INTERVIEW: Erick D. White
Our ongoing series of interviews with experts on various Buddhist countries and communities continues today with anthropologist and Thailand scholar Erick D. White (pictured to the left in a photograph taken by our mutual friend Kerry Lucinda Brown at the Burmese Vihar in Bodh Gaya, India).
Erick has been an instructor on the Antioch Buddhist Studies in India Program for the last five years, teaching classes on the Anthropology of Contemporary Buddhism and the History of South Asian Buddhism. He is currently completing his dissertation in Anthropology at Cornell University based on several years of fieldwork studying Thai popular religion and the subculture of spirit possession in contemporary Bangkok. He recieved a B.A in Religious Studies from Amherst College prior to his graduate work in Anthropology.
Erick and I got to know each other while serving together on the faculty of the 2006 Antioch Buddhist Studies in India program. He has since become one of my dear friends, and a vital person in my unorthodox growth as a student of Buddhist culture and history. (Regular readers will recognize Erick as a frequent source of news, commentary, essays, and interesting tidbits posted at this blog.) One of the smartest people I know, and also one of the funniest, he’s got lots of valuable information and insight for us. We “spoke” via email.
DANNY FISHER: Erick, could you explain the political situation in Thailand right now. There was a military coup d’état in 2006–while you and I were working in India, in fact. The junta abrogated the “People’s Constitution” and drafted their own constitution, and then held democratic elections at the end of last year. What should we be aware of with regards to contemporary Thai politics? Does all of this have an effect on the Sangha or Thai Buddhism in general?
ERICK D. WHITE: The current situation is very complicated. Many scholars see much of the current political polarization and battles as primarily a contest between two general camps–the political ‘establishment’ of the military, the royal palace and elements of the civil bureaucracy versus the popular former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, his political party and his political allies. Thaksin and his very popular political party, Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais), is perceived to have too radically and swiftly challenged the historical dominance of the former institutional actors. This challenge was primarily due to the party’s extraordinary size, stability and control within parliament and its ability to evade or undermine various constitutional checks on executive power. Over time, various important interest groups–the urban middle class, civil society groups, public intellectuals, business interests, the mass media, etc.–shifted into opposition against Thaksin for a variety of different reasons. Escalating charges of political corruption, betrayal of the nation, and anti-monarchical activities eventually allowed the military to act in ‘the national interest’ by deposing Thaksin in a coup in September 2006.
Numerous observers have argued that a deeper underlying fear was that if Thaksin consolidated control over the military hierarchy by shifting his allies into positions of authority, then his effective political control over the levers of formal political power would be insurmountable. Moreover, the establishment camp also was seen as fearful of how this consolidation of power might affect the long-term position and power of the palace. There are widespread, if mostly unspoken, anxieties about how a succession to a new monarch will proceed once the current beloved king, who is quite old and in failing health, exits the scene. In the eyes of these observers, the coup group wanted to ensure that the establishment was in political control at the time of the current monarch’s death rather than Thaksin, for they feared that Thaksin’s charisma could rival or surpass that of a new monarch.
Much of the political drama from the coup until elections in December 2007 was centered around the coup group seeking to:
- dismantle Thaksin’s regime and political legacy,
- preserve its own political and legal legitimacy,
- engineer a return to electoral democracy that prevented the return to power of Thaksin and his allies.
While the coup group succeeded in changing the political and legal rules of the game to their advantage, they were not able to uproot or eradicate Thaksin’s regime and influence to the degree they desired. The new constitution passed a national referendum, but the vote was close in the North and it failed in the Northeast, signaling that Thaksin’s allies were still politically vibrant in the strongholds of the now disbanded Thai Rak Thai party. A large number of factions within Thai Rak Thai reconstituted themselves as a new political party, Palang Prachachon (People’s Power), to contest the December elections under a new leader, Samak Suntharavej. Despite strict electoral constraints and the opposition of the military government, Palang Prachachon won nearly 50% of the parliamentary seats and eventually was able to form a coalition government in alliance with several other smaller political parties in early 2008. Opposition to the coalition government was too small to seriously interfere with its rule within the halls of parliament.
