killer that has claimed the lives of manyyoung men in Kelantan’s Thai villages in the past five years.

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I The large number of AIDS deaths in Kelantan’s Thai villages has led to pathologizing narratives of the nation-state across the border. This is a social phenomenon noted in many societies experiencing similar problems. In their study of Mexican laborers in the United States, Bronfman and Moreno argued that AIDS was constructed by these immigrants as an exclusively North American epidemic (1996). Similarly, Seremetakis (1996) argued that the Albanian body was produced as a repository of AIDS in the standard discourse of the Greek media. So terrible was the disease that Ban Bo On villagers rarely even addressed it as AIDS per se. 3S In the local Tumpat “lak Bai parlance of southern Thai used in most Kelantanese Thai villages, people often spoke of “rok sat nan” (that disease), “rok khon num” (the young people’s disease) and “rokphra ek,” the last designation punning the word AIDS with the pint ek (a young hero) of Thai poptdar culture. In Ban Bo On and other Thai villages in Kelantan, conversations about AIDS were often conducted in hushed .tones. Villagers anxiously lamented the very real threat of the disease in their midst —a disease which had its origins in the bar culture across the border but had permanently befouled the moral environment of Ban Bo On through its uncontrolled plague. In what seemed like a joke but carried with it deep and sinister resonance of social destruction, the young monkK&wn Di remarked to me one morning, “Win, when you go back to Singapore you would have to inform your mother that Ban Bo On no longer exists. It was wiped out because all of the young men have died from AIDS.” Donnan and Hastings argue that embodied metaphors o f a highly contagious diseased nation-state across the border are a means of stating the “undesirability of the alien,” which when taken to its extreme justifies policies of social and political exclusion along border zones (2000, 136). Disease, like physical borders, brackets the nation and its citizens. The ambiguous and easily crossed border now becomes a much clearer bulwark of the nationstate and of the physical bodies contained within it. Political boundaries are impressed into bodily boundaries through the metaphor of disease. Donnan and Hastings (ibid.) rightly point out that “the boundaries of the body become analogous to the borders of the nation and the nation-state; both are vulnerable to penetration and corruption from the outside, susceptible to disease and alien intrusion respectively.” Hence the discourse of ethnocultural identification in Ban Bo On and in the other Thai villages in Kelantan is articulated as an embodied sense of difference from Thailand. Nevertheless, although AIDS was associated with the Thai nation-state, to argue that all Ban Bo On residents viewed Thailand and her citizens as undesirable aliens is incorrect. Thailand in general and its southern provinces in particular were not spatially bounded immoral social worlds but rather complex cultural constructions that profoundly impacted on the everyday understanding of what being Thai meant to Ban Bo On residents. 313

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The ease of movement across the boundaries of the nation-state does not mean that Kelantanese Thai social actors call the geopolitical frontier into question. Rather, the purposeful knowledge that these individuals have of boundary crossing attests to the national border’s pervasive and powerful presence. As in the premodem period, the act of crossing the la Ba was a dear demarcation of geographical and political difference. Ta Ba was Thailand, mueang Thai, even though the Thai villages in its vicinity shared a similar culture and were enmeshed in the same complex kinship networks that extended into Kelantanese Thai villages. By crossing the border, Malaysian Thais entered Thailand, albeit a place that is in many ways remarkably similar to their home environment in rural Malaysia. This is not the “amazing Thailand” of faraway Bangkok as glamorized in the glitzy tourist brochures and posters printed by die Tourism Authority of Thailand or in the nighdy Thai television soaps that many Kelantanese Thais watch without fail. To the villagers of Ban Bo On, the Thailand that lay beyond the Ta Ba market and Narathiwat Province was indeed an amazing space. Here handsome and pretty Thai-Caucasian movie stars lived in luxurious mansions and drove fast cars. Their youthful portraits decorated the walls of many a Ban Bo On home. Thailand was also associated with urban sprawl, congestion of both people and traffic, overly spiced cuisine, and Buddhist royalism—romanticized images far removed from the lived experiences of most Kelantanese Thai vegetable.cultivators. Notwithstanding this almost fictional cultural distance, Kelantanese Thais were quick to point out their commonalties with the postmodern world of the Thai nation-state. These commonalties were based upon a shared perception of being ethnically Thai and culturally Buddhist. In the oft-cited introduction to his 1969 collection of essays, Frederick Barth rightly states that it is the persistence of the ethnic boundary that should be investigated rather than “the cultural stuff that it encloses.” Barth’s observation that ethnic boundary demarcation involves the dual processes of self-ascription and ascription by others established a trend in anthropological thinking about identity. It shifted attention away from the visible symbols of culture that had until then been the hallmark of the discipline. Nevertheless, Barth’s analysis has been criticized for its lack of consideration of the power differentials and subjective agency in shaping these ascriptive processes. What then of two ethnically similar groups living on opposite sides of the national boundary? How do imaginations of the nation and its citizens shape personal conceptions of ethnocultural personhood? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to take the Barthian argument a step further and to explore the meanings generated by these common imaginations. In effect, it is necessary to reconsider the “cultural stuff” that Barth dismissed in light of a plethora of transnational movements located within the discourses of power emanating from both nation-states. 314

