ABSTRACT

RICE RITUALS, LIMINAL IDENTITY, AND THAI-NESS IN GLOBALIZED NORTHERN

by Sirithorn Siriwan

In Thailand, culture reflects three values of Thai identity: seniority, communality, and religion. Each of these three concepts of Thai-ness, therefore, can be found in various stages of the rites of passage and the phases of liminality in rice rituals during the rice season. However, today Thailand has embraced modernity and globalization, and these changes have consumed ancient and local wisdom. When rice culture and rice identity are interrupted, the rice ritual performances cannot construct Thai-ness. Thai identity, therefore, enters a liminal state that neither belongs to the rice field nor the modernized Thailand. With the application of ethnographic approach, anthropological and performance studies concepts, this research explores how rice rituals in are interrupted by the strong currents of globalization and how rice culture is preserved and performed by the government, individual organizations and Thai artists.

RICE RITUALS, LIMINAL IDENTITY, AND THAI-NESS IN GLOBALIZED NORTHERN THAILAND

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of Theatre

by

Sirithorn Siriwan

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2015

Advisor______(Dr. Ann Elizabeth Armstrong)

Reader______(Dr. Paul K. Jackson)

Reader______(Dr. Fauzia Ahmed)

Reader______(Dr. Kathleen N. Johnson) TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………...iii

CHAPTER ONE: The Ritual Realms and Concepts of Thai-ness in Thai Riceland…………………………1

CHAPTER TWO: Thailand and Thai-ness: Historicizing Rice Identity through Rice Rituals……………...24

CHAPTER THREE: Globalizing the World…Globalizing the Culture: Thai Identity and Rice Traditions of Farmers in Northern Thailand..…………………...44

EPILOGUE: “To Preserve or Not to Preserve, That’s the Question:” Tradition, Innovation, and Authenticity of Rice Culture in Thailand……………………71

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..….82

Appendix I: Interview Questions for Lampang……………………………………….....85

Appendix II: Interview Questions for Baan Boonler…………………………………….86

ii Acknowledgement

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Dr. Ann Elizabeth Armstrong for her support, advice, and encouragement guiding me to step out of my comfort zone and to continue my journey as a student, teacher and explorer.

My deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Howard A. Blanning for his kindness, warmth, care… a shelter and his Roman garden where I had to feed the birds during wintertime.

Thank you Dr. Jackson for your trust and cheerful spirit. Whenever we are in troubles, chocolate always helps.

Thank you my family in Oxford… Wenya, Carl, Liz, Shuting and my classmates, especially Ashley and Jaime who gave me a beautiful name, Alemay.

การเดินทางคร้ังน้ีมีพอ่ แม ่ อ๋อง คอยประคองฉนั ให้เดินหนา้ ตอ่ ความรัก ความหวงั และความห่วงใย เป็นส่ิงสา คญั ที่ทา ใหฉ้ นั มายนื อยจู่ ุดน้ี

ขอบคุณชีวิต ขอบคุณครอบครัวผู้ให้ชีวิต ขอบคุณครูบาอาจารยผ์ สู้ อนชีวติ อาจารยน์ ก ครูคา รณ พี่นาด พี่แอ๋ม และพี่นอ้ งพระจนั ทร์เส้ียว และ ขอบคุณเพื่อนผูเ้ติมเตม็ ชีวิต เพื่อนที่คอยอยขู่ า้ งกนั ตลอด รวมถึงพี่ชานนท์และชิป

สุดทา้ ยขอบคุณชายที่คอยให้ความช่วยเหลือตลอดมา พี่ ป้า น้า อา ที่บ้านบุญเลอและลาปาง

iii Chapter 1 The Ritual Realms and Concepts of Thai-ness in Thai Riceland

With my hands and humble soul, Please come and accept my respect. With rice, leaves, and ripe fruits, Candles, and pleasant scents, Please follow these glowing lights. Do not stray from my guidance. I am now following my ancestors’ way. All my humble heart please let me Invite the rice spirit To dwell in this house. And may I please ask you, To bless me with prosperity. Then all my hands will belong to this sacred land. [translated by the author] (Sriprapan 85)

-- The Song of Inviting Mae Phosop

Growing up in Thai culture, I have been told many stories about the spirit of Rice or Mae Phosop1 who dwells in every rice seed. My grandparents also wai2 the food every time they ate to pay respect to khao (the rice) for providing them a healthy life. Moreover, my house where I grew up is located next to the rice field. I still remember how my friends and I played in the rice field and built our fortresses with straw. I have seen the process of growing rice; the life of rice has its own colors though out the year. However, newly built houses have been replacing the rice fields around my house. Rice farmers are rarely seen in the . Due to the change of socio- economic structure in Thailand, globalization and capitalism has interrupted rituals and practices of rice culture especially in the Northern part of the country where rice rituals

1 Mae Phosop: the word Mae means mother and Phosop is her name. always use the word Mae to call the nature such as Mae Naam as river (Naam means water, so Mae Naam is the mother of water). Therefore, image of Mae Phosop (the mother of rice) is portrayed as a mother that nurtures all life, especially for people in Asian agrarian countries. 2 Wai is an act and gesture to pay respect in Thai culture. People will use the gesture to greet, apologize, and thank someone. It is a gesture of a slight bow and palms pressing together in prayer-liked expression. The level of hands may vary by the age of the person. The higher position of hands suggests the younger age and the lower level is for the older ones. Wai is used in many countries, including India as they call it Namaste.

1 have become merely a fading tradition. The roots of Thai-ness that tie with those traditional values will be gone as well. When Thai identity has changed, how can Thai people call themselves Thai? But the main questions are that: “what makes Thai people Thai?” or even “what does Thai identity really mean?” Identity means the characteristic(s) that people in a particular community or society have in common. In Gunn’s History and Cultural Theory, he points out two types of identity: national identity and class and social identity. The first one is how a particular nation defines its citizens as the ethnic group that has their own culture. Second term refers to the identity created by hierarchical system and power relations of people in the group. Therefore, simply as it is Thai identity can be defined in the literal meaning as the Thai citizenship of the people who are born, live and practice (perform) Thai cultures, including languages, religions, beliefs, and social norms, and one of the important signifier of Thai-ness Ð the National Anthem. The concept of nationalism was reinforced during the time of Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram in 1950s. However, what is more important than the definition of Thai- ness is how this identity is constructed … what makes Thai people “Thai”. In the old days, rituals and traditions used to be the essence of the community, because they would bring people together in the same place where everyone would help one another to conduct the ceremonies and other activities, since that has been the heart of Thai culture for centuries. For example, my grandmother, whose ancestry is of Burmese and Thai, would bring me to the Burmese Buddhist temples to join the community. We dressed in Burmese costumes, offered food to the monks, and prayed with Burmese-Thai descendants in my hometown. Therefore, the sense of communality in Thai society, which is one concept constructing Thai identity, used to be very strong. Rice rituals, by the same token, are the events conducted to gather people altogether in rice community in which they exchange their labor, laughter, and culture in the paddy field. Furthermore, in the past farmers had to rely on natural resources; rituals are to show gratitude and respect of the farmers towards nature and the spirits of the rice fields. In the ritualistic moment of religious events, when everyone was in the temple sharing and creating the liminal space, a performative identity has been formed under the realm of ritual in which, I argue, reinforces three concepts of Thai identity which are seniority,

2 communality and religious beliefs and practices. During the ritual performance, the participants all shared the one status Ð the performers of the event. Rice rituals, therefore, construct an identity of the farmers, because they share their status as children of the rice field, subjects of the nature, communal members and Buddhists. These concepts of Thai- ness and the structure of Thai identity in agrarian society, I propose, are constituted through rice rituals and rice culture. In this study, I divide the research into three chapters. The first chapter is an overview of Thai rice culture, how it has changed through time, and why this research will be an important piece that fills the gap of cultural studies that focuses especially on rice rituals and identity of . The second chapter will provide historical context of Thailand, Thai-ness and the life of rice with the use of historiographical approach to analyze how the concepts of Thai identity are constituted through culture and history. Thirdly, I mainly focus on how globalization affects rice culture in Northern Thailand along with the case studies from Lampang and Mae Hong Son province in which rice farmers are now struggling against the currents of globalization and modernization. Lastly, an epilogue section will explore the notion of cultural preservation in Thailand. I raise a question whether the process of “preserving” the culture will create alternative ways for young generation to learn about the rice traditions without making them only inactive cultural displays. Thus, the performance Rice Now directed by Sineenadh Kaitprapai from Crescent Moon Theatre will be an example of Thai artists that reads, interprets and reenacts a theatrical performance that demonstrates the impact of globalization on rice culture. This thesis starts from the disappearance of rice rituals in Lampang, my hometown located in the North of Thailand. This situation may seem to be an unimportant circumstance for the majority of people, but those rituals are parts of culture that symbolize our roots and identity. Though it is arguable that identity can be malleable and assimilate with other manners all the time, without acknowledging our roots and traditions, culture as a national heritage will lose its authenticity. The origin of our identity that connects with our culture will also lose its spirit as well. As Gunn said national identity indicate who we are and what is our role in our society, without it we do not belong anywhere. We lose the essence of our existence.

3 Moreover, when rice becomes one of the commodities of the country and rituals will also fade away from “communal” society; our identity will soon be changed or, perhaps, even lost through times. For this reason, it is crucial to study the functions and components of the rituals and in this thesis I will focus on rice rituals in Lampang province where I can no longer see traditional ritual practices in the field. Further, I will use Baan Boonler, a village of Karen ethnic group called Paka-Kyaw in Mae Hong Son in Northern Thailand, as an example of people who still continuously practice their rice rituals in traditional ways. However, this study is not a comparison between two regions, rather it is the research that explores two different cultural perspectives towards rice rituals. Therefore, the main questions for this research will further a conversation about how the three concepts of Thai identity are created in rice culture, how rice rituals construct (and reconstruct) people’s identity after Thailand has encountered the change in economic i.e. urbanization, industrialization and materialism, and lastly the attempt of culture preservation and how Thai artists interpret and create performances about rice in order to emphasize the importance of the rice culture in Thailand.

