ASIA_NEWS: workshop, 'Thailand Today ...'

[Greg Young]

From: Craig Reynolds <Craig.Reynolds at anu.edu.au>
About: workshop, 'Thailand Today ...'


Thailand Today: New Perspectives and Approaches

18-19 February 2003


Lecture Theatre 6, Manning Clark Building(Next to ANU Union)
Australian National University, Canberra

This workshop will offer an opportunity for scholars to talk about
their current research with special reference to new approaches to the
study of Thailand and Tai peoples.  Postgraduate students are
particularly encouraged to attend.

Sponsored By: The Faculty of Asian Studies; The Division of Pacific
and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies; and
the National Thai Studies Centre.


Attendance is Free.

DRESS CODE IS INFORMAL.
 

Coffee and Meals:  Coffee and lunch will not be catered.  Participants
can buy hot and cold drinks and meals from the range of coffee shops,
restaurants and cafeterias (including Asian food cafeteria) located in
the ANU Union Building immediately adjacent to the conference
venue. The workshop Dinner will be held from 7.30 pm on Tuesday 18
February at the Zen Yai Restaurant, 117 London Circuit (Sydney
Building). Set price menu of $20.00 per person includes:
Non-Vegetarian Dishes; Thort Man (fish cakes); Hor Mok (fish); Kaeng
Massamun Neua (beef).  Vegetarian Dishes: Kraphao Tao-hu (tofu &
basil); Som Tam (no shrimps added) with sticky rice; stir fried mixed
vegetables; steamed rice; tea and coffee.  Zen Yai is BYO.

Please let the conference organisers know if you will be attending
the workshop dinner by lunchtime on Tuesday 18 February.   

Workshop Papers: Participants interested in receiving copies of
papers should contact the relevant speakers directly. 

For further information contact the workshop convenors:

Craig J. Reynolds  Craig.Reynolds at anu.edu.au

Peter Jackson  Peter.Jackson at anu.edu.au




Conference Program 


Tuesday 18 February 9.30 am

Opening and Welcome: Cavan Hogue, Director, National Thai Studies
Centre


10.00 11.00 am  Session 1  History (I)
 
Session Chair:   Craig Reynolds


Chris Baker, Independent Scholar, Bangkok (ppasuk at chula.ac.th)

Social Change in Late Ayutthaya


This presentation is an extract from a draft History of Thailand.  The
guiding idea of the History is to write about social change, as far as
the sources allow. This extract is about the social impact of commerce
in late Ayutthaya.  It will focus on the growing ability  of khunnang
families, from late Narai-period onwards, to conserve property and
position across generations and hence accumulate wealth. It then talks
about commercialisation of manpower relations, and speculates about
khunnnang attempts to control/change the monarchy.

Hong Lysa, Independent Scholar, Melbourne (hlysa at eraydium.com)

Thailand's Virtual Histories: Cults, Dreams and Cinema as Historical
Truth

In the past half decade or so, the history of three Siamese women
warriors, Thao Suranari, Phra Suphankalaya and Phra Suriyothai have
been the centre of popular and media attention. Historical evidence
relating to them are sketchy at best, but this has only facilitated
their becoming arguably the most well-known historical personalities
to emerge in recent times. The marketing of history through film
dissolves the line between fact and imagination, but the latter is
carefully limited by the codes of the establishment version of
national identity formation, fueled by a rhetoric of resistance to
globalisation.


11.00 11.30 am Morning Tea Break  

11.30am 12.30 pm   Session 2  History (II)



SESSION CHAIR:   HONG LYSA Rachel Harrison, Southeast Asia Department,
SOAS, (rh6 at soas.ac.uk)

East Meets West: Perceptions of the Outside World in the Prose
Fiction of "Victorian" Siam"

In this presentation I will talk about aspects of my current
collaborative research project with Peter Jackson on the history of
Thai perceptions and reception of the West.  I will discuss the
adaptation of Western literary texts in the production of the earliest
Thai detective fiction stories, Nithan Thong In by Crown Prince
Vajiravudh; and, some twenty years later, the perceptions of the
outside world and, particularly of the West, in the work of MC
Akartdamkoeng Raphiphat. The discussion of all these literary works
will draw connections between their shared dual treatment of the West
in terms of both fascination and rejection.   