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Small and seemingly peripheral communities living along international boundaries are not made up of powerless individuals who merely succumb to the whims and fancies of cultural ascription by larger, more dominant social forces. Grassroots narratives of history, as Nishii (2000) rightly pointed out, are important in the production of subjective meanings of local empowerment. Kelantanese Thais, like their west coast Sam Sam counterparts, are active agents who participate in an ongoing process of ethnocultural identity construction by negotiating and dialoging with these invisible but pervasive forces, as well as by selectively interpreting history and its various embodied associations. In playing with established national reifications, these people reinterpret the meanings of the “cultural stuff” that impacts upon their everyday lived experiences according to a discourse that they themselves create. Contemporary border crisscrossings are not restricted to flows of people. Like the invisible virus that causes AIDS, media images and the ideas they transmit are not hampered by the presence of the border. These visual and aural symbols transcend the barriers of the nation-state and inadvertently shape the perceptions of its cultural consumers on the opposite side. Being so close to the Thai border exposes Kelantanese Thai social actors to the images of Thai-ness that- emanate from her national bureaus and state departments. Every house in Ban Bo On possesses a television, and watching Thai television programs has become an integral part of being Thai in contemporary Kelantan. It is from Thai television that many of Kelantan’s Thai youth learn of the latest Euro-American trends in music and popular culture. 36 Kelantanese Thais rarely watch Malaysian channels, although a number of younger Thais enjoy the Hollywood movies and Mandarin-dubbed Korean soaps shown on Malaysian television. Local Malaysian dramatic productions in the Malay language, they complained, were “never as enjoyable. They are all boring, .unlike Thai dramas.” Even the live World Cup soccer matches, which many Kelantanese Thais viewed feverishly, were watched on Thai channels 1 1, 9, 3, and ITV instead of onMalaysian channels. So powerful was the cult of the Thai media in Ban Bo On that one evening when Pho Di’s old television experienced problems with its Thai channels, Pho Di angrily switched the contraption off even though the Malaysian channels were working clearly. “I don’t understand what they are saying!” scoffed Pho Di angrily after his wife suggested they just watch the Malaysian news until the Thai channels were readjusted. The Kelantanese Thais with whom I spoke constructed their argument for Thai television viewing along ethnic lines. Malaysian-produced television programs were khaek, an ethnocultural label that Kelantanese Thais used to signify Malays. 37 To be a khaek meant that one was not and could not be khan Thai (Thai person), a point well illustrated by Thongchai (1994) in his analysis of the standard Thai term. Thongchai argued that: 315

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Khaek is . . . a term which covers the peoples and countries of the Malay peninsula, the East Indies, South Asia, and the Middle East without any distinction. Khaek also denotes a Muslim, but by no means exclusively so. That is to say, a reference is sometimes made regardless of whether or not a certain characteristic really belongs to any particular nation or ethnic group, because the aim of the discourse is to identify the un-Thai-ness rather than to define the characteristic of any particular people. Once the un-Thainess can be identified, its opposite, Thai-ness, is apparent. (5)

In Kelantan’s Thai villages, khaek carried with it negative connotations based upon the pervasive Thai stereotype that Malays {khaek} “discriminated against” (hino} the Buddhist Thais even though both groups maintain cordial everyday relationships in practice. 38 Thais viewed this discrimination as stemming from a biased reading of their cultural practices byMalay Muslims and its corresponding associations with Islamic concepts of ritual pollution. “Some khaek would not even drink water from our wells or eat the rice off our plates” complained Mae Yai. “I will never drink water from a Malay well. They say our water is dirty. But we are not the ones who raise ducks by our well or wash our hair over the well,” laughed Mae Di sarcastically as we drove past a Malay village on our way to a temple festival. The practice of Malay Muslim hino of their Thai neighbors was believed by many Thais in Ban Bo On to have increased in the past years with the rise in Islamic fundamentalism across the state and as a global phenomenon. The ethnic bias generated by Kelantanese Thai social perceptions of hino is translated into local preferences for media coverage. I asked Phi Khum why he never watched Malay-language news, preferring instead to tune in only to the Thai news. “Malaysian news is too heavily censored,” he replied, citing the recent Israeli-Palestinian clashes as an example of biased reporting. “On Malaysian news, they only show images of how the Palestinians have suffered. They never show the suffering of the Israelis. Thai reporting is much more fair. They show both sides of the situation,” he added. With Thailand’s media come reified and naturalized national representations of a Thai cultural essence produced in Bangkok This is the political Thai-ness that the Thai nation-state celebrates through its idealized images of a common multicultural citizenry steeped in a shared national history (frawattisai) and culture (ivatthanatham). National Thai history, unlike local Kelantanese Thai conceptions of the past, concerns itself with a lineal search for first origins in the geopolitical body of an already-bordered state. This is most clearly displayed in the televised images of the changing map of the Thai nation-state from Sukhothai through Rattanakosin (Bangkok) — visual signifiers of an imagined sense of Thai-ness that saturate Ban Bo On’s living rooms every evening. Since the time of Chulalongkorn’s policies of 316

