Papers (Part 1)

• Gastrodiplomacy and Food Nationalism in Post-Coup Thailand Petra Desatova University of Leeds

  This paper examines Thai nationalism from the perspective of food by focusing on the period following the 2014 coup. Food has always been an important aspect of the collective Thai identity and a source of national pride. Since the early 2000s, it has also featured prominently in Thailand’s nation-branding efforts. The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), Thailand’s military junta that seized power in the 2014 coup, has launched a number of campaigns in cooperation with the private sector aimed at promoting Thai food both in Thailand and abroad. What is the purpose of these campaigns? What values do they promote? And how do Thai people react to them? These are only a few questions that this paper addresses in order to demonstrate that Thailand’s post-coup food promotion (domestic and international) is an integral part of the NCPO’s legitimation processes.

• Harnassing Nationalism in Social Campaigning Elvira Correa Brigham Young University

  Can invoking Thai nationalism help organizations in their efforts to tackle social problems? We investigate this question through a set of three survey experiments in which we expose respondents to social campaigns (either visual or text-based) and then measure their opinions on social issues and their willingness to support organizations in their efforts. The social campaigns we use include human trafficking and refugee immigration. We frame these social campaigns differently for different groups of respondents: control groups are exposed to a “nationalism-free” campaign, while various treatment groups are presented the same campaign with references to various aspects of Thai nationalism, such as Buddhism, the Monarchy, etc. We find that the effect of nationalism depends on the type of campaign as well as the type of nationalism.

• Thai Nationalism Through Theoretical Lenses Joel Selway Brigham Young University

  This essay assesses the state of knowledge on Thai nationalism through an overview of narratives via the lens of the four traditional schools of thought on nationalism: Perennialism/Primordialism, Modernism, Instrumentalism, and Ethnosymbolism. The essay highlights both the unique contributions and limitations of a reliance on these frameworks in our understanding of Thai nationalism. The final section of the essay presents the Thai nationalism story through several contemporary approaches to nationalism, including Neo-Perennialism, Postmodernism, Post-Colonial Theory, and Constructivism. It concludes by laying out an agenda for the future study of nationalism in Thailand.

• The Constitutionalization of Thai Nationalism Eugénie Mérieau University of Göttingen

  This paper examines Thai nationalism as embedded in Thai Constitutions. Based on an examination of constitution-drafting minutes, it analyzes the deep meanings attached to the key phrase of "Democracy with the King as Head of State" and traces its genealogy, a genealogy tied to the history of Thai Nationalism. To which extent is Thailand's "Constitutional Identity" a nationalist construct?

Papers (Part 2)

• Death of an Immortal King Edoardo Siani Kyoto University Matthew Phillips Aberystwyth University

  Thailand’s King Bhumibol Aldulyadej passed away on 13 October 2016, after seven decades on the throne. He was the world’s longest serving head of state. The monarch was a Buddhist king and many in Thailand revered him as a divine being. He was also a political leader and a figure of great historic importance. Historian Matthew Phillips and anthropologist Edoardo Siani met, by chance, in Bangkok as they were both attending the rituals that followed the royal death. Their shared experience of said rituals forms the basis for a dialogue regarding how events may be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. In this workshop, Phillips and Siani will discuss the relationship between ethnography and historical record as well as the process of jointly writing an ethnography in an attempt to question assumptions of what events are.

• Historical Drama and Nationalism in Thailand Kittiya Moonsarn University of Leeds

  In Thailand, television drama is one of the most influential forms of media in the country. Influential, popular TV dramas can have a high impact on the whole nation. While these TV dramas are produced mainly for entertainment, it is undeniable that they are laden with Thai values, beliefs, ideologies, and hegemony, for example. One of the key messages propelled through Thai television drama is that of a Thai nationalism, rooted in Thai Royalist Nationalist Historiography.

  My research analyses four selected Thai television dramas from 2007 – 2017. These each contain strong themes about northern Thailand, a popular focal area in TV industry productions. As most Thai TV dramas and programmes are produced from production companies based in Bangkok, and narrated from a central Thai perspective, this research investigates how the north is portrayed and as part of building specific concepts of nation. In the first part of my research, I studied two historical dramas influenced by Thai national ideologies. These dramas do not only reconstruct Thai history in a way that corresponds to what Thongchai Winichakul has called “Thai royalist-nationalist historiography” (2011), but they also use stories from history to communicate to contemporary audiences. This research wants to find out how history is narrated in these dramas, by focusing on the portrayal of northern Thai culture and history, and how TV producers manipulate the use of historical narrative as part of nation-building apparatus.

• Integration and Exclusion: Isan People and the Thai State Jacob Ricks Singapore Management University

  Since 2000, Thailand’s 20 Northeastern provinces, collectively called Isan, have become incredibly important to Thai politics, as they are home to the largest block of supporters for ousted prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra as well as the Red Shirt movement. Pacifying the region has been a central concern of the current military junta, echoing the worries of military regimes in the 1950s-1970s. The “northeastern problem,” thus labeled in the 1960s, is one of both ethnic integration and exclusion. Approximately one-third of Thailand’s people hail from the Northeast, most of whom are ethnically Lao and identify as Isan. Unlike other ethnic groups throughout Southeast Asia, though, Isan people tend to eschew political mobilization through their ethnic identity, instead embracing their “Thainess” and taking pains to differentiate themselves from the Lao across the Mekong. At the same time, Isan people are among the poorest in the Thai state, with relatively few economic or political benefits accruing to the region. Indeed, the Lao language and phenotype are frequently castigated by central Thais and the Thai state. Thus, the Isan region is both integrated into the Thai nation while simultaneously experiencing economic and political exclusion. In this paper, I examine the large-scale public adoption of the government-approved Thai identity among Isan people. I argue that the dual forces of both positive inducements for integration as well as negative consequences and stigmas associated with being labeled as “not Thai” create an environment wherein Isan identity is subsumed within the official Thai identity. At the same time, though, the Isan identity remains salient and serves as a possible source of political mobilization. I contend that the Thai state’s century-long effort to create a unified Thai identity could potentially be challenged by the rise of ethnic tensions between central Thais and Isan people.

Abstract

Keywords

• Authoritarianism
• Democracy
• Nation
• Politics
• Thailand