The Beginning of the Change Originally, the change in Thai society has occurred long before the 20th century. During King Rama V (1853-1910), it was the end of Thai slavery system since ancient times. The king introduced the country to the world outside through the political relationship with western countries like Britain and Russia, so that time the people in the country started to learn western culture and civilization such as medical treatment and education Ð the king even sent his children to study abroad in order to exchange knowledge with other students in different countries. In this period, Thailand (or Siam) was prosperous with the ‘new’ thoughts and people were fascinated with western cultures. The ‘traditional’ Thainess was blended with the ‘modern’ life style. And indeed, the characteristic of ‘being Thai’ has changed its meaning as well. Later, in 1990s Thai government tried to push the country to be the “fifth tiger” of Asian economic powers which were, at that time, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Chatichai Choonhavan, a former Thai prime minister (1988-1991), launched several National Economic Development plans to boost the economic system in Thailand

4 before the economy collapsed (Los Angeles Times 1998). This was the start of Tom Yam Koong Crisis Ð a financial crisis started in Thailand before spreading out to other countries in Southeast Asia. In the beginning, the rapid change encouraged Thai people sell their land to earn money, but after that the inflation destroyed the economic system completely. Many people lost almost everything in their life. Farmers lost their rice fields to richer people. Many lives in rural areas needed to survive by searching for jobs in another town. As younger farmers left their homeland, there was not enough labor who could work in the field except older people who became the main strength of their community. For this reason, instead of having several rituals during rice season, they had to reduce and adapt those rituals to make it easier for older farmers. By the same token, in many rural areas in Northern part of Thailand in these days farmers have only a few rituals left, because their children left home for school and jobs in bigger city like . If nobody notices the disappearance of rice rituals or even ignores the fact then their traditions will be lost forever, I believe within ten years children in the next generation will not acknowledge how rice is important to the country as a national treasure that feeds Thai life for centuries. The ideas of seniority, communality and Buddhism will become only ideal concepts that can no longer be valued in Thai society. In 2004, Henry D. Delcore wrote “Development and the Life Story of a Thai Farmer Leader” that demonstrates the story of a young Thai man, Berm, from the rice farming family who moved out of the rural area to seek fortune and a better life in the big city. The author explains that the main reason why people in rural areas move out from their homeland is because there is a trend that civilization3 in bigger cities would grant them a wealthy life. Furthermore, Amnarj Seelawatara depicts a life of a farmer in the central part of Thailand whose way of life has changed drastically due to globalization and industrialization in her article “Tragic Life of Sakhlee Farmers” (1994). Many farmers quit working in the field and found new job which could feed their family properly. Some people sold their land. The author uses Tid Chin as an example of a

3 The term “civilization” in this research does not only mean “the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced” (Oxford Dictionaries), it also means the illusionary concept that people in rural area believe material wealth and education will upgrade their social status. Civilization, therefore, reflects the hegemonic relation between the capital power and the marginalized bodies.

5 farmer who faced the drastic change in Thai agrarian society. She uses stages of rice farming as metaphors for his life that was changing through the different times during the rice season: preparation of the land, spreading rice seeds on the land, growing the rice plants, and harvesting the ripe rice. The agrarian society depends on nature. Therefore, people in this society have to value and respect to it. They have to think that nature is like human being; it has life and soul just like us. If we respect and try not to ruin the nature, we will be rewarded. There are a lot of farmers in Thailand, so they respect “rice” as the sacred plant [translated by the author] (Seelawatara 107). Each stage of this metaphor also signifies the stage of rice rituals; each one, I argue, is a different Rite of Passage (I will explain this in the next section) of the ritual participants as well. For example, during the preparation of the land, farmers have to conduct a ritual to ask for permission from the nature spirits to cultivate the land. In this phase of ritual, it is the starting point of entering the liminal ritual space. It is the first threshold that they need to come across in order to pace to another phase of other rituals during rice season. By the same token, it is the door for the participants (I will refer them as “performers” in latter section) to gain their role as the ritual performers of the field. Moreover, harvesting the rice at the end of the season also suggests the idea of the last step of transformation of the farmers. In this stage they are not only the farmers, but the children of the Rice Goddess who are obliged to invite their “mother” to dwell in the house barn, because they have to show their gratitude towards her deeds in blessing and protecting their rice. Thus, along the way of rice farming each stage of farming and rituals play important roles in each phase of the rice farmers’ identity that is also constituted in the rice field. In portraying the agrarian crisis of rice farming, Uruphong Raksasad, a Thai film director, depicts the life of Thai farmers in Northern Thailand in his short film Chiang Rai 0250. In 2008, Office of the Auditor General of Thailand investigated 721 Water System Development projects of Land Development Department with 2.5 billion-baht budgets. They found out that more than seventy five percent of the projects were wasted in vain because the farmers had no access to the water system generated by the

6 facilitators. This documentary demonstrates a story of Northern Thai farmers who suffered from poverty and the corruption of the authorities, the same authorities who own the land that once belonged to those farmers. Without any solution, one of the old farmers sets himself on fire in order to escape the trap that was set by the capitalists who used their money to buy their land and their lives. This documentary is one of the anti- corruption projects by Thai Health Promotion Foundation. It is one example that demonstrates how life in rural area has gone through modernization, and indeed, corruptions frauds and hopeless dreams that will never come through. This story is based on real events of Thai farmers during the waves of globalization in 21st century. It is true that without money we cannot survive. However, what if we are now erasing our traditional culture by painting new colors of capitalism and modernization? What will happen to Thai people as liminal bodies if we are caught in between the ideal past and the exciting new era? What will happen to our children who will be born outside of the traditional realm? I have not yet found the answer for how my life would be without tradition Thai culture. For this reason, my research is not only a study that integrates theoretical analysis and scholarship with actual conditions of farmers in Northern Thailand, it is also an ongoing journey that aims to raise awareness of people in this generation on how they can find a balance between traditional “Thai-ness” and “new world.”

Going into the Field An important challenge of this research is that the two locations I have worked on are completely distinctive and incomparable due to their differences of geography, religious beliefs, language and their way of life. Still, this thesis does not focus on the comparison between the two regions; it would rather explore how new paradigms of Thai society, globalization and modernization, have affected the rituals and their cultural identity in this modernized world. Additionally, there is also a tension in eastern scholarship in terms of social context and timeline of the research. Since social and economic change in Thailand have been changing gradually, it is difficult to indicate the exact period where rice rituals in Northern Thailand have gone or, I will claim, faded from the community. At this point, the “fading” image of the rituals is not the end of

7 traditional Thai identity; however, it is a phase in which national identity becomes malleable and continuously accumulates new fashions of today’s world. Since I cannot truly pinpoint the authenticity of “tradition” and Thai culture, I would like to propose that what we do, see, think and perform in this particular time is the traditional culture and authentic spirit of 21st century. Therefore, this thesis is an ongoing research of rice culture studies to find a way to maintain traditional values, and to pace forward to the future with awareness. In order to study culture, this research utilizes ethnographical methods including interviews and documentation as the methodologies. Moreover, historicizing rice culture in terms of traditional rituals and performances is another key point of this study. Along with the theoretical approaches of cultural, anthropological, and performance studies, it is very crucial to engage these approaches as the interdisciplinary modes of inquiry in this thesis because rice rituals and identity are, arguably, different subject matters. Thus, I will demonstrate the transformation of rice rituals, as well as the causes and effects of the paradigm shift and socio-economic change resulted from globalization, and the reason why it is crucial to study and reclaim our culture as the identity shared during the process of rituals in three chapters with an epilogue about how Thai artists express their aesthetic and philosophy towards the life of rice. It is because without these aspects our sense of belonging to this country will soon fade away through times. To begin with, Lampang province, my hometown, is the third largest town located in the Northern part of Thailand. Sometimes it is also known as Nakhon Lampang (Nakhon means a town). The province consists of 13 districts, and I will focus on Muang district where I grew up because it is the center district of Lampang province. Another research locale is Baan Boonler village in Mae Hong Son province which is located at the border between Thailand and Burma. The population in this village is called Paka-Kyaw, the ethnic group. They have their own language; however, there are also some villagers who can speak Thai. In this area, there is one Thai school where Paka-Kyaw children attend for their education as well. One significant point that I need to acknowledge is that people from these two regions have distinguished cultural perspectives and backgrounds. Ethnicity and worldview, thus, cannot be compared. Due to my positionality as a researcher from the outside, I must be aware of my interpretation

8 as well. While Lampang has already been urbanized with modern houses and factories, the majority of people in Baan Boonler still live with nature as agriculture is their duty not their career. Therefore, rice farming and rituals in Lampang and Baan Boonler are slightly different. However, the concepts of seniority, communality, and religion are still reflected in how they conduct rice rituals in both locations. In July 2014, two interview sessions were conducted with rice farmers in Baan Boonler village in Mae Hong Son province and the farmers from Lampang province, the researcher’s hometown in Northern Thailand. The reason why I chose to observe and study people in Baan Boonler is because they still preserve their traditions and religious beliefs very strictly. The main challenge of this study is that people in Baan Boonler do not speak Thai. At that point, translator is required for the interview with Paka-Kyaw people. The subjects are five villagers and farmers, including one Paka-Kyaw teacher from Baan Boonler, Mea Hong Son province and five farmers in Lampang, Thailand. Moreover, the interview consists of ten open-ended questions4 for the participants in Baan Boonler and nine open-ended questions5 for the participants in Lampang. During interview sessions, the ethnographic methods are the core of this research, because studying about people, and their life requires ethical procedures and responsibility to collect data and observe the culture of the subjects. D. Soyini Madison writes about ethnographic research methods in her book Critical Ethnography. Each chapter illustrates each step to conduct the ethical research with human subjects. Madison firstly engages the idea of “positionality” to the research, saying “this “new” 6or postcritical ethnography is the move to contextualize our own positionality, there by making it accessible, transparent, and vulnerable to judgment and evaluation (Madison 8).” Positionality is a crucial point in almost every field of study and research. My research, the field that is related the study of

4 See appendix I 5 See appendix II 6 The idea of “new ethnography”, as referred in Goodall’s work, is to criticize and problematize the positionality of the researchers in both objectivity and subjectivity towards their study. Madison writes “we take ethical responsibility for our own positionality for our own subjectivity and political perspective, resisting the trap of gratuitous self-centeredness or of presenting an interpretation as though it has no “self,” as though it is not accountable for its consequences and effects (Madison 8).