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state consolidation, Thailand’s reading of its national past has been concentrated in the elite center and its embodiment in the monarchical institution (Thongchai 1994; Gesick 1995). Images of King Bhumibol and members of the Thai royal family flash across television screens in Ban Bo On every hour, a legacy of Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat’s attempts at ensuring the success of his version of the nationalist project through a celebration of the monarchy. 39 On the living room walls of almost every house in the village are displayed pictures of the Thai king. These representations are often cut from the front pages of old Thai calendars or purchased from vendors during temple festivals throughout Kelantan and Thailand. In some households, framed pictures of the king take on an almost sacred quality, being placed alongside Buddha images on personal altars. These pictures, however, do not cany the same revered sacredness as an unquestioned symbol of national pride for Kelantanese Thais as they do for their friends and relatives across the Ta Ba. When I asked some Ban Bo On residents why they displayed these political symbols of national Thai culture, they replied matter-of-factly that the pictures were “beautiful” (ngam). Also ngam were the glossy posters of Thai pop idols, Buddha statues, and temples with which they shared a common wall space. Images of the Kelantanese sultan were rarely exhibited on the private space of the house wall. I believe that the reason for this was not so much a sense of national, pride in Thailand but rather a feeling of having been neglected by a Malay Muslim ruler whose traditional intimacy with the Thais had eroded. Older Kelantanese spoke approvingly of the intimate relationship the former sultans had had with the Buddhist establishment, thereby fulfilling the idealized role of “king as protector of the religion.” Unlike the king of Thailand, who was ever-ready to dirty his hands with the peasantry, as the Thai media incessantly informs its viewing audience, the present sultan rarely visited Kelantan’s Thai settlements. When he did decide to visit his palace at Tumpat taking a route which brought the royal entourage along Jalan Hospital through Ban Bo On, the motorcade seemed always in a hurry and the somber-faced ruler “never even waved to his Thai subjects.” The positive belief of the Thai monarch as a kind and beneficent Buddhist father figure was derived from these popular images which, when considered, pointed to the Kelantan sultan’s social distance. The pictures of the Thai king in Kelantan are thus displayed out of an intense respect for his actions and a shared feeling of ethnocultural sameness as subjects of the ideal Thai Buddhist monarch rather than a false sense of national patriotism. These kingly snapshots provide Kelantanese Thais with ,a visual and beautiful vocabulary with which to symbolically merge their otherwise minority Buddhist status in a predominantly Malay Muslim state with powerful larger discourses of cultural personhood emanating from Thailand. 40 By so doing, Malaysian marginality is subsumed within an all317

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encompassing sense of Thai-ness that has been purged of its political signification. Kelantanese Thais repeatedly spoke of themselves as first and foremost loyal Malaysians. Thailand was a faraway place that Kelantanese Thais visited frequently but did not experience as home. Home was Malaysia, as this was where historical roots were anchored. No more clearly was this displayed than on August 31 of last year, when. Ta Thong wrapped himself with a large Malaysian flag as we paraded joyously through the streets of Ban Bo On to celebrate Ta Koi and Ta Mo’s ordination. Ta Thong’s behavior, as well as the large red Kelantanese flags and Malaysian flags which decked the truck on which 'la Koi and Ta Mo sat nervously, were distinct acts of national patriotism on Malaysia’s independence day (Hari Merdeka). Despite these objectified signs of Malaysian-ness, my friend Ke Nuan always reminded me, “We are Thai, after all.” It was this subjective ideology of “we are Thai, after all” (rao khon Thai bd), a feeling of fraternity at being from the same ethnocultural group as Thai Buddhists across the border rather than a shared national pride or historical consciousness, that brought busloads of Kelantanese Thais to Bangkok a few years ago to pay their last respects to the queen mother before the royal cremation. Crossing the border in the opposite direction are the students making annual visits from Thailand’s various universities. They enter Kelantan during week-long trips to teach Kelantanese Thai teenagers the elementary moves of an embodied national discourse —dance, kickboxing, decorum (marayat), and standard Thai linguistic pronunciation. This provides a clear example of the success of Thailand’s policy of producing cultural citizens in the furthest reaches of its hegemonic domain. The space of Thai-ness is therefore not confined by the territorial perimeters of the nation-state, but is extended beyond it. Thongchai remarked, “The domain of Thainess is rather ambiguous; it can be quite extensive or quite restricted” (1994, 169). Emanating from her -cultural auxiliaries, this official and positive rendition of Thai-ness as defined by the Thai nation-state was expressed through the private display of its symbols, Barth’s “cultural stuff” inundated by discourses of power that bounded a marginal Malaysian border community.

PARADISE AT YOUR DOORSTEP: SPACE AND IDENTITY ALONG A RIVER I have constructed an image of Thailand as a chaotic and confusing place. To the Kelantanese Thais of Ban Bo On, it is a space associated with a narrative of Buddhist immorality and disorder—sensational images of rapists and money-laundering monks flood into Kelantanese Thai living rooms through the conduits of media news reports. Here, corruption runs deep, bandits and 318