The new coalition government proceeded to place its appointees throughout the civil bureaucracy and restore many of the policy programs previously advocated by Thai Rak Thai, while carefully negotiating a political détente with those in charge of the military after the coup leaders retired. Critics attacked Samak as a nominee of Thaksin, charged that Thaksin was bankrolling Palang Prachachon, and claimed that the new government’s policies were a return to the immorality and corruption of Thaksin’s era. When the government moved to amend certain parts of the new constitution it deemed undemocratic, opponents charged that they were trying to undermine the legal cases against Thaksin in the courts and to facilitate his return to power. Civil society groups that had previously opposed Thaksin have now returned to protest in the streets of Bangkok and in the provinces, seeking nothing less than the dissolution of the government and the creation of a new coalition shorn of Palang Prachachon’s presence. Political polarization is increasing again, while mob violence between these anti-government protestors and pro-government groups has recently broken out.
The basic dilemma is one of a stalemate between the two camps. Neither side can, at this moment, definitively eradicate or politically dominate the other. Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai fundamentally changed the character of Thai political culture in important ways, especially through its populist appeals to the rural masses that tended to be neglected in previous parliamentary politics. In this way, a sizeable political party with enduring, stable control of parliament threatened, for the first time, the long-standing institutional power of the military, the palace and the civil bureaucracy and their ability to dominate formal politics. Even if the current coalition government falls, indications are that Palang Prachachon (or another new version of it) would likely win again at the ballot box. Opponents of Thaksin therefore are increasingly relying on non-parliamentary means to undermine his allies and interests–street protests designed to strip the government of its moral legitimacy, criminal legal cases designed to put Thaksin in jail and strip him of his extraordinary wealth, and nationalist attacks on coalition government policy. Those citizens and groups who are neither strongly pro-Thaksin or anti-Thaksin search for a third way or middle ground, but the deepening polarization has made this difficult. Amidst this polarization between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces, the long-term political projects of liberalization, democratization and constitutionalism have been obscured, confounded and even undermined.
The consequence of all of this on the Thai Sangha in particular or Thai Buddhism in general is rather limited and indirect. The increasing intensity of political conflict and polarization, combined with the verbal and physical violence, no doubt fuels a general sense of declining social morality amongst Buddhist thinkers and religious actors. Thaksin, his wife and certain key allies have been accused at times of intoxication with ‘black magic’, but those claims are rather vague and are not limited to only his circle of political elites. Even the military coup leaders were seen as relying on unconventional and somewhat stigmatized religious experts at times as well. The main effect on the Thai Sangha of perpetual political infighting, fragile coalition alliances and a weakened executive is that administrative oversight and / or reform of the Sangha is hampered, if not rendered impossible. Fragmented and inconsistent government policy means that endemic institutional problems within the Sangha are not on the radar screen or if they are, they can’t be effectively addressed. The religious status quo–which many observers and critics are not happy with–thus continues.
D.F.: Last year, there was a renewed movement among monks to have Buddhism named the state religion of Thailand, and many said this was the result of a widespread belief within the sangha that Islam poses a threat to Buddhism. More than 90% of Thailand’s population is Buddhist, but Islam is the majority religion in the southernmost provinces–mostly in the Malay Pattani region. Over 2,000 people, Muslims and Buddhists, have died as a result of the Islamic insurgency that has been raging in that area since about 2004. Could you say a bit about Buddhist-Muslim relations in Thailand? What’s the pre-2004 history? To what extent do fears about Islam among the monks (or, at least the most politically active ones) represent the feelings of lay Thai Buddhists?