Peter Jackson, Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School
of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU (peter.jackson at anu.edu.au)  

Contradictions and Ambiguities in Thai Culture and Thai Studies

Claims that central features of Thai culture and social life are
contradictory and/or ambiguous are extremely common in the
English-language literature on Thailand.  The tropes of "ambiguity"
and "contradiction" are found in some of the earliest travel
literature, recur in contemporary popular representations of Thailand,
and have been a constant theme in anthropological, sociological and
cultural history studies of Thailand.  In this paper I follow up some
of Benedict Anderson's and Erik Cohen's observations on this situation
and pose the question of where the claimed ambiguity and
contradictoriness of Thai culture lies.  Are ambiguity and
contradiction inherent structural features of Thai culture or are they
instead features of the Western knowledges of Thailand?  I suggest
that in some situations ambiguity and contradiction emerge in Western
studies of Thai culture as epistemological "effects" of a failure to
recognise the incommensurability of Thai and Western cultural logics. 
In such cases accounts of Thai cultural ambiguity and contradiction
cannot be considered to reflect Thai cultural "reality" but may
instead represent the epistemological interference patterns that
emerge at points of intersection between radically different cultural
logics and discursive systems.

  12.30 2.00 pm - Lunch Break

  2.00 3.00 pm - Session 3 Religion

  Session Chair:   PETER JACKSON

  Soraj Hongladarom, Philosophy, Chulalongkorn University
(hsoraj at chula.ac.th)


Bangfai Payanak: Science, Belief and Thai Society


This talk is a report on my ongoing project on looking at modern
science in Thai society.  The guiding theoretical question concerns
whether there can be a different kind of science that is more suitable
to the socio-cultural context, say, of Thai society. I will report on
the recent controversy surrounding the bangfaipayanak (Naga's
fireballs), which are fireballs seen rising out of the Mekhong river,
mostly in Nongkhai and Nakorn Phanom areas, around the Buddhist Lent
period (October and November). These fireballs are believed by many to
be the work of the snake god Naga paying homage to the Buddha. I will
show how this phenomenon indicates how Thais view epistemic matters
and hope that we can have a discussion on how knowledge is viewed,
appropriated and produced in Thai society, as well as further
theoretical or philosophical issues involved.


Jovan Maud, Anthropology Department, Macquarie University,
(Jovan.MAUD at scmp.mq.edu.au)

Cross-Border Brokers of Morality: Chinese Patronage of Thai Monks in
Southern Thailand

This paper will consider one aspect of cross-border religious
interactions in southern Thailand, namely the patronage of certain
Thai Theravada Buddhist monks by Chinese devotees from Malaysia and
Singapore.  Focussing on one particular Kathina robe-offering ceremony
at a temple in Songkhla province, the paper will discuss the
development and dynamics of the transnational networks that exist
between Thai monks and foreign Chinese patrons.


3.00 3.30 pm Afternoon Tea Break  

3.30 5.00 pm Session 4 PH D Students Politics and Polity I


Session Chair: ANDREW WALKER


Robin Hamilton-Coates, Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU
(Robin.Hamilton-Coates at dfat.gov.au)


The Development of Thai Citizenship

The development of nationality law, or legislative decree on the
right to claim membership of a national community, varies widely from
place to place in both intention and practice.  Siamese citizenship is
a product of the introduction of Western ideas, the modification of
these by the Siamese elite, and native reaction formations to this
process.  By placing historical, theoretical, and legal issues in
perspective, we would be better equipped to analyse and understand
contemporary citizenship discourse in Thailand, and possibly offer a
normative viewpoint.

Yoshi Nishizaki, University of Washington & Faculty of Asian Studies,
ANU (Yoshi.Nishizaki at anu.edu.au),

Limits of Money, Violence, and Clients in Rural Thai Politics

In this paper I will present my general thoughts on the usefulness of
the standard interpretations of rural Thai politics.

Katharine McKinnon, Department of Human Geography, Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, (mckinnon at coombs.anu.edu.au)

  Geographies of Knowing: Research, Governmentality and the Highlands
of Northern Thailand.

  Taking as my starting point Foucauldian ideas about the
relationships between knowledge and power, this project looks at what
kind of a relationship might exist between knowledge and
governmentality in the highlands of northern Thailand.  Specifically,
I am examining the ways in which the highlands and highlanders are
represented, are defined and known; and the ways highlands and
highlanders are governed.  This project looks at the practices of
researchers, academics, activists and developers those people and
organisations that construct knowledges and the ways that they
construct the highlands and highlanders in particular ways in and
through their work. I explore how processes of knowing and
representation interact with (and are in themselves) practices of
governing. Activist efforts to obtain citizenship rights for highland
people, the interventions of multilateral development projects, and
ethnographic research in highland communities, are some of the issues
through which questions of representation and governing are
explored. This presentation will give a brief outline of this work in
progress and elaborate on the key concepts I am using in my analysis. 
 