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Muslim insurgents threaten the livelihoods of hardworking nikbom settlers, murderers escape prosecution, and AIDS rages along the border zones. This negative image deconstructs and dissolves away the discourse of a sanitized national Thai-ness produced by the Thai government. It symbolically turns the powerful narrative of cultural sameness on its head by weaving a complex picture of Thai society across the border as being fraught with danger and immorality, opposed to the pristine environment of Malaysia. Even though some Ban Bo On villagers readily admitted to the inefficiency oftheMalaysian bureaucracy and the corruption of its officials who maintained policies of Malay exclusivism and of discrimination against Thais, Malaysia was still considered a better place to live than Thailand. Malaysia was where patriotic loyalties laid due to the maintenance of historical continuity with one’s ancestors in the state. This was where one’s ancestors originated and hence where the webs of kinship, so crucial in defining social personhood in Kelantan, were maintained. “When I hear ‘Negaraku’ (the Malaysian national anthem) being played, my hairs stand on end,” laughed Ke Nuan as she drove her dark green Malaysian-made Proton through the rubber-filled landscape of Tanah Merah. As she spoke, a little beaded ornament of King Chulalongkorn dangled from the rearview mirror. I asked her about it, expecting an answer figuring of contested loyalties. "Oh I just hang it there because it is very pretty [ngam],no big deal really,” she said, smiling —only to add later, “but we are Thai after all.” Thailand is “paradise at your doorstep” —to reiterate the loud Tourism Authority of Thailand slogan plastered on the side of the white and yellow number 43 bus that plies the route between Jalan Hospital and Kota Bahru. It is where Buddhism prospers under a kind and affectionate people’s monarch. The sacred Buddhist temples, shrines, and hospitals provide nodes for the management of Kelantanese Thai physiological suffering. The little temple in Nakhon Si Thammarat with its miraculous wooden wand was one such example in the quest for a return to healthy normalcy by crossing the border. It was to Thailand’s Buddhist temples that one looked to recover from the diseases which doctors in Malaysia had dismissed as incurable. Many Kelantanese Thai monks traveled across the border when they needed to seek out medical treatment. Khun Dam informed me that monks were treated much better at Thailand’s hospitals “since it was easier dealing with Thais,” and that medical services were provided for them free of charge. Thailand was thus both an arena for infection and the site for its control and eradication. AIDS crossed into Kelantan by way of Thailand’s sexual immorality. So rampant is the disease in larger communities like Ban Bo On that villagers now joke about how AIDS in their village is a “gift” brought back from Thailand, a place well known for its cheap shopping, by young men only to. be shared with their girlfriends, wives, and children. 41 They 319

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were quick to point out that the problem was not confined to their village but also felt in other Thai and Malay villages. Thais and Malays were thus not that different after all. They inhabited innocent spaces that had been plagued by a similar disease. The looming presence of AIDS in the community was associated with the dangerous pleasures that characterize a morally decayed mueang Thai. Even though villagers acknowledged that there was no cure for the disease, its containment lay on the other side of the Ta Ba. When pregnant Ke Di realized she was HIV-positive after having been infected by her young husband, she sought out the abortion services of a clinic in southern Thailand, thereby preventing the transmission of future sadness in Ban Bo On. Indeed such an association supports Donnan and Hastings’s contention of the diseased body as a site for articulations of the “undesirability of the alien” (2001). Nevertheless, social undesirability is situational and contextually specific in the Kelantanese Thai case. Kelantanese Thai social actors reject their negative associations with Thailand but embrace its positive aspects. The Chakri monarchy is celebrated and Buddhism in Kelantan still looks across the border for its ritual and institutional inspiration. Simply put, Thainess in Ban Bo On is a dynamic concept that emerges at the interstices of desirability and undesirability. The practices of border crisscrossing in which these Kelantanese Thai villagers constantly engage, and through which they articulate a sense of ethnocultural pride, cannot be analyzed without considering the pervasive power plays both nation-states exert over citizens on the peripheries. Being situated along the international frontier makes Kelantanese Thais privy to discourses emanating from both sides. Borderlands, despite their identity as ambiguous and blurred political spaces, are also powerful markers of nationhood. The border at the Ta Ba River and the ensuing discourses of Thai-ness which emanate from Bangkok through it have solidified Kelantanese Thai narratives of national pride in being Malaysian while sharing intimate cultural associations with their Thai citizen neighbors. Globalization theory, notes Fernandez (2000), is a postmodern discourse that celebrates the deconstruction of boundaries and of the previous fixity inherent in takenfor-granted cultural essentialisms. Fernandez adds, however, that despite the seeming boundlessness inherent in an increasingly mobile modem society, new reifications and boundaries are constantly being established (2001). My analysis of the agentive production of ethnocultural space in Kelantan has been a case in point in understanding local responses to diverse movements. To the villagers of Ban Bo On, the nearby border is both a real and subjective place. The images and imaginations triggered by the presence of the border and the roads that link it with the settlement are selectively embodied in the social actors’ narratives of morality. It is the exposure to the other (Thai, Malay) that shapes these indigenous reifications of personhood and its 320

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articulation in everyday practice. In this paper, I have shown how Kelantanese Thai villagers construct a complex and crisscrossing representation of identity formation in the globalized practices of their mobile residents. It is a constantly emerging picture in the moving kaleidoscope of ethnicity that makes up social life along Malaysia’s northernmost margins of sovereignty.