E.D.W.: This is another very complicated issue, and as with politics, it isn’t exactly my area of expertise. Islam in Thailand is quite diverse–different sectarian traditions, different legal schools, different ‘styles’ of Islam deriving from different historical and cultural traditions. As a result, the character of Buddhist-Muslim relations can vary considerably according to local conditions. In the context of your question though, perhaps the most significant difference is between regions in which Muslims form a demographic minority vs. a majority. Outside of the deep south of Thailand, Muslims are a demographic minority and typically are perceived as belonging to relatively distinct ethno-cultural groups that are not ‘Thai’, such as Yunnanese, Indians, Arabs, etc., that migrated into Siam / Thailand at some point in the past. In the three most southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat (and parts of Songkhla), Muslims are also perceived as an ethno-culturally distinct group (Malay). But they aren’t ‘immigrants’ in any conventional historical sense. Rather, they are the descendants of a long-standing Islamic polity that had contentious relations with the pre-modern Siamese polity in Bangkok and which was eventually absorbed into the periphery of the Siamese, then Thai, modern nation state as it took shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And they are not a demographic minority; rather, they are the majority in these areas and it is other ethnic and religious groups who are the minority.
Consequently, outside the deep south most Muslims in Thailand generally have sought assimilation into the dominant Thai social and political environment, while simultaneously seeking to preserve their distinct cultural and religious identities, communities, and traditions. And as long as they more or less defer to the greater prestige, status and power of the ethnic and religious majority (meaning primarily Thai Buddhists), they have been welcomed and accepted. In the Malay majority areas of the deep south, however, assimilation is a much more complicated and suspect strategy of finding a place as citizens in the modern Thai nation. Thus, over the past century a more narrow and restricted strategy of selective accommodation to certain aspects of Thai national culture and the state has generally prevailed. Running parallel with that have been strong efforts to preserve their distinctly local religious, cultural and social world. This enduring undercurrent of resistance has over time developed increasingly strong separatist leanings and movements, as well as active political and military efforts in the pursuit of independence. While local Malay Muslim-Thai Buddhist relations in the deep south were typically benign and cordial, with peaceful accommodations reached between the two groups, tensions would often flare up between local Malay Muslim communities and representatives of the Thai state and/or non-local Thai Buddhist immigrants.
The rise of political Islam around the world since the 1980s and the rhetoric of the “War on Terror” post-9/11 has given a sharper Islamic edge to certain of these separatist movements. During the past decade or so, a seemingly new generation of violent separatists has arisen in the deep south who employ more extreme Islamic rhetoric and calls to ‘jihad’ in the pursuit of independence through a guerilla insurgency. They seem intent on not only repudiating ethnic Thai Buddhist control and dominance, but also in forcefully remaking the religious, cultural and political world of local Malay Muslim society as well. And they use widespread violence against both of these targets in pursuit of their goals. There is little credible evidence that they are part of or involved with Al-Qaeda, however. (A good and wide-ranging discussion of Islam in Southern Thailand can be found in this excellent paper by Imtiyaz Yusuf. The Islamic dimensions of the current insurgency is also explored in detail in this report by the International Crisis Group.)
It is clearly these recent developments in the deep south which have particularly alarmed certain conservative elements within the Thai Buddhist Sangha. It feeds into a host of stereotypes among Buddhists in general who often claim–falsely I might add–that Islam destroyed Buddhism in the land of its birth, India. (There were many reasons for the decline of Buddhism in India, and it began long before Muslims began invading Northern India.) Perhaps precisely because Buddhists represent such a demographically overwhelming and unassailable religious majority in Thailand (roughly 94%), some of its leaders are surprisingly prone to envisioning Thai Buddhists, at times, as a besieged minority in need of state protection. This often arises in contexts in which other minority religious communities are perceived as not deferential enough or as imprudently assertive or competitive. Thus, there is a long-standing historical fear among certain Buddhist elites–both, monastic and lay–of Christian missionary work and the threat of mass conversion. Obviously, separatist projects advancing the goal of an idealized Muslim polity through political independence also strike this same nerve.
Since most Thai Buddhists across most of the country do not personally encounter such violent, separatist Muslims, I don’t imagine that any fear of Islam or Muslims is particularly deep or salient outside of the deep south. At least I haven’t read of any indications of this. Nonetheless, Islam clearly can be easily stigmatized as ‘other’ in the religious imaginary of much Thai Buddhist discourse by employing a set of predictable ideological contrasts–it is foreign, it is monotheistic, it is violence–prone, it aggressively proselytizes, it is demographically explosive. Such fears are, however, much more widely found now among Thai Buddhist living in the deep south, as the new insurgents have managed to fray and even sever the cross-cutting social ties that formerly bound Buddhists and Muslims together into a shared local community. In addition, press accounts about the recent round of separatist violence in the south have no doubt increased a sense of unease about Islam in general in the mind of the Thai public living elsewhere. Thai Buddhist tolerance is much more fragile than is usually imagined.