9 human subjects, requires my positionality as well; it is to state what position and status of me as a researcher towards my study and the farmers who participated in this study. For this rice rituals study, I am aware of the etic and emic perspective in my research approaches as a researcher who is studying human behavioral structure in different regions. An etic perspective is the “outsider” point of view where the researcher acts as the observer of the event; meanwhile, emic is an insider perspective that the researcher is a part of that particular society such as the person who grows up in that culture or has spent an amount of time living within that society. However, the boundary of emic and etic is still disputable, because the amount of ‘time’ that the individual has spent with the research subjects does not always indicate an emic position of that person. The concept of subjectivity of the research will be explored and questioned throughout the study as well. In Lampang, I grew up near the rice field, so I have seen how the rice is grown and harvested. The absence of rice rituals in my hometown, therefore, inspires me to study them. As I have seen how farmers work in the field, this experience helps me widen my point of view as the insider observer. However, in Baan Boonler I position myself as the observer of the research since I am not originally from this area. The difference of culture and language is the limitation that puts me in the etic position. Still, the image of etic researcher is not a boundary making me distinguish from the villagers; instead, it is an opportunity to learn their language and culture (they even taught me how to sing their songs), especially the value of kinship in this village. Even though we had an interpreter, the villagers and I tried to communicate through verbal and non-verbal languages. At this point, according to Madison “as an audience member consciously reenters the web of human connectedness and then travels into the life-world of subject, where rigid categories of insider and outsider transfigure into an intersubjective experience, a path of action is set” (Madison 176), I engage myself in both positions: the observer and the participant. I have also been a volunteer teacher for the children during the research as well. I was also concern of that introducing myself as a teacher to the villagers create a sense of social hierarchy between the villagers and me. However, after having conversations and, later on, dinner with them, the boundary between us began to soften because we treat each other as friends regardless on age, gender, and ethnicity.

10 Lastly, another important aspect that I need to mention in this section is how ethnographic research methods enhance and connect to my area of study. Madison adds her explanation about how ethnography is related to performance studies. In the process of recognition, substantiation, creation, and invention Ð culture and performance become inextricably connected and mutually formative. Performance becomes a ubiquitous force in our social and discursive universe [emphasis added] (Madison 150). From her point of view, it is necessary to expand this research not only for theatre studies but also other disciplinary theoretical analysis which will be unfolded in the theoretical analysis section of chapter one, including Victor Tuner’s anthropological concept of “Liminality” and “Communitas,” Richard Schechner’s performance theories, and Judith Butler’s “performativity.”

Reading the Rituals According to Oxford Dictionary, ritual means “A religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order”. Throughout the year, Thai people have several holidays that are related to Buddhism; in each event, ritual is the core of the special day. Like other countries in this world, many times rituals are linked with beliefs, religion and practices in society. Therefore, to study rice rituals related to the notion of cultural and national identity, it is necessary to unfold all theoretical approaches that will be explored and utilized throughout the study. Firstly, I will discuss the anthropological approach from Rites of Passage, Liminality and Communitas. In his essay “Liminality and Communitas”, Victor Turner, a cultural anthropologist who had been working symbols in the stages of rituals, uses the term the rite of passage to illustrate the functions and stages of rituals. Initially, a French ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep coined the term the Rites of Passage (Les Rites de Passage) to explain rites and rituals that construct position, definition and status of an individual, especially the growing up process of a person. In this sense the rites of passage the transitional phrase between childhood and adulthood. In some tribal or ethnic people, they will have rituals or ceremony to celebrate fertility and puberty of their kinsmen (Turner 79). Van Gennep also asserts that there is a “liminal phase” during the

11 process of Rites de Passage or simply called the “transition”; “limen” in Latin means threshold. The rites of passage generate three phases: separation, margin and aggregation. He further explains that the first state is a symbolic detachment of the ritual subjects from their social status or “office”. Then, it is the liminal period. In this phase, “the characteristics of the ritual subject (the “passenger”) are ambiguous; he or she passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state.” And thirdly, the post-ritual state, sometimes referred as reaggregation or reincorporation, the ritual subjects will gain another status that is bound with norms and rules of that particular community. The ritual subject, individual or corporate, is in a relatively stable state once more and, by virtue of this, has rights and obligations vis-à-vis others of a clearly defined and ‘structural’ type; he is expected to behave in accordance with certain customary norms and ethical standards binding on incumbents of social position in a system of such positions (Turner 79). Then, Turner moves to the concept of liminality or, what Turner calls, liminal personae (threshold people). He defines this term as a condition in which the personae slips through a state of being, status and office to another phase in the cultural space. During this period, the subject’s “being” and condition is ambiguous as he says, “liminal entities are neither here nor there” (Turner 79). He also provides examples of rites and rituals in African regions in order to explain the order, meanings and process of liminality and also demonstrate how individuals who have gone through the rite of passage change their status and identity. For example, Turner discusses about the Ndembu of Zambia whose rite of passage creates the authority (of the senior chief), power relation of the community members and the threshold period of the change of their social and ritual status. He claims that according to the belief of this community, a young man will become a man after he enters and walk across the threshold separating childhood and adulthood and person who is appointed to be the chief of the clan who rule the community. From this point, the rite of passage is very important to the ritual subjects because it can change, blend and transform their identity, status and position of the liminal personae.

12 For the symbolic stage of ritual, the states of Liminality are essential to be discussed in this section. In “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology” Victor Turner pointed out that “socio-cultural process” combined all the hidden meaning and underlying message which he called Symbol both in verbal and non-verbal forms. Rituals as the performance contain symbols and cultural codes that are embedded in their structure and pattern. He claims that “symbols, both sensorily as perceptible vehicle (signifiants) and as sets of “meanings” (signifiers), are essentially involved in multiple variability of the essentially living, conscious, emotional, and volitional creatures who employ them not only to give order to the universe they inhabit, but creatively to make use also of disorder” (Turner 23). Therefore, comparative symbology attempts to seek the meanings and forms of those symbols in daily life. In order to decode the underlined meaning of rice rituals, it is necessary to unfold and interpret each step of ritual preparation and also each phase of liminal entity of the farmers during ritual process. Symbology in ritual, thus, fills the gap of the research as signs, symbols and rhythms constitute the culture. Next, to explore about the fluidity status of rituals and performances, Turner also explained the notion of work, play, and leisure, which are associated with the idea of liminality of rituals and performances. These three concepts are the combination that also shape and manipulate how we look at the sets of signs and symbols. According to Oxford Dictionary, “work” means: physical and mental effort or act invested in order to achieve the result; employment; earning income by physical and mental effort; “a task or tasks to be undertaken; something a person or thing has to do.” Turner explains that rituals require the work from community, so it is obligatory for the members to participate in the activities. Communal participation, obligation, the passage of the whole society through crises, collective and individual, directly or by proxy, are the hall marks of ‘the work of the gods’ and sacred human work Ð without which profane human work would be, for the community, impossible to conceive, though no doubt, as history has cruelly demonstrated to those conquered by industrial societies, possible to live, or, at least, exist through (Turner 31).

13 However, in our industrialized society now, the concept of work also integrates with the idea of “play.” During the ritual process, when the individual members become the master or owner of the activity, they will “act” in certain roles. Role-playing is created for each member. This is where “work” and “play” become the combination of the ritual elements. Even sometimes the “play” itself can transform into “leisure”, the play creating in the free time. At this point, the liminal phase of the rituals and rites become the “liminoid.” Firstly, the liminal happens during the rituals and this phase of ritual, as an obligation for participation, can be the combination of play and work. In addition, Turner argued that sometimes during the ritual performance in tribal and agrarian society, it is the liminal phase that blurs the distinction between playing and working. Meanwhile the “liminoid” becomes as the entertainment for the participants; it includes the elements of “leisure” as one characteristic of ritualized activities. Turner adds that “‘leisure’ then, presupposes ‘work’: it is a non-work, even an anti-work phase in the life of a person who also works” (Turner 36). The last anthropological concept that will be explained in this section is communitas. According to Turner’s definition of communitas, it is an unstructured community in which every member shares the same status equally. There are two main models for human interrelatedness: the first type is the society in which structures and “hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions” classify the members into groups. The second, another society occurs in the liminal period where social status and structure are ambiguous (Liminality and Communitas 80). The role, identity and status of performers (workers/participants) are fluid and shifted back and forth all the time. The state of society becomes stateless and unstructured which Turner calls communitas. Therefore, it is the space roles and identities of participants (who are from different background) are blended into a temporary community where everybody is all in the same phase of performative rituals. The notion of liminal stage of performances and rituals was mentioned in Richard Schechner’s performance studies essay about transported and transformed phase of performers and audience. Due to his notion of ethnographic and performance study, he focuses on the performative aspect of the rituals making them into performances, or what he calls, “theatrical reality” such as weddings, funerals, or even initiations. He has