7.30 pm Conference Dinner: 

Zen Yai Thai Restaurant, 117 London Circuit (Sydney Building), Civic
(Ph. 6262 7594)  



Wednesday 19 February

10.00 am 11.00 am Session 5 - Forms of Knowledge - Method Issue(s):

Session Chair:   CHRIS BAKER


Craig Reynolds, Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU
(craig.Reynolds at anu.edu.au)

Why is Thai Nationalism so Difficult to Write About?

In a seminar in Singapore last year where five Southeast Asian
historians discussed the national histories they were writing, I was
struck by how each author accepted the nation-state as an entity
worthy of serious attention.  Unlike the historiographies of other
parts of Asia, the nation-state was not an abstraction, it was not an
illusion, and it was not an unwelcome European by-product of the
colonial period.  It was a real and meaningful entity that shaped the
post-independence history of each country.  These historians were not
besotted with the nation-state, nor were they uncritical of its mortal
rulers.  Rather, they were not, or at least not yet, willing to
discard the nation-state as the political entity whose discourse of
unity, multicultural membership, and territorial integrity is best
able to give expression to aspirations for political participation,
social justice, and economic security.  In this essay I want to
explore the problem of writing about nationalism and the nation-state
in relation to recent Thai-language studies of Thai nationalism.

Attachak Satyanurak, Chiang Mai University, (attachak at hotmail.com)

New Trends in Thai Local History

This presentation is based on a project studying regional and local
history in northern Thailand.


11.00-11.30 am Morning Tea Break  

11.30 am -12.30 pm Session 6  Out from the Centre


Session Chair:  RACHEL HARRISON  

Andrew Walker, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU,
(ajwalker at coombs.anu.edu.au)  

Upper-Mekong Borderline Dialogues in the late Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Centuries

Administrative documents held at the Achives d'Outre Mer in Aix en
Provence provide important insights into the day-to-day establishment
of the modern colonial border between Laos and Siam. This seminar
provides some initial findings arising out of archival research which
I undertook in early 2002.  Of considerable interest is the extent of
on-the-ground ambiguity on the part of both French officials and local
chiefs - about the extent and nature of French authority. The
administrative records provide important insights into the local
politics of territorial demarcation and document the faltering
progress towards new understandings about the nature of local
authority over people and places.

 

Tony Diller, ANU, (Anthony.diller at anu.edu.au)

How do various Tai-speaking Peoples Come to Terms Linguistically
with (Bangkok/Central) Thai?


This will be an informal presentation on several lines of research. 
The Zhuangs do not think about "Thai" very much and do not regard
themselves as "Tai" at all.  While a few members of this group in
China are perhaps vaguely aware of a Zhuang/Thai linguistic
relationship, as far as I know, Zhuangs do not look to Thai as a
source of inspiration - certainly not as a practical source of
vocabulary.  This Contrasts with the Pha-ke, Aiton and Khamti of NE
India, who now teach Bangkok Thai in some of their schools and even
"enrich" their local Tai languages with Thai material.  Lao is another
interesting case. The Lao regime seems to be puristic in trying to
keep Lao free from what some authorities think is Thai influence, but
in Vientiane teen/youth culture, Thai-ized Lao is the way to talk (so
I am told).   

12.30 2.00 pm Lunch  

2.00 3.00 pm Session 7 POLITICS AND POLITY II

Session Chair:   SORAJ HONGLADAROM  

John Funston, National Thai Studies Centre, ANU
(john.funston at anu.edu.au)


Thailand and the War Against Terrorism: How Threatened is it?


Recent media reports have focused on terrorist activities in Southern
Thailand some even describing these as the launchpad for the Bali
bombing.  How serious is the threat from groups such as al-Qaeda and
Jemaah Islamiah?  What has caused a recent upsurge in violence in
Southern Thailand?


Andrew Brown, Department of Political and Social Change, Research
School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU (Andrew.brown at anu.edu.au) 

Thaksin and Labour Politics

What is the significance of Thaksin and his government for
understanding labour politics? The aim of the paper is to sketch out a
tentative framework for addressing this question.


3.00 4.00   Conclusion and Discussion




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