It is worth pointing out that religious pluralism and freedom of religion in Thailand is distinct–culturally, politically and legally–from its American counterparts. While both religious freedom and pluralism are constitutionally recognized, Buddhism is in practical terms the de-facto state religion of Thailand, with certain distinct privileges. And religious plurality, within limits, is recognized as long as other religious traditions ultimately defer to the dominance–demographic, ideological, social, and political–of Buddhism. I think it is these two reasons, more than any fear of Islam per se, that explains why so many Buddhist monks endorsed in 2007 the idea of officially, legally recognizing Buddhism as the state religion. And also why so many average Thais and even certain political and military elites could also endorse the idea. It simply appears to many Thais–a majority if polls are to be believed–as the legal confirmation of an obvious historical, demographic, social fact. The coup group, by drafting a new constitution, opened up this set of issues to formal political and legal consideration again, so perhaps that is one unintended consequence of the coup for Thai Buddhism. Luckily, however, many political elites have recognized how dangerous making Buddhism the state religion would be for the tenor of inter-religious relations, and particularly with regards to Buddhist-Muslim relations vis-à-vis an endemic separatist insurgency that shows no signs of immediate resolution. They ultimately shot down the state religion amendment despite its general popularity, but the protests by monks only ended, it is worth noting, once the royal palace publicly revealed its opposition to the change.
D.F.: At the 2000 Association for Asian Studies Conference, you gave a talk about “commercialized Buddhism” in Thailand before and after the Asian currency crisis. Specifically, you looked at the case of Wat Dhammakaya, an inordinately successful and moneyed Buddhist movement, and the state’s crackdown on it following the crash. You’ve done other writing and speaking about materialism, economics, and globalization, and culture in Thailand, and their effects on each other. It seems like there’s an awful lot to explore in what you call the “changing social and ideological relations between state, market, civil society, and Sangha in Thailand’s boom and post-boom eras.” Can you say a bit about the relationship between the economy and Buddhist culture in Thailand? What exactly is the “wider moral crisis produced by the crash” in your view?
E.D.W.: Another very broad and complicated set of issues. Criticisms of and worries about “commercialized Buddhism” (Phuthapanit) are increasingly common in discussions of contemporary Thai Buddhism. While the currency crisis and economic meltdown of the late 1990s intensified these concerns, they remain present today even after that crisis has passed and they existed before that crisis as well. This discourse basically expresses a fear that the values, social relations, and forms of production, exchange and consumption characteristic of the capitalistic market have invaded the realm of religion in general and Buddhism in particular. A heightened focus within the Sangha on generating and accumulating wealth, the transformation of ritual practices and sacred objects into objects for sale, the reduction of all exchanges with the Sangha to a monetary value, the creation of financial bubbles around popular religious goods and services, the promotional marketing of religious good and activities–all of these represent some of the specific foci of anxiety people have when they talk about “commericalized Buddhism”. And the presumption is that these developments are inherently antithetical to and destructive of Buddhism.
This discourse, in fact, reflects a much broader set of generalized anxieties regarding the effects of capitalism, commercialism and consumerism on Thai society. While capitalist economic relations initially took root in Siam in a more limited fashion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their breadth and depth across the social terrain significantly accelerated after WWII during the “era of development”. More recently however, mainstream economic development has been subject to increasing critical scrutiny from various quarters as the problems of unequal and distorted economic development in the developing world become more obvious and pervasive. There is increasing concern in Thailand to fix or avoid the dysfunctional side effects of conventional capitalist development, such as deepening social inequality, the destruction of the environment, corrosive materialism and rapacious greed, and the destruction of traditional culture and society. As a result, the possibility of alternative and / or sustainable development strategies is increasingly attractive to many Thais.