14 distributed the corroborative work with Victor Turner, therefore, their works share some threads that are linked with rituals and performances. Schechner proposes that the performance activities are processual and generate the process of transformation. Both defined and undefined performances always share one characteristic; “performance behavior is not free and easy”, because it never belongs to the performers (Schechner 118). He provides an example of performance behavior of the “play” of the Ramlila of Ramnagar, one of the most well known Ramlila group in India. When the actors take roles of Rama or Hanuman, they present the lives of the characters not theirs. Therefore, there is a line separating them from imitating and being. Like ritials, there are stages and phases occurring during the performances. He writes, “The stage Ð I mean not only the physical place but the time/space/spectator/performer aggregate Ð generates a centripetal field that gobbles up whatever happens on it or near it. This absorption to the center is the chief parallel between performance process and ritual process” (Schechner 119). The process of performance is always rejecting and replacing, according to the three states of the rites of passage Ð separation, liminality, and aggregation, the position and status of the performers. These three phases of rituals also metaphorically implies how Thai farmers from agrarian community enter into the globalized world as well. The first phase “separation” suggests how farmers are separated from tradition and authenticity of rice culture to enter the liminal process in which their office becomes malleable and ambiguous. Then, at final stage of the transition they will gain new status Ð the identity that is a combination of traditional and globalized entity. Schechner also claims that performers (the ritual conductor and participants) have to go through the liminal period in which they would be able to transform or take the roles of the character (e.g. shaman, dancers, or actors) whose presence would exist on the performance space only. They need the rite of passage as a threshold to bring themselves into the realm of performance. Therefore, it is crucial for performers to be engaged in the initial rite, which is called “the rite of passage”, in order to effectively “be” someone or something else. The performers are “transported” to the characters’ being through the transformation happening in the process of performance. Another significant notion I will investigate in this theoretical section is Diana Taylor’s book on archive and repertoire in performance studies. To study rituals and

15 other kinds of performance, it is essential to learn how these cultural events are documented and restored. Firstly, she proposes that among the research and scholarly works in western world, especially in the U.S. we have to problematize and investigate the positionality of the researchers who have worked in the field of human behavioral study, including anthropology, ethnography and even cultural studies. She adds that etic and emic point of view is very important. It is because when the scholars and researchers put themselves in the etic mode, they will assert the “outsider” perspective in those non- western cultural events; some details might be left out, cut off or even distorted from the original. Moreover, Taylor also problematizes the notion of translating and documenting the written works as “archive”, as she defines the term “‘Archival’ memory exists as documents, maps, literary texts, letters, archaeological remains, bones, videos, films, cds, all those items supposedly resistant to change ” (Taylor 19). Many times, as she claims, there is a “colonial discourse” embedded in the written works that are created by the colonial powers. Further, “writing” documents about non-western culture will never be accurately and perfectly translated into western languages. Therefore, the languages used in the archive may not be wholly accurate, because of etic point of view in the works, western discourse, and translation. In addition, Taylor points out the concept of “repertoire”; she explains, “The repertoire, on the other hand, enacts embodied memory-performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing-in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, non- reproducible knowledge” (Taylor 20). It is the term used to describe the “live” performances and other cultural events that cannot be restored in written form. As repertoire cannot remain the same and transforms through times, it requires presence and participation in the events or productions. Both archive and repertoire contain historical and cultural body, however, they embed multi-layers of human behavioral elements. We as student, researcher or scholar need to be aware of the complexity of differences in cultures and performances. The reason why Taylor’s scholarship is immensely significant for this research is because rice rituals Ð that are indeed the repertoire because it is ephemeral and also requires the participants to be in that ritualistic moment—now become an archive of the nation. As those rituals today almost disappear from agrarian

16 society, government organizations urge to preserve and display them as cultural heritage in museums and exhibitions. Thus, the rituals that are seen during special events are merely reenactment of the liminoid repertoire rather than authentic events during rice season. This leads to another discussion of authenticity and innovation in James Graves’ Cultural Democracy. Graves raises an argument about the authenticity of folk culture whether tradition belongs to the insiders only. He points out “[i]dentity is inseparably bound to tradition. The accumulated attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, and prejudices that constitute that self-image of a particular group of people in a particular place and time are the fruits of tradition” (Graves 41). Then he makes a statement that having an “authentic” tradition does not mean that is the “real” tradition, but authenticity is authority…authority to perform, interpret, and representation by people from that particular culture. In my point of view, it is impossible to categorize what is “old” or what is “new”…I cannot exactly conclude that the fading rice culture in Thailand that I have been talking about is the “traditional” culture, since culture, language, and identity have changed through times. These subject matters are fluid and transitional. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett also supports this argument about the “staging culture.” She points out that many people start to problematize how rituals transform into spectacle in special events. The reason why ritualistic performance becomes merely an exhibition is because we have been familiar with the concept of museums that display objects, cultural artifacts, animals even the “body” of human beings. The drama of the quotidian feeds on what John MacAloon calls a genre error: one man’s life is another man’s spectacle. Exhibitions institutionalize this error by producing the quotidian as spectacle, and they do this by building the role of the observer into the structure of events that, left to their own devices, are not subject to formal viewing (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 47). This is what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls “exhibiting the quotidian.” When the liminal rituals turn into the staged performance, the authenticity of tradition, I propose, that used to be performed as the quotidian changes its office into an exotic, rare, and

17 special in the eyes of the outsiders, including people from new generation who do not have first-hand experience about rice culture. Furthermore, these rice rituals research also relates to the notion of performativity through the perspective of Judith Butler in “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, a gender theorist. J.L. Austin, a language philosopher, introduced the term “performativity” as a part of speech act theory. He explained that in communication and speech act, they create a condition, “performative sentence” or “performative utterance”, or, in short “a performative” which means speech and utterance can perform an action. He wrote, “the name is derived, of course, from ‘perform’, the usual verb with the noun ‘action’: it indicates that the issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action Ð it is not normally thought of as just saying something” (Austin 6-7). However, Butler’s main interest focuses on gender, queer and political theory. She proposed the idea of performativity as it is the acts of an individual that constructs his/her gendered body instead of the physical and biological gender that attached with the person since he/she was born. To do, to dramatize, to reproduce, these seem to be some of the elementary structures of embodiment. This doing of gender is not merely a way in which embodied agents are exterior, surfaced, open to the perception of others. Embodiment clearly manifests a set of strategies or what Sartre would perhaps have called a style of being or Foucault, ‘a stylistics of existence’… Consider gender, for instance, as a corporeal style, an ‘act,’ as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where ‘performative’ itself carries the double-meaning of ‘dramatic’ and ‘non-referential’ (Butler 521-2). Even though Butler’s critical theory is not directly related to the concept of ritual, how she coined the term with the explanation of what we do constitutes and defines who or what we are will enhance and support the reason why human beings need rituals and performances in their community. Rituals and performances create their collective identity or I would say “national identity” as I will discuss later. One example that embraces all concepts of repertoire, performance, and performativity is the scholarship from Adrienne L. Kaeppler, an anthropologist and dance ethnologist. In her essay “Dance

18 Ethnology and the Anthropology of Dance,” Kaeppler asserts that in order to understand a specific performance; ethnographic dance scholars need to understand the culture of that particular performance, as performance is not always a “universal language.” Sometimes, with etic point of view, many scholars assume and interpret gesture and movements of the “others” without acknowledging the differences of each culture. She proposes that dance is a structured movement system as from anthropological point of view suggests that movements in dance are composed by religious beliefs, rituals and other events created by human. Dance, therefore, is an artistic product of culture that “manipulates human bodies in time and space.” Moreover, Kaeppler also points out that while European scholars tend to classify dance studies based on historical and regional context while American dance ethnologists question about the component of dance studies, so they tend to include dance studies into anthropological field to seek for the underlying meaning, such as intention, cultural context and social conventions, in the performance. This scholarship may not directly relate to rice rituals in Northern Thailand. However, it is an important key to interpret Rice Now, a contemporary dance performance created by Thai artist who is not completely an insider of this folk culture. This performance, I argue, is a constructed movement and produced as reinterpreted cultural artifacts in this contemporary urban society. Dance becomes visible as a product of human action and interaction in the context of a socially constructed movement system. The system itself is invisible, existing in the minds of people as movement motifs, specific choreographies, and meaningful imagery. In Hawaii, dance traditionally functioned to promote prestige, power, status, and social distancing. Today Hawaiian dance has an additional political dimension in that communicative competence in this cultural form is considered an

aspect of social and cultural identity [emphasis added] (Kaeppler 42). Since rice rituals are the symbolic activities that create the sense of community among people;they gather people altogether in the same place to celebrate, as well as, to establish a sacred space for everyone to enjoy and enforce their beliefs. Thus, communitas can be used as a tool to examine an ideal image of rice ritual in the time before the enormous change of economic system in Thailand. While rice rituals transform

19 the participants into the master/performers of the events, the ritual procedures also transport them into the realm of ritualized space. They live in the moment of sacred ceremony. Though I could not participate the real events during the research trip in summer, this research will be an example of how ethnography works in the field of performance studies that also utilize interdiscinplinary research methods. Along with these scholarships from different fields, my research questions will be unfolded in the following chapters throughout this study. In the following part, I will introduce and review some of the literature that enhance and guide my research questions. To understand Thai culture and social structure, historical contexts are necessary to be explained at the beginning as the introduction to the realm of rice. The following literature review attempts to provide the explanation and relationship between rice rituals and national identity of people in Northern Thailand. Phraya Anuman Rachathon profoundly wrote about Thai rice farming and rice rituals in his book The Life of the Farmer in Thailand which was translated by Willliam J. Gedney. Although his work explains all aspects of Thai farmers’ life comprehensively, the book was published in 1955 at a time in which Thai society had not yet encountered with a drastic change of socio-economical change. His book provides excellent document for the research; however, this source seems to be outdated for the work that focuses on contemporary time. Still, this source is very valuable as the overall historical context of rice history in Thailand. Further, the book Khao Kap Khon Thai by Bureau of Rice Research and Development demonstrates rice history in Thailand with well-organized content. It is helpful for the researcher to use the information as another background of the research. One thing that must be considered is that it was written by government organization. It excludes some aspects of rice culture and history, which are from different regions of the country. Another significant source that supports Phraya Anuman Rachathon and the governmental organization’s work is Watthanatham Khao (1994) by Iam Tongdee, a cultural-anthropologist scholar. The content from this source provides detailed information from the scientific knowledge about rice to the cultural significance of rice in Thailand. Tongdee’s work offers an over all concept and image of rice culture in Thailand which is a key information need in this research, yet the context of this book

