Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Jonathan Rigg, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In terms of theories of modernity that dominated the social sciences for much of the 20^th century, the growing prominence and diversification of supernatural cults and magical ritual in many parts of Southeast and East Asia represent some of the most perplexing and least anticipated trends in religious life since the end of the Cold War. These diverse phenomena across the region challenge both the secularisation thesis and the equation of market-based and mediatised forms of urban modernity with the presumed rationalisation and disenchantment of social and political life. Since the 1980s, there has also been a significant change in the Thai state’s relation to the domain of religious practice and ritual. Religion and ritual remain highly important symbolically. The state, both at the national level and in provincial administrations in the regions, has adopted an implicit strategy of appropriating aspects of popular religious expression that are amenable to furthering its objectives, most obviously, but not exclusively, in enhancing the charismatic authority of the monarchy. As the state has re-oriented its relation to religious expression, effectively becoming a sponsor of often unorthodox cultic ritual, forms of supernaturalism that are trenchantly critiqued by both secular and religious modernists in Thailand have nonetheless found a place in state projects. In this paper I trace the outlines an analytical model that lets us appreciate novel forms of politically inflected enchantment in Thailand, not as “residues” of “premodern superstition”, but as emerging from the conditions of 21^st century Asian modernity. In presenting my argument, I will also reflect on the religious dimensions of accounts of the life and legacy of King Bhumibol that were published in the Thai press in the weeks immediately following the late monarch’s death on 13 October, 2016.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter A. Jackson (PhD) is Emeritus Professor of Thai history and cultural studies in the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. Over the past 30 years, he has written extensively on modern Thai cultural history, with special interests in religion, sexuality and critical approaches to Asian histories and cultures. Peter Jackson was the editor-in-chief of Asian Studies Review, flagship journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, from 2009 to 2012 and he is a member of the editorial collective of Hong Kong University Press’s Queer Asia monograph series. Peter Jackson founded the Thai Rainbow Archives Project, which with support from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, has collected and digitised Thai gay, lesbian, and transgender magazines and community organisation newsletters (http://eap.bl.uk/database/results.a4d?projID=EAP128). His most recent books are: “The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand” (with Rachel Harrison HKUP 2010), “Queer Bangkok: 21^st Century Markets, Media and Rights” (HKUP 2011), “The Language of Sex and Sexuality in Thailand” (with Pimpawun Boonmongkon, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai 2012,) and “Cultural Pluralism and Gender/Sex Diversity in Thailand” (with Narupon Duangwises, Princess Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Bangkok, 2013). His most recent book, “First Queer Voices from Thailand: Uncle Go’s Advice Columns for Gays, Lesbians and Kathoeys”, was published by HKUP in April 2016. He is collaborating with Prof. Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière (Centre Asie du Sud-Est, CNRS-EHESS Paris) to establish a network of scholars interested in the resurgence of spirit possession rituals across the Buddhist societies of mainland Southeast Asia. He is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, where he is researching the political dimensions of new cults of wealth and other non-orthodox forms of ritual in Thailand.

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