It is undeniable that Thai daily life has been profoundly affected by capitalism, regardless of whether we are talking about urban or rural society. Capitalism has reshaped the values, social relations and material practices that define a constantly expanding set of activities–agriculture, the arts, education, medical care, etc. Many forms of Thai culture–from literature and drama to music and leisure, for instance–fundamentally rely upon the institutions, technologies and forms of the capitalistic market for their continued production and reproduction. Traditional ‘folk’ styles of cultural production outside of the market and the cash nexus constitute an increasingly shrinking proportion of these activities. It is not surprising, therefore, that Buddhism also finds itself relying upon the logic, technologies and social relations of the capitalist market for its continued existence. Capitalist models for organizing collective action are widely prevalent throughout society, and more and more of the other social spheres and actors that Buddhist institutions interact with are guided at least in part by a capitalist logic of production, exchange and consumption. Buddhism’s ability to remain quarantined from capitalism’s influence is therefore increasingly difficult without setting up an expanding set of filters, speed bumps and quarantine zones.
Now, while the reshaping of various cultural spheres by capitalist ideologies of exchange is typically mourned and even resisted everywhere in the modern world, in the case of certain activities–such as kinship and religion, for instance–it is seen as particularly destructive. This is because these domains of life are largely defined in the modern world as inherently opposed in their essence to the logic of the market (and the state, I might add). And so to the degree that Buddhism is seen as primarily representing an abiding source of deep tradition, transcendent value and otherworldly ends, it would appear to be not only even more opposed to capitalist values and practices but also more corrosively distorted by their introduction. One consequence of these presumptions is these moral panics about “commercialized Buddhism”, which ultimately are an expression of this anxiety about capitalism invading, distorting, undermining and even destroying authentic Buddhist beliefs, practices and institutions.
It is worth pointing out, however, that these presumptions about the inherent nature of Buddhism as religion and its definitive opposition to the economic (or, I might add, the political, the scientific, etc) have a strongly modern feel to them. The way we now divide the world up into the religious, the political, the economic, the social, etc. as discrete, contrasting and antithetical domains of life is a very modern invention, and most Buddhists throughout history wouldn’t necessarily perceive things in exactly the same way. With regards to the relationship between the ‘economic’ and Buddhism, it is worth noting that Buddhism has had a very complicated, diverse and changing historical relationship over two millenium to trade, the production of trade goods, the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and other activities related to ‘economics’. Moreover, its ethical teachings on these issues were quite different depending upon whether one was a monk or a layperson. Buddhism in India (and elsewhere), for example, flourished on the back of expanding regional and global trade, monasteries were centers of wealth and financial credit, and some of the strongest supporters of Buddhism were mercantile traders. And the accumulation of wealth by virtuous laity was not an issue so much as how one earned and used that wealth. Moreover, there are strong indications that basic ideas fundamental to mercantile trade subtly influenced how Buddhists conceptualized and practiced merit making and other religious beliefs. (See the interesting argument here, for example.) My basic point is this: one shouldn’t simply conflate as identical a series of ideas (and historical social forms)–economics and capitalism, trade and commodity exchange, wealth and capital. If “authentic” Buddhism has survived alongside of and prospered from mercantile trade for most of its historical existence, the real question is what is it about capitalist production, exchange and consumption that renders it so destructive of Buddhism? Is it because we now envision (capitalist) economics as deeply, irrevocably opposed to (real) religious activity? Is it because there is something particular about the underlying logic of capitalist social relations and exchange that renders it antithetical to Buddhism in a way that mercantile social relations and exchange were not? These are complicated questions that have not really been studied by scholars of Buddhism or economics, as far as I am aware.
D.F.: A few years ago you wrote an article for the Anthropological Forum, entitled “The Cultural Politics of the Supernatural in Theravada Buddhist Thailand”. In it, you talk about (among many other things) the “creation and institutionalization of a rational, systematized and bourgeois Buddhism” in Thailand after the mid-nineteenth century. At this point, certain pre-Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious elements start to be contrasted with those aspects of Theravada Buddhism that are “textual in orientation and respectable on the world stage.” Can you tell our readers something more about why and how a modernist Buddhism was created and institutionalized in Thailand? It sounds like Thailand’s modernist Buddhism came about in the same way that “Protestant Buddhism” did in Sri Lanka: as a response to Christian missionaries. Is this accurate? If not exactly, how are these developments in Sri Lanka and Thailand different and distinct? Also, what particular elements in Thai religious culture are most frequently assigned “supernatural” status? And why those?