20 still needs to be investigated and compared with the changes that might happen after the period that the book was published. Not only the context of rice history in Thailand, the history of the country is another aspect that portray national identity of people. Though there are numbers of sources that is about Thai history and written in English, many works are written from etic point of view (which means the outsider’s perspective) of European and American scholars. It is arguable that written works on Thai history, which were published in Thailand may have been censored and edited by the government. Therefore, there are some works that both investigate and perhaps conceptualize the assumption on how Thai- ness is constructed through history. One of the significant works is from Niels Mulder’s Inside Thai Society. His critical perspectives comment on Buddhism and how Thai identity is constituted through religion, which answers the research question about how Buddhism constructs Thai-ness in agrarian society. Also, the history books about Northern Thailand by other western scholars such as David Wyatt’s A Short History of Thailand. The last two sources of history are about the history of Northern Thailand specifically. By reading and comparing these historical context altogether, all the sources from both sides are all supporting the argument about how history can construct Thai national identity. However, using several sources from several voices allows the researcher to utilize historiographical approach to organize, compare and decode all the texts in order to discover which histories were written under which discourses. With the introduction for the notion of rice as national identity, Emiko Ohnuki Tierney proposes that food turns to be the representative of “self” in metaphoric form. Especially, the countries that have the concept of nationalism, such as China and Japanese, define rice as the food of their nations. In some regions, rice is a national resource that only belongs to people in those countries. It becomes the symbol of identity and self. Rice field become “our land” as suggested in this chapter. She also refers to Victor Turner’s notion of “exegetical meaning” and “dominant symbol” to explain the phenomena where people try reconstruct the meaning of symbol and reconceptualize cultural structure in order to create the paradigm shift of social status. Even though the context of her work is about Japanese people, this scholarship answers my research questions in many ways; for example, both Japan and Thailand are Asian countries in

21 which rice is the main food of people. Moreover, rice is also the culture that signifies “self” of the people and the nation. Therefore, Tierney’s Rice as Self is one of the significant models that can be used in this research in to explore how rice becomes a symbol of culture that creates national identity of Thai people. Moreover, Willemijn de Jong also mentioned the idea of rice and kinship in Indonesian context in her work. Jong proposed that ritual practices construct the socio- cultural identity and create the kinship among people in society. Therefore, rice becomes more than food that it symbolizes social hierarchy. Rice is the food for the elites. Indonesian farmers hold the agricultural ceremonies in the rice field in order to seek fortune from the elderly prophesy whether their rice field will be protected and their lives will be full of prosperity. Rice rituals also strengthen the relationship of the family members as it gathers people together and embeds the significance of the senior to young people. Jong concludes that rice is very significant for the ritual, because it is the “means of exchange for offering to the supernatural being.” In this research, it is necessary to discuss about how Southeast Asian communities are constructed, especially in Thailand. Rice is not just food but a mean that bridges people altogether through the eating culture and behavior. It is because rice and other foods are related to farming and nature. Therefore, people have to pay respect to the food and nature by conducting rituals in order to unite people in their community and also boost their spirits. Lastly, the most important work that is the key point of this research is The Philosophy of Rice Rituals of Lanna. This is a research work of Kwanfa Sriprapan that explains all the rice rituals of Northern Thailand from the beginning of the rice season until the end. The reason why this source immensely fills the gap of this thesis is because all the rituals described in that work cannot be found in the rice field any more. After globalization and industrialization, there are only a few rituals left and there is not a lot of research about them. Moreover, Kwanfa also includes his interviews with the farmers and elders from rice communities and uses the archive about rice culture to support his argument such as the rice songs and records of rice history. However, a major issue of Kwanfa’s work is the research focuses the rituals the practice not how Thai identity is constructed through rituals, so he does not efficiently explore rice culture in context of Thai national identity, which is the main focus of this research.

22 With the fluidity of rice culture and national identity of Northern Thai people, it is truly difficult to pinpoint only one result that can unfold all research questions that I have. Whether to perform or not to perform…to preserve or not to preserve, rice rituals are still fading away from Thai agrarian life, as new life style seems to be more colorful and exciting than the dull traditional values that are rarely seen in this globalized society. This study may be a model of folklore and performance studies that integrate several approaches from different research fields such as anthropology, ethnography, and cultural studies in order to examine a huge concept of identity and explore the possibility on maintain the culture for people in the next generation. Without our traditional roots, we will be lost in the strong waves of consumerism and globalization. It is true that we have to go with the flow, but what will happen when these new currents begin to fade away like rice culture? What will be left for us when what we attach ourselves to is merely a shadow of modernization? New identity of the farmers, which has not been constituted through the process of liminality, is only to become a slave of money and machine in the rice field. To reclaim Thai identity, it is necessary to trace back to the history in order to study the structure of seniority, communality, and Buddhism that has been constructed since ancient times. In the next chapter, I will provide the historical context of the nation and the cultural aspects of rice rituals that have been practiced and performed during the rice season.

23 Chapter 2 Thailand and Thai-ness: Historicizng Rice Identity through Rice Rituals

The term “identity” has broad definitions: characteristics of a particular group of people in a particular culture or society that they have in common. There are many ways for an individual to gain his identity; either he or she is born and raised in that culture or he can borrow some traits from the others, select some aspects, and combine them to create his own identity. In this research, I will use “Thai-ness” as a particular iteration of Thai identity. Thai-ness— the concept of seniority, communality, and Buddhism, is how people in this country, especially the rice farmers, perform their beliefs, norms, and culture through rice rituals. Therefore, I argue that in this contemporary society traditional Thai identity reflected through rice culture is interrupted by globalization, which benefits the country in terms of technology development and economic system, yet it also destroys local wisdom and beliefs in the rice field, especially in Northern Thailand. In order to have a better understanding about Thai-ness, in this chapter I will investigate how rice rituals constitute the concepts of seniority, communality, and religion, which are the three main components of Thai identity by historicizing Thai-ness and the rice culture. To discover how these concepts were established, it is necessary to trace back to the history of Thailand and of Lanna (an empire in Northern Thailand). Going back to the origin of Thai people, I was taught that Thai people today used to be called Tai (same pronunciation but different spelling) who migrated from the Altai Mountains. Though there are several theories that explain the origin of Thai people, yet one theory has been widely accepted by the scholars; people in Thailand today were Tai people who came from southern China. Before this country became Thailand, it used to be called Siam that has best known for jasmine rice, herbs and other ingredients among the world travelers and traders. Yet, the culture identity of Tai is not so easily defined, for Tai people shared a great deal of their culture with other Southeast Asian peoples. David Wyatt, an American historian specializing in Thai studies, claimed that “By two thousand years ago the peoples of Southeast Asia shared a common, distinctive, and advanced civilization. Like their neighbors, the Tai conducted subsistence rice agriculture, supplement by

24 fishing and the gathering of forest products” (Wyatt 3). For the geographical and demographical feature nowadays, Thailand or the Kingdom of Thailand is located between the Indo-China and Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With 66 million people in the country, it is bordered to the north by and , to the east by Laos and , and to the south by Malaysia. Today, Thailand is still known as an agrarian country that used to be a number one rice exporter in the rank. In the past, some groups of Tai people settled down and remained in the Northern area and the rest went further downward to the central area which later became Dvaravati kingdom. Before Dvaravati was established, the foundation of Buddhism was laid in Southeast Asian regions between sixth and ninth centuries (Wyatt 17) under the influence of Indian civilization. Ashoka, the Buddhist king from India, expanded Buddhism all the way to Southeast Asia. Then, came to Tai-land and occupied the lowland in the central and Northern highlands. They also brought Indian cultures along with them to the new land. For this reason, during that time, Tai people took Buddhism as the regional religion. Later on, Burmese culture reached the Northern part meanwhile Khmer civilization remained the east. Under the influence of Mon-Khmer (Cambodian) and Paĝan (Burmese), Tai people borrowed and adapted these two cultures to create their own. During the Dvaravati era, people eventually adopted Theravada Buddhism from Burma and later on Theravada Buddhist civilization became the national religion of the region during Sukhothai era in thirteenth century. For people in the north around 1086-1261 A.D., they established and named their kingdom, Lanna.The origin and history of Lanna were written by various historians. Hans Penth, a German philologist-historian specializing in Lanna region, briefly described the history of Lanna in six stages: the arrivals of Tais (c.1050-1300), the making of Lanna (c. 1300-1400), the golden age of Lanna (c.1400-1525), the decline and loss of independence (c.1526-1558), fragmentation (c. 1558-1775), and renaissance and integration with Siam (c.1775-present). During 1261-1371 the golden age of the kingdom, King Mengrai united the principalities in the north and sent his children to rule over them. Buddhism was introduced to Lanna people. By the time of mid-sixteenth century, the Lanna kingdom had been governed and heavily colored with Burmese cultures. Eventually in 1774, Lanna was able to expel the Burmese from the kingdom

25 (Forbes and Henley 15). Today, we can still see Burmese-styled Buddhist temples all around north Thailand. Later on, due to the internal conflict in royal family and politics, the kingdom declined, regained the power and united with the other parts of Siam around 1774. Lanna means the Kingdom of Millions Rice Fields (lan means million and na means rice fields). As the name of the kingdom, Lanna itself might not have a million rice fields as its literal meaning, but it was a metaphor that reflected the image of fertility of the land. With the prosperous natural resources, they were the main factors that made Lanna a powerful kingdom (Sriprapan 21-2). Lanna was an agrarian society where the citizen worked in the rice fields to grow rice for their consumption and production. The kingdom was the land of Tai Yuan in the past located in the Northern part of Thailand and stretched its boundary to Sibsongbanna, including Chiang Rung, Jeng Hung, Yunnan, Eastern Burma and the east side of Salween River. Today, there are eight provinces in Northern Thailand such as , Lamphun, Lampang, Chiang Rai, Phayao, Phrae, Nan and Mae Hong Sorn. With its mountainous features, Northern Thailand is geographically different from other parts of Thailand distinctively, because three forth of the region is highlands. It is also the watershed of most of the main rivers in Thailand. The most significant river in Northern region is Ping River as it used to be the main path of transportation, trading and cultural exchange among Lanna, other cities and foreign countries. People in Lanna call themselves Khon Munag7. Lanna people have their own language called Kam Muang (kam means words). However, due to the geographical features, it was difficult to travel from one place to another before convenient transportation from modern infrastructure. Thus, each city has their own Lanna dialect and vocabulary (Ongsakul 33). Today, Lanna people still use their language to communicate in daily life even though after Lanna united as a part of Siam and Thai became the national language. In Forbes and Henley’s Khon Muang: People and Principalities of Northern Thailand, it is wrote,

7 Kon means human beings or people and Muang means city or principalities. Kon Muang is the name to call people of principalities as Lanna used to be divided into small towns with the capital cities in each region.