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NOTES Ethnographic fieldwork for this paper was conducted in a number of Kelantanese Thai villages between August 2001 and December 2002. 1 am especially grateful to the villagers of Ban Bo On who allowed me to live in their community and treated me with the warmth and kindness so typical of Kelantanese Thai hospitality. It is to them that I dedicate this paper. Kelantanese Thais always address each other using a number of standard honorifics, which I reproduce here. Men who had once been monks are called Chao as opposed to the never-ordained Eh (formal) or Ta (informal). When referring to a Chao within one’s parents’ generation, the kin term Na is affixed to the honorific. Women usually have Ke (madam) as a formal honorific preceding their proper names. Men and women may also be addressed as Pho (father) and Mae (mother) 'respectively, as long as they are from one’s parents’ generation, regardless of actual kin affiliation. As in standard Thai, Kelantanese Thai social actors also use more generation-specific honorifics, especially when speaking to or about respected or genealogically distant people. These include phi (elder sibling), nong (younger sibling), lung (man in one’s grandfather’s generation), and pa/mae kae (woman in one’s grandmother’s generation). Monks are always named using the respected prefix of Khun or Than. 1. Phuea chiwit (songs for life) is a genre of contemporary Thai music popular with a large number of young Kelantanese Thai men. The music combines aural and visual elements of heavy western rock with an indigenous Thai sound. Phuea chiwit songs often revolve around everyday social issues and injustices rather than the romance of more conventional Thai musical styles. 2. The popularity (/we) of the wat amongst Kelantanese Thais as a site for miraculous healing began when the story of Na Chao Bot circulated within and beyond Ban Bo On. The Once almost blind Na Chao Bot was said to have returned from the temple with renewed albeit blurred vision. 3. Most Kelantanese Thai villagers seemed to believe in the wand’s magical efficacy but a number were more reserved, in their judgments. When I asked twenty-oneyear-old Ta Di why he did not accompany his father to the temple, he dismissed the issue matter-of-factly, saying, “I don’t believe it. It is just like with the mo th ewada [spirit doctor] at Ban Kao who was so popular here a few years ago. Everyone went to see him. But now, you never even hear it mentioned anymore. That is how our Thai society is.” According to Ban Bo On villagers who had gone to the temple, the key to being healed was as much psychological as it was magical. “It only works ifyou believe [chuea] in the stick and do not question its power,” said Pa Ngiam. People who attempted to test the stick’s efficacy by feigning illness were rumored to contract a mysterious skin disease. Most of the villagers I spoke with agreed that they felt better after visiting the temple even though there were known cases of conditions deteriorating. Lung Di died from throat cancer shortly after his second visit. The popularity of the temple lasted some six months, after which it was said that the wand “wanted to go elsewhere.” 4. Nakhon Si Thammarat has since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played " a crucial role in the political affairs of the Kelantanese Malay court, for instance in its

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official support for Tuan Senik during the Kelantan civil war of 1838 (Skinner 1965). The southern Thai principality maintained intimate relationships with the Kelantanese Thai as.well, albeit on a ritual rather than political plane, with the Mahathat temple (Wat Phra That) being a major node in the traditional (pre-Second World War) Kelantanese Thai pilgrimage circuit. Ban Bo' On villagers spoke of how Nakhon (as the southern principality was called) used to be an important religious center for Kelantanese Thais. Thirty-five-year-old Khun Kaew compared the ritual position of Nakhon Svith the Muslim holy land of Mecca: “In those days, to go to Nakhon was like going to Mecca.” Pho Di noted how, “in the past, if you went to Nakhon it was something important [Zue].” Although still a sacred site, Nakhon Si Thammarat today does not carry the same significance to Kelantanese Thais as it did in the past, in part I believe due to the ease of movement to the province. Infrastructure developments across Thailand in the past forty years has also allowed Kelantanese Thais easier access to a much wider sacred map that now extends all the way into the North and Northeast. 5 . Relative isolation from the west coast did not mean that pre-nineteenth-century Kelantanese social actors were removed from the dynamic forces of precolonial globalization. Scholars of Kelantanese history have noted the importance of international trade in the development of Kelantanese Malay society and political culture. See for instance, the works by Shahrii (1981), Rahmat (1979, 1987), Othman (1987), and Wee (1987). 6. The census did not include data on the number of Malay Muslims who were not Malaysian citizens in Kelantan. A large number of Malay Muslims from southern Thailand workboth legally and illegally in the state, primarily in construction projects and as restaurant workers. A number of these southern Thai Malay Muslims are enrolled as students in national and Islamic (pondok/sekolab Arab) schools throughout Kelantan. The problem with the statistics, however, is that as with many other border societies, many Kelantanese and Thais have dual citizenship, being both Malaysian citizens and Thai nationals at the same time. Being the citizens of two nation-states is illegal in both Thailand and Malaysia, yet rampant corruption and strong patronclient-type ties make its acquisition relatively easy. Having dual citizenship facilitates cross-border movement and allows holders to derive the social and economic benefits of both nation-states. For an analysis of these “traveling cultures” (Clifford 1997), see Hortsmann (2002). < 7. Shamsul’s (1996, 477) “authority-defined” ethnic identities were “authoritatively defined by people who are part of the dominant power structure.” This formal element of social reality occurred simultaneously with “everyday-defined” identities as “one which is experienced by the people in the course of their everyday fife.” 8..The “other” (Malaysian citizens) category comprised Indonesian, Thai, Filipino, Myanmar, Japanese, Korean, other Asian, Eurasian, European, and others (Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2000, 104). 9. A number of so-called Thai villages are in fact mixed communities comprising both Thais and rural Chinese, as well as Malays. In these instances there is usually a clear demarcation in terms of settlement layout, with ethnic Thais tending to form household clusters.