E.D.W.: This relates to the final the point I closed with in the prior question. Many Buddhist scholars are increasingly reflecting upon the emergence of a new type or style of Buddhism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries–modernist Buddhism–that emerged out of the colonial encounter between Asian Buddhist intellectuals and apologists, Western scholars of Buddhism, and ‘the West’ more generally. The discourse of modernist Buddhism argues that a number of “essential” characteristics are central to Buddhism’s “authentic” identity. Its philosophical rationality and empiricism. Its historical founder. Its salvational soteriology centered on the individual. Its scriptures, and most especially a canon of ancient texts. The social organization of its religious virtuosos (i.e., the Sangha). The otherworldly and transcendent focus of its teachings. A series of unique dogmas and theological formulations peculiar to the tradition. These claims represented somewhat novel readings of previously existing elements within the heritage of Buddhism, but now innovatively articulated within a new frame of interpretation. It entailed, in other words, a re-imagining of Buddhism–both at the level of its parts and as a coherent whole–for a new audience and a new historical setting.
And this re-imagining was designed to serve several ends. One goal was to make clear that Buddhism was a respectable (modern) world religion as the modern Western tradition had come to envision the idea of a world religion, and that it had its own distinct identity separate from other recognized religions. In many ways this entailed re-imagining Buddhism in relation to the standard prototype of bourgeois, Protestant Christianity that lay behind much of this thought (hence the other label that has been used to describe this phenomenon by some scholars, “Protestant Buddhism”). Even the language of early modernist Buddhist interpretation draws on similar language used to describe Christianity. A second goal was to make clear that Buddhism was a proper (modern) “religion”, and not a part of other functionally distinct spheres of life such as “economics”, “politics”, “science”, etc. While Buddhism as a modern religion could exert an influence on these other domains (within proper bounds, of course), it was nonetheless seen to essentially be about something uniquely different. There are debates, of course, about what exactly that uniquely something different is–salvation, the sacred, the ‘spiritual’, the transcendent, etc.–but modern thinkers agree that the function / purpose / nature of religion is distinct from economics, politics, etc. On these issues, there is a broad convergence between the arguments advanced by Buddhist studies scholars and the arguments of various religious studies scholars who have been studying the emergence of the modern idea of religion (such as Catherine Bell, Daniel Dubuisson, Russell McCutcheon, and Tomoko Masuzawa) and sociologists who have studied the emergence of a modern system of global religions (such as Peter Beyer).
Re-imagining what is properly Buddhist also, of course, entails rethinking what isn’t properly characterized or identified as “Buddhism”. As a result, modernist Buddhist scholars and apologists came to envision certain beliefs, practices and individuals as properly belonging either to another identifiable world religion–such as Hinduism or Taoism, perhaps–or a more primitive religious tradition–such as ‘animism’ or ‘fetishism’. The textual heritage of Buddhism, the historical forms of Buddhism, and the living social reality of Buddhism were all subject to this sort of re-classification according to a modern model of authentic Buddhist religiosity. Those elements of the Buddhist tradition that did not conform with the idealized (and Protestant Christian-influenced) prototype of modern religiosity were typically re-categorized as “other”, and then treated as either a historical contamination from another world religion or a historical survival from primitive religiosity. So, for example, Buddhist devotionalism and theism were often ascribed to the influence of Hinduism, while ecstatic trance behavior (like spirit possession) or sacrificial ritual was almost universally perceived as a survival from animism. The ‘empty’, meaningless ritual of the unsophisticated masses or the belief in gods or spirits who can intervene practically and usefully in one’s daily life could be assigned to either of these categories, depending on their presumed historical origins. Modernist Buddhists, after all, are strong believers that authentic, original Buddhism was and is unconcerned with and even dismissive of ritual or supramundane beings per se. (In an interesting twist, however, meditation is not treated as empty ritual, or even ritual at all, which from an anthropological perspective requires some amazing interpretive contortions!).