26 The inhabitants of these isolated principalities Ð that is, the Tai-speaking, lowland rice farmers, as proposed to the various hill peoples who inhabit the intervening mountain ranges, … Ð differed from each other by accent, or sometimes by style of dress, as citizens of different muang (Forbes and Henley 8). Tracing back to the history of Lanna ruling system, there was a chao system. Chao is a title of ruling class that had authority to rule the region. Both Lanna and the central Tai-land had a ruling system of absolute monarchy. The definition of chao can be referred to royal families whose kingship was succeeded by bloodlines. The king was the one who assigned the royal family members to govern the principalities in Lanna. For the politicians and bureaucrats who were excellent in working, they would be granted a title to govern the principalities as well. Chao system has established the concept of seniority— one of the most important characteristic of Thai people, social classes, and power relations between the townspeople in Northern Thailand. First of all, for the rulers kingship is based on patriarchal hereditary succession Ð from father to sons, uncle to nephews, or older brother to younger brothers… from older generation to the younger ones. In the past the kings would remain in the capital city meanwhile the sons were governing the smaller town outside. Social class and hierarchy are determined by age. Therefore, seniority became the value and rule that Tai and Thai people respect the most. It is because younger people are regarded as inferior, have less authority and need to pay respect to the seniors; the hierarchical power is based on age of the persons. This social norm is still a cultural practice in Thailand in modern days. That is why we have a gesture wai to pay respect, apologize, greet and thank one another. Wyatt describes Lanna history in his book that: The Buddhization of the Northern Tai must at the same time have been associated with changes in their style of life. For the first time in their history, they were moving onto extensive, lowland plains suitable for the irrigated cultivation of rice. This made possible the development of urban centers and the proportional growth of an urban ruling class freed from direct involvement in agriculture. These were still, however, societies of

27 ruling families (chao) and freeman (phrai) bound together by personal reciprocal bonds of obligation and responsibility (Wyatt 26). Seniority in Lanna used to play important role in every unit of society. For instance, the secession heredity system of Lanna kings that only allows younger rulers to govern the principalities when they reached a certain age or sometimes they had to wait until the older king descended from his throne; for the smaller unit such as community such as a village, people have to have rituals and ceremonies for the spirit who they believe to have more power over common people. And most of the time the master of ceremonies is the senior in the community. They can be male or female, but they have to be the person who has experienced the world; and for the smallest unit of society, family, children need to bow their heads when they walk past older people. They are taught to be obedient to the elders. Seniority is valued everywhere and in every context of Thai society. It is a culture that put things in order Ð from bigger to smaller and from older to younger. However, the ruling system of Thailand has changed from an absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. The seniority of ruling system may not be as strict as in the past; still people regard the king and royal family very highly. Due to the country’s (pseudo) democracy, social classes in Thai society may not be strictly justified by age, but it is educational status, economic power, material wealth that have the power to change an individual’s status. However, in Southeast Asian countries, people still depend their life cycle, including food and agricultural production, on nature, so they believe that nature has the power to nurture life and also destroy them at the same time. For people in Northern Thai agrarian society, human beings submit to the power of nature. Farmers have to show their respect and gratitude to the nature spirits. Some rituals, therefore, are the symbols of hierarchical relation between the humble human and the powerful nature (earth, water, fire, and wind). For rice culture in Northern Thailand, people have a ritual called Wai Pii or the event that the rice farmers will offer foods and sacrifices to the spirits of the land, water, rain and many other nature spirits. Wai Pii has been a tradition for people in the north and northeast Thailand. According to Lanna belief, pii has two meanings: the spirit of the deceased person (normally they are spirits of the ancestors), and the sacred spirits that can bless or punish

28 people when they violate the customs. Pii can be also categorized into three types. The first one, they call pii dee (the good spirits). Lanna people believe that pii dee will help them if they do not violate any rules and norms. Normally, pii dee are called pii faa (spirits of the heaven), but was later referred to gods and according to cultural influence from India. Another type is pii rai or the bad spirits causing troubles to people. The last one is the neutral spirits that are the spirits of nature, ancestor, and warriors of the kingdom (Sriprapan 25-6). For the good and neutral spirits, if Lanna people would like to ask for help, they have to offer something in return such as food, animal sacrifices or some items at the spirit houses8. On the other hand, when people make them angry, they have to make amend and ask for forgiveness. Such belief in pii has great influences on rice rituals of the farmers all over Northern region; meanwhile, in central Thailand, the farmers would rather call pii as the holy spirits (sing sak sit) instead. One of the most significant beliefs of the rice field is Mae Phosop or the Rice Goddess. Beliefs and values about rice has been told and retold to many generations for decades. The life of Mae Phosop will be always included in every rice story. In addition, the ritual of paying respect to the spirits also links with the idea of the “territorial passage.” Arnold Van Gennep, a French folklorist and ethnographer, proposes the concept of the Rite of Passage by defining it as a rite or ritual that brings the participants to cross the threshold in order to enter into another stage of life. The rites of passage can be varied such as puberty rites, wedding ceremonies or even commencement ceremonies. Liang Pii is a territorial passage for the farmers. The ritual reminds them to be ready the rice season and prepare them to perform their duty as farmers whose duty is to cultivate the land. Therefore, they have to pay respect to the land that belongs to the nature spirits, and they have to create a zone of rice farming which is also a sacred space…a territory of all the Mother Nature. In Buddhist-animist society, it is a mixture of religious practices and indigenous beliefs which can be found in people’s way of thinking and living. For the animist way, Lanna people believe that there are spirits in everything. For example, in the trees there

8 In Thai culture, it is believed that the is a place where the good spirits, who protect the house owner, would live in. This idea derived from Khmer culture and later mixed with Buddhism. The spirit houses in this research belong to the land spirits who protect the rice field.

29 are gods and goddesses dwelling in there to protect the tree trunks. For this reason, sometimes people who collect food in the woods will be very respectful and humble towards nature, and they will neither insult the spirits verbally nor act against them. Similarly in rice culture9, Mae Phosop or Mae Khosok is the goddess who provides life to people; she granted food and protected rice for human beings. She has an image of a beautiful woman with shoulder length hair, a flower behind one ear and a delicate forehead’s ornament. Her garments will be decorated with jewels on her red or green dress. Her figures or paintings are of the goddess in sitting position. One of her hand holding a bunch of ripe rice and another holding a bag of harvested rice. When farmers are holding the ritual for Mae Phosop, they will place her image on the shrine and recite the prayers. If they do not have her images, they will use a rice sheaf as her symbol instead (Tongdee 31-2). All over Southeast Asain countries, there are hundreds stories about the origin of rice, but for Thai people, there are many tales that tell us about the history of rice. In Northern region of Thailand, it can be said that this area has the matriarchal culture. The voices of women would be always significant in our society. This is because of the value of gender in the past where women were (are) in charge of households and well beings of their family. In Richard Davis’ work “Tolerance and Intolerance of Ambiguity in Northern Thai Myth and Ritual”, he described how social norms or even laws were accommodating for women. The transmission of residential property through women is closely connected to the domestic cult of spirits. House spirits, called “spirits of the ancestors” or “spirits of the old people” (pii puu nyaa), are inherited in the female line. They are said to “belong to” the eldest woman of the household. House spirits are domestic manifestations of clan spirits. For ritual purposes the Northern Thai are organized into matriclans (kok

9 Rice culture is the local beliefs and practices that are related to the life of humans being and rice. It includes life style, patterns of rice cultivation, rituals, tools, wisdom, ideals, communities, and animals that help farmers grow and harvest rice and many more. Rice culture reflects people’s behavior of rice consumption and management as well. In the modern time, rice culture also employs technology and innovation that will help rice farmers develop the quality of rice as the product in the market (Tongdee 14-5).

30 phii). As far as is known, the Northern Thai are the only Tai people who possess matrilineal descent groups [emphasis added] (Davis 2). From the past to present time people still have the value of mother-centered culture. The word Mae (which means mother) is a prefix of many words that are related to human beings’ life cycle. For instance, Mae Naam (the Mother of water) means river or Mae Toranee (the Mother of the Earth), and last but not least Mae Phosop who is the mother of all rice. These words, I argue, portray the relationship between humans and the Mother Nature that nurtures many lives on earth. Femininity and nature, thus, are associated with the image of caring and nurturing mothers. This notion is similar to how Mae Phosop is highly regarded as the Mother of Rice whose duty is to feed her children (the farmers and other people) and also take care of her territory in the rice field. This highly reflects in the rice customs of Thai people in order to humbly live with nature. We also have a saying “the water may rely on the boats as well as the tigers to the forest” This means everything is interconnected. Nothing separates from one another, so everyone will reply on one another harmoniously. As well as farmers have to respect all the natural elements, and indeed they have to always think about Mae Phosop. In “The Philosophy of Rice Rituals of Lanna”, the Kwanfa Sriprapan, the rice ritual researcher, claims that For Lanna agrarian society, rice farming is the most important thing for the individual, family, and community of rice culture. The beliefs have been carried on for a long time. The collective stories and wisdom reflecting in the rice rituals have been involving with fertility of the land and rice for the whole rice season. Every process of rice farming consists of rituals … Firstly, rice farmers hold the rituals due to the myth and old stories such as the tale of Mae Phosop. Secondly, the rituals related to the taboos. The third kind is the sacrificial rituals. And lastly it is the rituals that will help rice farmers go through crisis such as drought and other natural disasters [translated by the author] (Sriprapan 42) In Thailand, rice farmers must conduct the rituals every rice season. Since there are several rules and restrictions in terms of rice farming, farmers avoid committing a taboo that may anger supernatural beings. Thus, the crisis that Sriprapan mentions in the