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10. In its efforts at introducing dual cropping in villages, the Malaysian Department of Agriculture constructed irrigation canals (tali air) through what were once rain-fed fields. In Ban Bo On, the canals forced villagers to abandon rice cultivation permanently. Villagers complained to me about how agricultural engineers did not take into consideration the undulating slope of Ban Bo On’s topography when constructing the canals. Hence, water that was once held in the fields drained out into the canals. Expensive pumps were needed to reintroduce the water back into the fields, a practice poor fanners could ill-afford. Soils soon dried up and the oncefertile rice fields became converted into grassy fodder zones for cows and buffaloes. 1 1. Most tertiary-educated Thais who are fluent in Malay, standard (central) Thai, and English have found employment in competitive white-collar industries in the high-skill technological sectors of Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Although many lamented having to move out of their home communities in the pursuit of economic opportunity, they realized that it was the only choice they had given Kelantan’s sagging economy. 12. My Kelantanese Thai friends preferred to chat in Thai-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels (#) such as #Siam and #Thailand. IRC Channels such as #Kelate were viewed as largely monopolized by Kelantanese Malay chatters and hence not the cyberspace of choice for culturally different Thais. Another popular channel was #Kampung, which was a Malaysia-wide as opposed to a Malay-dominant chatroom like #Kelate. Thais rarely ventured onto predominantly English channels, claiming that their command of the language was too poor to initiate and maintain conversations with English speakers. 13. Many villagers I spoke with attributed the economic success of some residents to their participation in investment schemes offered by the Malaysian government to Thais in the 1980s. Although Thais were not classed as bumiputera (indigenous inhabitants) in the national constitution, they were allowed to invest in the highinterest bumipwtera schemes, a privilege denied to the nation’s Chinese and Indian populations. 14. The Thai Buddhist villages that border the Ta Ba in Narathiwat Province far outnumber similar Tumpat Tak Bai-speaking communities on the river’s Malaysian bank, bothin their size and demographics. Most are located in the provincial district of Tak Bai, although a number are also found further north, in and around the districts of Su-ngai Padi, Su-ngai Kolok, Tanyong Mat, and Ra-ngae 1 5. None of the Ban Bo On villagers I spoke to could recall when the roads were first constructed. Some remembered Jalan Hospital as a small dirt track (thang iat) along which villagers traversed to and from their rice and vegetable plots “not too long ago.” Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on the history of road works in Kelantan despite their predominance and significance in shaping processes of mobility and early industrial development. In 1921, Kelantan’s southern interior (wZa) was opened to direct colonial control with the completion of the Kota BahruKuala Krai roadway (Shahril 1987, 159). It is likely that the northern extension ofthis road, the ubiquitous Kota Bahru/Pengakalan Kubor/Thailand route via Tumpat and Ban Bo On was probably constructed in about the same period. Subsequent road widenings and constant resurfacing carried out by the state authorities resulted in the present two-lane highways. 324

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16. Kota Bahru’s Royal Thai Consulate was officially opened on April 30, 1966. As the foremost representative of the Thai nation-state in Kelantan, the consulate was instrumental in facilitating cross-border movements amongst Kelantan’s Thai popula tion in the 1 960s and 1 970s through informing local Thais of the nikhom proj ects and through handling the bureaucratic paperwork of prospective migrants. The consulate’s official duty, however, was related to the management of Thai nationals living in Kelantan as well as in other matters concerning the Thai nation-state such as the granting of tourist visas (Kershaw 1969, 203). 17. Although it was never directly stated, either in Thai official records or by the settlers themselves, one could suggest that the encouraged resettlement of Kelantan Thais into lower Narathiwat Province could be seen as having a political agenda of populating the region with politically docile immigrants. Kelantan’s Buddhist Thais were possibly considered by the Thai state to be more culturally akin to Thailand’s majority Buddhist population than other people in the area. Their large numbers in predominantly Muslim Narathiwat Province could offset the number of local Malay Muslims, thereby overcoming the perceived threat of Malay Muslim insurgency. 18. For further discussions of the nikbom projects see Kershaw (1969), Golomb (1978), and Mohamed (1993). 19. In this paper, I refer to the pre-1945 polity of what is today Thailand as Siam. By Siamese, I mean the Thai-speaking Buddhist population of the polity, usually in reference to the political elites in Bangkok. I have never heard Kelantanese Thais speaking among themselves refer to themselves as Siamese, even when speaking of their pre-colonial history. They unquestionably stated that they were Thaifkhon Thai. 20. The early (thirteenth- through eighteenth-century) history of Kelantan has been discussed by Rentse (1934), Wheatley (1961), Wyatt and Bastin (1968), Abdullah bin Mohamed (Nakula) (1968), Wyatt (1972), and Nik Hassan Shuhaimi (1980, 1986). 21 Kelantanese Malay disgruntlement with Siamese overlordship was common. Shahril Talib (1981,48) noted that in 1831, the Malay rulers of Kelantan participated in a joint campaign with the leaders of the other Malay states against the Siamese. The failed coup resulted in the Kelantanese ruler having to pay a fine of 30,000 Spanish dollars and ten katies of gold dust to Rama IV Gold dust also had to be paid to the Bangkok-appointed Siamese court official in charge of administering the state. The otherwise distant peripheries of the Siamese polity were thus drawn closer to the core center of power while ensuring a certain degree of regional autonomy. 22. One of the oldest nora (manord) dancers in Kelantan is Lung Lan, a wellrespected resident of Ban Bo On. Lung Lan recalled to me how during the period of the “white man’s administration” fwangkhon khao pokkhrong),the state’s most popular nura troupes received the patronage of the sultan and his deputy, the temenggong. These troupes regularly performed at the Kota Bahru palace during royal celebrations and their lead actors were exempt from all state-imposed corvee obligations. 2 3. The Thai Buddhist population of Narathiwat Province’s Tak Bai (la Ba) District in 1997 was approximately twenty thousand and was served by twenty temples. Tak Bai’s total population thatyear was 57,515, the remainder being mostly Malay Muslims (Watthana 2000, 21) . 24. For the role of Japanese and Thai forces in Kelantan in the 1940s, see Nik Anuar bin Nik Mahmud’s (undated) article entitled “Kelantan dibawah Pentadbiran 325