Different modernist Buddhists arrived at different re-drawings of the boundaries of Buddhism proper, as well as different compromises over various ambiguities, but all modernist Buddhists felt the need to do so and not infrequently there were rather common interpretive solutions decided upon. After all, often both Western scholars of Buddhism and Asian Buddhist apologists were in communication with each other and aware of each other’s work. Asian Buddhist thinkers in a modernist vein were also often in contact with each other across colonial and national boundaries. Modernist Buddhists were not however only responding to Christian missionaries, although these might have been the most immediate and personalized agents of this kind of thinking that they encountered. Secular scholars and thinkers were also influential. Even more important, however, is to realize that this basic modern idea about religion as a functionally distinct sphere of life with its own unique logic was conveyed through a diverse range of institutional mediums and ‘technologies’–treatises and constitutions, educational institutions and programs, scholarship and journalism, tax codes and legal discourses about rights, medical training and scientific research. As the full scope of modern Western political, economic, legal and social institutions increasingly impinged upon and demanded a response from its colonial subjects or those few still independent Asian powers, native exegetes naturally had to slowly, haphazardly, subtly re-imagine Buddhism and to institutionalize these new conceptions.
There are obviously debates and disagreements among contemporary scholars about the degree to which these ideas about modernist Buddhism actually influenced the general population beyond elite circles–how broadly across the terrain did it spread, how deeply into daily social life did it reach, how enduring or significant was its influence? Related to this question is how similar or different was the phenomenon in different regions. Differences in the historical, political or economic contexts of re-imagining could have important consequences for the character, dynamics and consequences of any particular local form of modernist Buddhism. For example, unlike Sri Lanka, Thailand was never colonized and its monarchy was never abolished. As a consequence, its indigenous forms of political governance and economic production were not as sharply or radically disrupted as would have been the case under Western colonial rule. Partly as a result, modernist Buddhist rethinking in Thailand emerged among the ruling political elites and as an adjunct of royalist aristocrats seeking to buttress their traditional authority. It helped to define in important ways this Thai political elite’s project of creating a unified Thai citizenry and a shared Thai national culture in the service of preserving their control. In Sri Lanka, modernist Buddhism emerged among disaffected, non-aristocratic bourgeois classes working outside the colonial administration. It was a resource that enabled criticism of both the foreign British who ruled the island as well as those Sri Lankans who worked for the British colonial administration. The historical contexts of modernist Buddhism’s emergence in other Theravada countries–Burma, Cambodia and Laos–were equally unique, and therefore the character and consequences of modernist Buddhism followed still different trajectories in each of those places. Unfortunately, scholars really haven’t studied in detail the phenomenon from a comparative perspective to tease out the full range of similarities and differences.
For readers interested in the issue of Buddhism, modernity and modernist Buddhism, there are a number of books being released in the near future by top-notch scholars that explore this issue in much greater detail: Lionel Obadia’s Buddhism and Modernity, David McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism, and Donald Lopez’s Buddhism and Science.
D.F.: Lastly, I have a question connected with the previous one: You contributed a piece to Andrew C. Willford and Kenneth M. George’s Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, entitled “Politics, Law, and the Disciplining of Contemporary Thai Spirit Mediums”. In it, you look at a Buddhist monk’s campaign to have spirit mediums banned in Thailand. Your dissertation work examines the phenomenon of Thai spirit mediums as well. Can you tell us a little bit about Thai spirit mediums and their relationship to Buddhism and Buddhists in Thailand? What are you discovering in your research that you can share with us at this point?
