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Complicity and Confrontation in the Thai Body Politic
Organizer and Discussant: Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
Chair: Pattana Kitiarsa, National University of Singapore
This panel addresses the range of ambiguities from bodily stance (as in kick-boxing and gesture) to political action (as in the play of transparency and obfuscation in political protest and public discourse) that characterize, as the panelists will demonstrate, the operation of political interaction in Thailand. The mutually opposed stereotypes of Thai society as "loose" and hierarchical," and of Thai language as "lacking grammar" and "highly ordered," are symptomatic of a situation in which the criteria applied to the understanding of political discourse and action are grounded in assumptions about the nature of order. In this panel, which ranges from the rituals of Thai boxing to the organization of political protest and the articulation of political discourse with identity issues in the framework of the modern nation-state, we shall take the Thai case as a locus for critically re-examining primarily Western notions of order/disorder through the lens of a specific Asian country's experience of negotiating these concepts. The goal of the panel is to relate the specific experiences of one Asian country, situated in a maelstrom of competing cultural and political influences, to current debates about agency and practice in the social sciences.
Political Sublimations of the Clinch: The Variation of Bodily Contacts in Muay Thai
Stéphane Rennesson, Université de Versailles, France
Considering Thai Boxing bouts as a very politic object, I shall scrutinize briefly the ways both fighters and spectators jointly control their public image. From an empiric and interactionist point of view, I shall picture sequentially: The mastering of one’s face by the boxers just before, during and after the fight. It has to be specified how the fighters get in contact or not and how. The behavior of local figures, promoters of the contest, before and after the bouts, when they try to seize at their own advantage the prestige that springs from the action between the ropes by approaching, even touching the fighters. From the preparation of the boxers a few minutes before their encounter to the mediatisation of the fights and their immediate environment, we shall follow the networking of bodily contacts in Thai Boxing contests. Proposing a few prospective guidelines for interpretation, we shall verify the hypothesis that Muay Thai is a very efficient tool to assume one’s pride (kiat or barami). We shall see how it enables to build a performative play upon one’s body and physical violence control which is highly codified in Thailand along two alternative relationship patterns, horizontal (cooperation and competition) between equals in status on the one side, hierarchical (mutual obligations) on the other side. Finally, it has to be proved how one’s prestige is constructed by and for social groups, from the training camp up to the Thai nation.
Saksi Luk Phuchai: Honor and Shame in Muai Thai
Pattana Kitiarsa, National University of Singapore
In this paper, I argue that the poetics of Thai manhood, which include the cultural construction, practices, and representations of Thai masculinity, are interwoven around the conception and interpretation of the term “saksi” (honor/pride). “Saksi” in general, or “saksi luk phuchai” (men’s honor) in particular, as the heart and soul of Thai cultural masculine ideal, is fundamental to capture the complexities of evolving cultures of Thai male gender and class. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork on muai Thai (Thai boxing) in Nakhon Ratchasima, Northeastern Thailand, I suggest that social actions, which are defined as upholding (or disgracing) saksi luk phuchai, are culturally conspicuous in the world of muai Thai. In the boxing processes, which men are recruited, trained, accumulated skills and experienced, matched to fight other men face-to-face on the stage before public audiences, and rewarded or punished after the bout, saksi is not inherently given, but symbolically and culturally-specific embedded in the men’s disciplined bodies and their performance. By situating it in a discursive position between the polemics of honor and shame, it includes sets of descriptive cultural beliefs and practices, which is traditionally highly valued as men’s masculine properties, such as brave-heart (chai nakleng), face (na ta), fighting spirit (chai su), and wit (lium). It serves as a critical entry to reveal or capture the complicity and confrontation in the contemporary Thai public culture, where the borderlines between honor and shame are morally blurred.
The Stateless Encounter the State: Power, Interaction, and Narrative Identity on the Thai-Lao Border
Peter T. Vail, University of Ubonratchathani
Statelessness is becoming recognized as an extensive problem in northeastern Thailand, along both the Cambodian and Lao borders. In this paper, I combine approaches in interactional sociolinguistics and narrative analysis to understand the lives of stateless people on the Thai-Lao border in Ubon Ratchathani Province, in particular their dealings with government officials. I focus on how social interactions between stateless people and state officials are later formulated into narratives told to different audiences, and what these transformations show us about the processes of power(lessness), the interpretations of discourse, and the deployment of identity. By looking at the minutiae of concrete interactions, we can see the particular forms
state power takes at its fringes among marginal people living within state territory but lacking legitimate membership. Conversely, we also get a view of the state from the perspective of those marginal people who, as noncitizens with no other ‘legitimate’ place in the world, stand both in and outside of it—a view of the state from just beyond its fringes, a worldview of people lacking a nation-state but still faced with the consequences of living in one. Examining concrete social interactions shows us the practical consequences and inescapability of state power; examing narrative formulations of those interactions show us more affective dimensions of marginality and powerlessness as understood by those stateless people.
Political Crisis and Resistance in Southern Thailand
Arafat Muhammad, National University of Singapore
This paper discusses the political crisis in Southern Thailand on one hand and the resistance against structures of power on the other. The spectacle of violence has attracted much scholarly attention to the crisis in the largely Malay-populated provinces of Southern Thailand. This paper, however, aims to provide some insights into the crisis through the author’s observation of everyday lives of the people in the area. Malay resistance to the Thai state takes on multiple forms. While physical resistance in the form of firearms skirmishes is a spectacle, there are also more clandestine forms of resistance. Malays continue to defend their cultural identity, which is distinct from the dominant Thai-Buddhist identity even after a century of bureaucratic political control by the Thai state that includes attempts of cultural assimilation. This paper looks at the important roles played by individuals and groups in Malay resistance to the Thai state, which is done rather successfully by producing and negotiating social memories in ways that emphasize Malay cultural identity. In doing so this paper aims to bring into question conventional notions of power and hierarchy whereby power is often seen as being concentrated, and even monopolized, by the dominant group, which victimizes the groups lower in the hierarchy.