31 excerpt above is not (yet) the crisis resulted from the social change. However, it is a nature crisis that human beings have no power to manage and control the nature. Therefore, in agrarian society rituals function as the guarantee granted by the nature spirits to protect the rice field, or in the other hand, rituals, I propose, are bribes from human beings who have to respect the elders (the nature spirits) by showing their humble respect and indeed the actual offering items for the land and rice. According to Ngampit Satsahguan, a Thai anthropologist, rituals are the symbols that reflect religious beliefs of people. It is because all the religious stories and beliefs are complex and very difficult to understand. It is easier to have some symbolic acts in order to explain the significance and procedure of the religious events to people (Sriprapan 38). There are four rice rituals in Northern Thailand. The first one is the ritual before the farming during May-July such as the food offering and asking for permission to grow rice from the land spirit. According to my interviews with rice farmers in my hometown, they said that this ritual is an initial rite for everyone in the field. It is for auspiciousness of the land and for the farmers themselves. This is because the ritual is the symbolic act that prepares the farmers to work in the field. Moreover, it is to boost their spirit for the hard work during the year as well. They will make a small wood stand in their land and put food and other offerings to the spirit. There is another the ritual for water spirit and rainfall. Before preparing their land for rice, farmers also have to offer food to the water spirit or Lanna people would call Pii Khoon Nam10. They believe that to have this ritual, their rice field will have water supply throughout the year. In my previous chapter, I mentioned the three phases in the rite of passage which are the rites of separation (preliminal rites), transition rites (liminal rites), and the rites of incorporation (postliminal rites) (Gennep 11). The ritual of Liang Naa is not only the “territory passage” in which in the ritual space is zoned and marked by ritual object Ð the woodstand or the house of spirit indicate Mae Phosopn’s territory, it is also the rites of separation which is the first phase of ritual liminality. Liang Naa reinforces the farmers establish the sacred moment when they are performing as the ritual leader or even the

10 It is believe that Pii Khoon Nam are the spirits protecting and dwelling in the water sources. Therefore, food and item offering is very important process to guarantee that the grains will receive enough water from the sources (Sriprapan 87).

32 participants. Then, the ritual will separate the ritual subjects, the farmers, from the real world outside the rice field. At this point, the farmers are only the labor in the field, but the members of the ritual created for nature spirits and Mae Phosop. The seniority system created outside of the field is brought back to the sacred space as the rice children are demonstrating their respect to the rice supernatural elders. Rice rituals in the field are the rites of passage that tighten the sense of community among people in the rice land. Sriprapan referred to Anthony F.C. Wallace, a American anthropologist in religious studies that there are four main categories of religion: Individualistic, Shamanistic, Communal, and Ecclesiastical. The communal aspect is of people who create rites and rituals for the members of their community. As in every procedure of rituals, it requires people to take care of each process. People are obliged to ‘help’ their kinsmen for the sake of the gods/goddesses, spirits and their community benefits. For example, the ritual of food offering to Pii Khoon Nam will begin with a meeting and discussion among the farmers whose lands are in that area about how they can arrange the money and food for the spirit’s offering. After they share some money to buy the items, they will prepare the offerings and put them in the bamboo baskets. One person may take care of one basket, another person do the same thing with another one. There will be the ceremony leader who will recite the chants during the process of ritual. Afterward when they think the spirits are satisfied with the offerings, the farmers will share the food with their friends. The procedure of this ritual is an example that demonstrates how communality works in the rituals. Everybody will have his own role. Everyone is required to be apart of the community. When each individual engage in a communal event, sense of belonging and kinship will be established among friends and neighbors. For this reason, instead of being an individual person who has his own objective in life, s/he become a member that belong to that society who share the life experience and a moment of “doing something together”. Suwitcha Pattanapraiwan wrote in his work about the community system of Pga K'nyan that the study of community can be divided into three dimensions. Firstly, the geographical dimension does not mean the actual area of a community or a village, but it is the concept of a social unit in which members communicate and create their relationship. This type of community also exchanges their relations with other

33 communities as well. Therefore, the geographical dimension of community includes both rural and urban communities where there are changes, adaptation and rapid growth in each one (referred from Santasombat, 1996). Secondly, community in terms of historical dimension is community that members have experienced and shared their historical moments altogether. Thus, they have the same beliefs and ideals due to the their similar background. Also, they can be the group of people who use the same resources or they are related in blood. And lastly, it is the spiritual dimension of community system. This type of community is formed through religion and beliefs of people. Community is this sense also include life after death or Thai people call it the “Third World” where their spirits are attached to moral codes of that particular society (referred from Kanchanapun, 1999). As the farmers move along to the next phase of the rites of passage, liminal entity of the rituals also transports them into the sacred realm and transforms their office, status, and identity during the process of liminality. The second stage is the transition rites or the liminal rites. It means that once the farmers are completely engaged with the ritualistic moment, they walk across the threshold of their identity. Since the rites of separation detach them from their “real” role outside in field, including a father, a husband, a sister or a friend of someone; when they step into the liminal space their status, role and identity suddenly become ambiguous. They no longer hold the titles they have carried with them in daily life, but they become all the same…they become the members of this pseudo and temporary community in the field as Turner calls it communitas, “an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders (Turner 96).” Moreover, Northern Thai people also pray for the rainfall during the season. It is because some parts of Northern Thailand are very dry. Some rice fields depend on the seasonal rain. For Lanna people, farmers will use Mom, a mythical creature that is the combination between tiger and cat, to ask for the rain. If the rain god sees that people from earth with Mom are in crisis of lacking water for their crops, he will eventually grant them the rainfall.

34

Figure 1: Tongthai, Nam-ngam, mom the mythical creature used to pray for rainfall

Next, the ritual during the process of growing rice; for example, the most important event is Haek Naa or asking Mae Phosop to bless and grant the farmers with the best quality of rice on the first plowing day. The farmers will carefully make the wood stand and a shrine to place the offerings for Mae Phosop which are cigarettes, dessert, meat, sugar canes, flowers, candles, and other offerings in the bowls made of banana leaves. They will also cut the bamboo and make it into a pole and fix “a six- pointed figure of plaited bamboo called a “hawk’s eye” (taa laew)” (Davis 3). Then, they will attach it with the bamboo chain and the fish images made from bamboo. The farmers (mostly male farmers) will thank Mae Phosop, Mae Thoranee (the Mother Earth), and the Four Heavenly Kings, each of them will protect one cardinal direction of the earth (Payomyong).

35

Figure 2 Champawan, Ruchira. Ta Laew

Then, they will use the plough to plow the land for the first time of the season. For Thai people, doing something for the first time is always important. If everything seems to work well in the first time, it will foreshadow that the business will be successful. Therefore, working in the paddy field for the first time is to predict the result of rice production as well. Haek Na is also practiced in the central of Thailand. People call it, instead, Raek Na ritual. Every during May, there will be , originated from Hindu culture, where they will use two sacred oxen to predict the condition of farm production in Thailand, and they will plough the land as the auspicious rite at the beginning of rice season. At this point, I argue during the phase of transition rite communitas, that has been extended from the start of the liminal phase, creates communality in this unstructured and unstructured society, because it is a space where ritual members share the same spirit of conducting the “work for god” as Turner points out in his book. With communitas, every ritual performers establish communal relationship among group members who work, play, laugh, and also grasp the seriousness of ritualistic moment as well. However, the picture below demonstrates another crisis farmers in Lampang, my hometown, are facing today. Due economic tension in Thailand, many farmers are forced to leave their home to

36 find a better job with better payment in bigger city. Therefore, there are only a few farmers who are still growing rice to feed their family. Rice farming in Lampang has changed its meaning since globalization and modernization became their main point of earning a living. Growing rice is not a work for god any longer, but a work for the sake of their well-beings. By the same token, rice rituals almost disappear, because when seniority becomes less important than money, communality created during liminal entity is also gone. If these concepts cannot be constituted during rice rituals, how will these concepts construct the notion of Thai-ness in Thai rice culture today? What will be left for the next generation to hold on to when our roots are gone? This is the reason why this research is immensely important in terms of the national identity crisis that is happening now in Northern Thailand where I came from. While I am now being away from home, I can only look at my culture from the etic perspective where my study can only critique how Thai rice culture and identity are fading from agrarian community. Because of this issue in my hometown, the only phase of rites of passage created in the field is the rites of separation where social identity is detached from ritualized identity. However, the liminal stage is not fertilized due to the lack of rice farmers. Thus, they do not cross the threshold of identity. They are caught and stuck there in the transition period in which their “neither-here-nor-there” status is not transported to the communitas in the rice ritualistic realm.

37

Figure 3: The rice farmers will seek the rice plants and tie them into bunches. Then, they will take a few of them and replant all the rice in orderly rows. It is because it is easier to take care of the rice when they are fully grown.

Before the rites of passage reaches the last phase, the rites of incorporation, there is another ritual called Soo Kwan Khao or the ritual of inviting the rice spirit Mae Phosop dwelling in the rice seeds to stay inside the rice barn. The farmers will ask for Mae Phosop for forgiveness, because during the time of threshing the rice, some farmers may step on the rice. Normally, they will have this ritual on the day that they finish putting all the rice in the barn or if they cannot make it on time, they will do it the day after. Soo Kwan Khao can be a small or big event, depending on the customs of that particular society. The offerings for Mae Phosop will be the small things that women use such as comb, small mirror, or powder. According to Manee Payomyong’s notion, the rice field owner cannot recite the litany to the Rice Goddess. It has to be the shaman of the village only. When they are done with preparing all the offerings to the spirit, women who attend the ritual with use a ladle as if they are ladling the rice. This is a metaphoric performance meaning that they are collecting all the rice spirit to stay in the barn. They will also say that “Rice, please stay in the barn. Don’t play around outside or else the animals will

38 accidentally step on you” (Payomyong). They all believe that rice has the spirit just like human, so they can wander around when humans do not pay attention. Furthermore, there is another ritual to thank all the animals, especially Thai buffalos that help the farmers grow all the rice.