E.D.W.: Given that my entire dissertation is an historical and ethnographic examination of that general question, I’ll necessarily have to simplify, leave out the convoluted scholarly debates, and highlight some of the major points. First of all, the overall situation is quite complex because historically Thailand is home to various traditions of spirit possession and mediumship as well as various ‘styles’ of doing and imagining Buddhism. This isn’t something that is often appreciated or understood. One finds, for instance, unique traditions of spirit possession amongst tribal groups, Chinese and Indian migrants, and lowland Thais. Even among lowland ethnic Thais there are distinct forms of spirit possession. Regarding ‘styles’ of Thai Buddhism, one can speak of a modernist reform Buddhism, a ‘traditional’ syncretic folk Buddhism and an establishment Buddhism advanced by state institutions. My work focused on the urban subculture of professional spirit mediums who claim to be possessed by virtuous gods and who offer assistance to anonymous clients on a regular, often daily, basis. I was interested in how this subculture defined itself, how it envisioned itself in relation to other types of spirit possession and the various Buddhisms, and how Buddhist monks and others actors or institutions related to this subculture. From the perspective of most Thais outside the subculture, spirit mediumship is a suspect, stigmatized and marginalized activity often characterized as ambiguously Buddhist, at best. Professional spirit medium and their followers, however, perceive themselves as devout, virtuous Buddhist practitioners pursuing many conventional Buddhist goals and endorsing common Buddhist values. In this regard, they represent a relatively recent historical transformation of spirit mediumship identity and practice that has made itself more self-consciously Buddhist in tone and character in reaction to the more common notion that spirit possession is a survival from animistic, pre-Buddhist religiosity. Their ideas about mediumship, however, run against the grain and interpretations of all three ‘styles’ of Thai Buddhism in certain important respects, and so they are in many ways really attempting to carve out their own particular spin on certain common Thai Buddhist ideas and practices as well.
Second, despite their classification as “other”, “non-Buddhist” or heterodox from outside the subculture, much–but not all–of what these mediums believe, say or do is rather mainstream in the end. They offer up advice to their clients which is often quite similar to what monks or astrologers might provide. They perform similar rituals as might monks, Brahmins or other ritual experts. They engage in similar activities of merit making and generalized support for Buddhism as any layperson or monk might. A crucial distinction, of course, is that the source of their authority derives not from following the rules of the Vinaya or being knowledgeable in the esoteric arts of Vedic ritual or astrology, but rather the claim that they are possessed by virtuous deities such as Siva, the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara or King Chulalongkorn (a highly revered ancestor of the current monarch). In many ways though, this underlying similarity or overlap regarding much of their actual beliefs and practices is obscured by official and conventional understandings of Thai Buddhism, especially as they have been influenced by a modernist Buddhist sensibility. Scholarly academic models, including in anthropology, often reproduce this same perspective unknowingly as well. Once one looks at Thai Buddhism outside of and beyond the conceptual frame of modernist Buddhism and official establishment Buddhism, the similarities between this subculture and the rest of the religious field in Thailand are pretty clear. They use similar language and rhetorics regarding sacral potency and efficacy. They rely on similar cosmologies and ritual techniques. They utilize similar ideas about devotionalism and esotericism. They use similar techniques for building entourages of devotees and followers around themselves. Professional spirit mediums put their own particular innovative spin on many of these elements and the overall social dynamics and consequences can vary in important ways, but the continuities between their behavior and other Thai religious actors is nonetheless quite striking.
Third, most of the scholarship on spirit mediums focuses on individual mediums and emphasizes the ritual encounter between the possessed medium and a client seeking assistance or healing. This is the context most scholars use to understand who these religious actors are, where the source of their religious authority resides, and what social significance they have. In my fieldwork however, I was struck at how deeply any individual medium is embedded in a much larger web of social networks and how much these networks shape their lives. Most prominently, they are linked in enduring ways with a range of other mediums with whom they have reciprocal social and ritual obligations. But they also actively seek out and foster long-term relations of reciprocity and exchange with monks and monasteries, the mass media and other social institutions. These social ties beyond their own entourage are crucial to how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others. I was also struck by how much of a professional spirit medium’s daily life is defined by activities beyond relatively private and intimate moments of ritual possession. Their social ties with family, friends and other religious authorities. Their religious projects of conventional merit-making. Their joint public ritual ceremonies with other mediums and at large-scale public ceremonies sponsored by non-mediums. All of these activities take up a considerable amount of a professional spirit medium’s time, attention and financial resources. In the end, these extended social ties and non-healing religious activities are just as important in the creation of their religious reputation and authority as the more conventional, exotic moments of possession and therapeutic service that most scholars have focused upon.