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Tentera Jepun dan Pentadbiran Tentera Thai, 1941-45” (Kelantan Collection, Kelantan State Library). 25. Lorainne Gesick (1995) has noted that centrist Thai histories that emphasized lineal temporality were often the privy of elites. Local southern Thai historiographies tend to revolve around the production of meaningful places through a network of stories. Nevertheless there has been much overlap between both versions of the past, creating what she terms “a hybrid local historiography.” 26. For a history of the ferry service and the development of the la Ba border region see Praphon (1987). 27. The process of border demarcation was closely associated with the development of transportation networks in the region. One of the stated conditions of the AngloSiamese Treaty of 1909 was Britain’s agreement to loan the Siamese government four million pounds at 4 percent interest to build the southern extension of Siam’s railway line, which would link it with Kelantan (Kelly 1997). Until 1957, there were twiceweekly train services from Kelantan’s Wakaf Bahru and Tumpat stations to Su-ngai Kolok in Thailand. 28. Luk thung (“child of the fields”) is a popular Thai musical genre relying heavily on a rural Thai sound (e.g. using a combination of traditional Thai instruments and rhythms in a western pop aural environment) and strong vocals. The songs often revolve around romanticized visions of village life and the dangers posed by the modem city. 29. Even though the need for citizenship documents in legal border crossings was officialpractice in 1950 and came under the Federation of Malaya Agreement, Section 124 (1) (e), it was likely that most Kelantanese Thais did not pay attention to this in the early period of implementation. Kershaw (1984, 57) noted that at the Pasir Puteh District Office only two or three such documents were issued to Thai villagers from Ban Semoerak between 1951 and early 1952. ' 30. In 1948, Kedah hosted the first set of nak tham examinations in British Malaya. Phra Wijarayanamuni, the chief monk of Kelantan, initiated the study and teaching of nak tham in Kelantan a year later. The examinations were conducted at Wat Uttamaram in the village of Bang Saet (Pasir Mas) (4 Short Bibliography of Phra Wijarayanamuni, 1963). Today, most Thai temples in Kelantan hold their own nak tham classes. Classes are taught by monks who have completed all four years of Thai education in Kelantan’s monastic school system. Nak tham exams are held in February with different temples postered as venues for the examinations on a three-year cycle. For a further discussion of the nak tham examinations in Thailand see Tambiah (1970, 127-8). 31. The concept of a national Buddhist examination was the brainchild of Somdet Phra Maha Somana Chao, abbot of Bangkok’s Wat Bowomiwet in the early years of the twentieth century (Suchaowana Phloichum 2000). 32. Almost everyone passes the nak tham examinations. Although each candidate sits at his own table and the exams are proctored, cheating is easy. “If you really can’t answer a question, just ask the proctor and he will give you the answer,” said my friend Khun Phom matter-of-factly. 33. It was likely that the chief monk engaged in the ceremony was Than Khru Kin. Farrer (1933, 262) stated, “At 7 p.m. the head of all the Siamese priests in Kelantan, ‘lb Raja, (who is treated as of royal blood and addressed as Ku) arrived and was introduced.” Ku is likely a Malay pronunciation of Kiu or Khru. 326

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34. Alcohol and sex services are also available in Kelantan under the cover of darkness. But unlike in Thailand, these are not publicly perceptible and are not associated with the excitement of discreet travel across the border. Eh Khao, a twentysomething-year-old student now.attending a private college in Selangor, told me how he and his friends would cross the Ta Ba late atnight, especially during temple festivals. Once in Thailand, they would drink and seek out prostitutes at the brothels behind the Ta Ba market. Alcohol and sex at the Ta Ba border were more affordable than at the more tourist-oriented bars of Su-ngai Kolok and hence attracted a younger Kelantanese Thai clientele. 35. The use of different words to refer to the disease is identical to the Kelantanese Thai practice of calling dangerous animals by nicknames when referring to them at night or in the jungle so that the animals would .not know that they were being mentioned and would not harm the speaker. 36. Kelantanese Thai youth popular culture is an interesting phenomenon that has yet to be studied by ethnographers of the region. Many Kelantanese Thai teenage boys form cliques based on the kind of American music they enjoy and its corresponding expression in fashion, gesture, and language. These groups are called by various designations, the most popular being the “hip hop” boys who attempt to imitate American street fashion, speech styles, and rap music. “Hip hop” boys also enjoy skateboarding and BMX bicycling, two activities that they practice every afternoon on the marble floor beneath a Ban Bo On temple’s large Buddha statue. Other groups include “punks” and “skins.” 37. 1 have never heard Kelantanese Thais refer to non-Malay Muslims as khaek, unlike in. the word’sstandard (central) Thai meaning. So Sethaputra (1975, 70) defined a kbaek as being “a stranger, a foreigner, except a Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Burmese, or a white man-,an Indian; a Malay; a negro; a person from the Near East or Middle East; a person from North Africa; a visitor, a guest” (italics in original). This standard definition thus carried with it connotations of cultural and non-Thai other-ness. 38. The word bino is a Kelantanese Malay derivative of the standard Malay hina, which meant “having low social standing” (rendah tarafnyd) and “disrespectful” (keji) (in relation to a person’s character and action) (Kamus Dewan 1994, 459). 39. The display of Thai images in Ban Bo On homes must be understood in relation to the rise of monarchical patriotism in Thailand during the administration of Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat. Sarit came to power in 1957, and, during his controversial term in office, instituted a resurrection of royal symbolism and Buddhist culture that had not been seen in the nation since the overthrow of absolute monarchy in 1932. 40. Thailand as an imagined community comprising “Thais,” rather than a mismatch of different ethnocultural groups (e.g. Malay, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Chinese, Tamil) living within the territorial confines of the nation-state was a policy developed by Phibun Songkhram as part of his state prescriptions (ratthaniyom) in 1941 (Thongchai 1994, 165). 41. The threat of the disease has concerned the Kelantan state government to such an extent that now men and women intending to marry need to be tested before their marriage can be legally certified by state officials.

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REFERENCES A Short Bibliography ofPhra Wijarayanamuni.1963. Cremation vol. Wat Uttamaram, Pasir Mas, Malaysia. Abdullah bin Mohamed (Nakula). 1968. Kelantan dari Pra-Sejarah hingga Zaman Permulaan Sri Vijaya. Jumal Persatuan Sejarah Kelantan.Kota Bahru, Malaysia. Asaad Syukri. 1971. Introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference,edited by Frederick Barth. London: George Allen and Unwin. Bronfman, M., and S. Moreno. 1996- Perspectives on HIV/AIDS Prevention among Immigrants on the US-Mexico Border. In AIDS Crossing Borders: The Spread of HIV among Migrant Latinos, edited by S. I. Mishra, R. F. Conner, and J. R. Mangana. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Clifford,J. 1 997. Routes:Travel and Translation in the LateTwentieth Century.Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Farrer, R J. 193 3. A Buddhistic Purification Ceremony. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 11 (2): 261-63. Fernandez, J. 2000. Peripheral Wisdom. In Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundariesand ContestedValues,edited by Anthony Cohen. London: Routledge. Gesick, L. 1 995. In the Land of Lady White Blood: Southern Thailand and the Meaning of History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. Golomb, L. 1978. Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adaptation in a Rural Malaysian Setting. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. Hastings, D., and T. Wilson. 2001. Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation, and State. Oxford and New York: Berg. Horstmann, A. 2002. Rethinking Citizenship in Thailand: Identities on the Fringe of the Nation in National and Post National Times. Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Thai Studies, January 9-12, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Ramus Dewan.1994. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Kelly, N. 1997. History of Malaya and Southeast Asia. Singapore: Heinemann. Kershaw, R. 1969. The Thais of Kelantan: A Socio-Political Study of an Ethnic Outpost. Ph.D. diss., University of London. Kershaw, R. 1973. The Chinese in Kelantan, WestMalaysia, as Mediators ofPolifical Integration to the Kelantan Thais. Parts 3-4. Nanyang Quarterly 3: 1-10. --------. 1984. Native but not Bumiputera: Crisis and Complexity in the Political Status of the Kelantan Thais after Independence. Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnography 3: 46-71. Masqueiier, A. 2002. Road Mythologies: Space, Mobility, and the Historical Imagination in Post-Colonial Niger. American Ethnologist 29 (4): 829-856. 328

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Amporn Kaewnu is currently heading Southern regional office of Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI), an independent public organization under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. Omar Farouk Bajunid obtained his Ph.D. in Politics and Government from the University of Kent at Canterbury in England in 1981. He taught for many years at the University, of Malaya before moving to Hiroshima City University, Japan as a tenured professor. He has done extensive research on Islam and politics in Southeast Asia. Paul Dowsey-Magog has published journal articles on outdoor ritual theater and Thai puppetry in a number of academic journals in Thailand, Australia, and the U.S. He was formerly a lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Australia, but is now retired and living in Thailand. Marlane Guelden is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. As a photojoumalist in Southeast Asia from 1984 to 1991, she published Thailand: Into the Spirit World and Times Travel Library: Kuala Lumpur with Times Editions, Singapore. She has a B.A. in Sociology and M.A. in Public Policy Development from San Francisco State University. Irving Chan Johnson is Assistant Professor at the Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He is a social anthropologist interested in issues of identity production, history, and mobilities in the Thai villages of Kelantan, Malaysia.°His current research looks at the histories and experiences of movement, monumentality, and expansive diasporic spaces along the Thai-Malaysian border.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Jawanit Kittitornkool received her Ph.D. in Development Studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bath, UK. She is currently lecturer and director for the Master’s Program in Environmental Education, Faculty of Environmental Management, Prince of Songkla University. Contact e-mail: [email protected]. L Phil King is currently working on a Ph.D. on the history of regional resource economies along the Thai-Malay frontier at the University of Wollongong. Contact e-mail: [email protected]. Lamai Manakarn is a researcher at the Wetland Research Project, Faculty of Science and Technology, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus. She has been actively involved in local community networks and civil groups. Jovan Maud is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He is currently completing his thesis on popular Buddhism and transnational Chinese religious tourism in southern Thailand. Theodore Mayer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology » at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research investigates the exploration of new forms of social engagement within Thai Buddhist traditions. He teaches anthropology, Thai language, and Buddhist studies at Webster University, Thailand, and coordinates Webster University’s Buddhist Studies Program. Duncan McCargo is professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds, UK. He has published widely on Thai politics. His latest book, coauthored with Ukrist Pathmanand, is The Thaksinization of Thailand (NIAS, Forthcoming 2005). Contact e-mail: [email protected]. Nukul Ratanadakul is Assistant Professor of Biology at the Faculty of Science and Technology, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus. He is interested in issues of environmental problems, community-based resource, management, and local participation. Piya Kittaworn is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of Social Sciences, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus. He has been actively engaged in local grassroot activities and organizations. Suleemarn N. Wongsuphap is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University. Her research interests include 332

CONTRIBUTORS

gender, development studies, local history, and the Chinese diaspora. She is currently doing her Ph.D. research on Identity Politics and Transnationality of Chinese in Southern Thailand at La Trobe University. Contact e-mail: [email protected]. Wattana Sugunnasil is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, Prince of Songlda University, Pattani Campus. His research interests cover the fields of rural studies, environmental issues, culture of consumption, and conflict studies. Contact e-mail: [email protected]. psu.ac.th.

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