Figure 4: Farmers were threshing ripe rice in the field.

The ritual inviting the rice spirits and Mae Phosop to dwell in the barn is the end of the rice season. Every process of rice farming will be finished by this particular time. This ritual suggests the notion of the rites of corporation that is the last stage of the ritual process according to Gennep. It is a post-liminal phase in which their liminal identity has completely transformed. Their labor for their goddess and other nature spirits has done. And in this stage, they have gained their office and status as the accomplished farmers who have been nurtured by the Rice Mother for the whole year of rice farming. At this point, I propose that they have changed from children of the rice to the men of the field who now have an ability to protect their land and their rice. However, I am not suggesting that after the post-liminal rites, the concept of seniority and communality will be ended completely. Rather, the three phases of the rites will circulate over and over due to the Buddhism belief about the cycle of life. There is a saying that nothing is permanent; the end of something will be the beginning of something else. Rice rituals, by the same token, will be repeated years after years and the process of liminality construct rice

39 identity will keep rotating among the ritual subjects as well. This idea of Buddhism as an aspect of Thai-ness will lead to the last ritual of the rice season, which is not directly related to the animistic belief of nature spirits any longer. Lastly, the ritual after harvesting, Taan Khao Mai is the event that farmers will offer the newly harvested rice to the monks and make a merit for the spirits of nature and deceased ancestor whom then believe is the spirit protecting the rice and the farmers’ families. In Thailand, people always offer the food they have made to the monks beforehand, as they believe that the monks should have the best things, including food and other items, offered by the townsfolk. This is because in Buddhist culture, monks cannot earn money by themselves. They have to live their life in the simplest way, all the belongings they have are all from people who come to the temple to make merit. The monks are the symbols of Buddhism who are qualified and willing to devote their life for Dharma. They are regarded as the purest among other people. Therefore, the foods need to be the best as well. For this ritual, people will prepare the cooked sticky rice and make it into small balls. Then, they will grill the rice. Some families have their tradition of cooking the sticky rice in the bamboo. In the next morning, everyone will gather together at the nearest temple around village. When the monks are ready in the temple, the liaison of the temple will lead the ceremony. At the end of the event, people will pour the water in small bowls and as a sign of dedication of merit to their ancestors and other spirits. Buddhism is another factor that has influences on Thai way of life. Though today many Thai people embrace other religions, the majority of people are Theravada Buddhists. We are always taught that religion is the core of being that unite all people together. Buddhism apparently also acts in that way. It creates the sense of belonging to Buddhists in the society. Buddhist temples are the place in which people will gather together to conduct and attend religious events and ceremonies. Ratchaneekorn Settho, a socio-anthropologist, explains that Buddhism acts as a moral code teaching people to be merciful, sharing, and caring for the others. For this reason, in terms of anthropological viewpoint, the roles of Buddhism are:1) rules, and moral codes that contribute the origin of culture and national heritage such as customs and cultural norms, especially ‘generosity’ which is regarded as the national trait of Thai people; 2) religion acts as the laws and social control that monitor positive and negative behavior of human beings with

40 the dharmic principles11 that help Buddhists to get rid of desires and conflicts in several circumstances; 3) it creates unity among Thais as religion creates the sense of belonging. “People who have the same belief will share something in common”; and 4) Temples are the center of the community since from birth to death (Settho 58-9). In the past, when a baby was born, the monks will name the baby for auspiciousness. It is believed that the baby will be blessed with morality and prosperity. When someone passed away, people in the family have the funeral at the temple as well. Temples are also the places that have collective wisdom of the ancestors as reflected in sculpture, architecture, and mural painting. The sense of communality in Lanna used to be much stronger; however, people in rural area still stay together as a big family. In one family, relatives build their own house and stay together in the same area. Sometimes we can see many houses and household within the same fence. Many times, in a village relatives and cousins have their homes on the same small street within the village. This pattern can still be seen in many part of Northern Thailand, including my hometown Lampang. Kinship in Lanna means that they should to stay and share their livelihood together as a group...as a family. The image of communality of Lanna community can be found in the gatherings and rituals. As temples is the place where communal relationship is established, rituals are the mediums that unite the members of community to do activities and to share mutual experiences. Rice rituals, in the same token, construct the micro-society within the community. There are roles and duties that oblige curtain group of people do some curtain things. Thus, Buddhist way of life is another medium that bring community together. Nonetheless, in this twenty-first century, these aspects of seniority, communality, and religious belief may not be the same. Many young family members who used to live in the same fence have moved into the urbanized area of Lampang. When they lack people who can help they work in the field, they have to use machines to produce rice.

11 The Five Commandments are the basic code of ethics, including not killing, not speaking false speech, not committing sexual misconduct, not stealing, and not taking drugs that cloud the mind. Four Principles Virtuous Existence are the principles of loving-kindness or benevolence, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Four Noble Truths consist of dukkha (unsatisfying state of being), the cause of dukkha, the end of dukkha, and the way to cease dukkha.

41 Little by little, rice is also becoming the liminal body in Thai rice culture, because rice today is merely a commodity within the capitalist mechanism. Thailand, the rice bowl of Southeast Asian countries, has been in the first rank of the country that the top rice exporter for decades, followed by India and . During these days, Thailand seemed to struggle with the highly competitive rice export with India and Vietnam due to the policy of Thai government that decreased the rice price and created tension among Thai farmers. In 2012 India has successfully climbed to the top rank of rice exporter and beaten Thailand into the second rank where Vietnam was following closely (Maierbrugger). This is how Thailand is portrayed in newspaper and media today, the country that once produced the most rice with best quality to the world market. Since the chao ruling system was created in Lanna, the concept of seniority has been practiced among Thai people for a long time. In the past, age played important role in hierarchical relation in Northern Thai society, because it is believed that age is a signifier of life experiences. Therefore, chao system allowed older people to have an authority to lead, teach, and take control of the younger people in order to create harmony in their community. Rice rituals, especially Liang Pii, establish seniority between the powerful gods, goddesses, and other nature spirits who have power to grant the farmers prosperity, or to punish the person who are disrespectful toward the supernatural beings. Moreover, parental relationship between nature and human beings are also reflected through ritual rituals that are conducted to pay respect, apologize, or even bribe the goddesses and the spirits. As I argue once the farmers participate the rituals, they obtain other identity, the “children of Mae Phosop,” whose duty is not only to grow the rice, but also to show their gratitude toward their Mother(s)…toward the senior(s) in the rice field. In addition, all rituals require labor to conduct the “work for god;” when people in that particular community gather together, they establish a small society that construct the sense of belonging…a bonding among people who share the same interest, culture, and identity (as communal members before the liminal phase). Lastly, Buddhism is another aspect that both integrate seniority and communality altogether. It is because in the past temples are center of community, the gathering space for ritual members. Further, Buddhist monks are regarded very highly, because they are the followers of Buddha who can teach, preach, and guide people to dharma. Therefore, in Taan Khao Mai only freshly

42 harvested rice will be offered to the monks. However, these rituals and practices become vulnerable and start to disappear from rice community in Northern Thailand. The concept of seniority becomes an old-fashioned way of thinking, because today people with higher education become the real strength of the community. When national educational system is more important that local wisdom, young generation start to move to bigger city for their future career. Then, rice rituals cannot be performed since there is no participant in the field. For this reason, I will move to the next part that critiques how farmers in Lampang are struggling to survive when the waves of globalization take their children away from traditions and rice culture.

43 Chapter 3 Globalizing the World…Globalizing the Culture: Thai Identity and Rice Traditions of Farmers in Northern Thailand

Living in the age of modern technology and rapid change of cultural structure, I am bewildered with how fast the communication system in Thai society has developed. Everyone can keep in touch with one another as technology is at the fingertip of the communicators. And indeed, every community has to adapt themselves to be able to catch up with the world without border. Globalization has reached its destination in every region of the world already. Before globalization arrived in Thailand, people in the country had been introduced to modernity. As I mention in the previous chapter about the trading system with Chinese and other countries during Sukhothai era, Thailand has officially paced forward to modernity in the time of King Rama V where the king established political relationship with Britain. Niels Mulder, an independent anthropologist, claims that Thailand has been opened up to modernity since 1855. Therefore, it cannot be completely said that the economic and cultural changes occurred in the country today is an unexpected paradigm shift, because it has been lingering around for centuries. Moving forward toward the twenty-first century, Thailand is one of the countries heavily under the influence of globalization. Globalization is a phenomenal expansion that is emerged from the innovation of technology and media, especially broadcasting, computer, and telecom system (Chairaksa 49, referred from Weera Somboon 2009). This process projects the growth of socio-economical relations between countries as well as political and cultural conditions that are interrelated with the individual, community, business and government units across continents. In this chapter, I will discuss the impact of globalization on rice culture that used to construct the concepts of Thai-ness. Today, the notion of seniority, communality and religious beliefs and practices are challenged by the new paradigms of Thai society, which are urbanization, industrialization and capital education system that have deconstructed rice culture of the farmers in Northern Thailand. This part of my study will focus on the post-liminal status of rice identity that has been going through currents of globalization and modernization. With a case study of

44 Paga K’ (an ethnic group of Karen people), I will examine how they can still manage to preserve their traditional way of life despite of the social and economic changes in Thailand. Then, the interview my friends whose parents are the rice farmers will provide another perspective younger generation who have different opinion toward the notion of education, career, and homeland. To begin with, Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan, a neuroscientist and geostrategist, and Ambassador Gérard Stoudmann explain the notion of globalization: It is a concept that has been defined variously over the years, with some connotations referring to progress, development and stability, integration and cooperation, and others referring to regression, colonialism, and destabilization. Despite these challenges, this term brings with it a multitude of hidden agendas. An individual’s political ideology, geographic location, social status, cultural background, and the ethnic and religious affiliation provide the background that determines how globalization is interpreted [emphasis added] (Al-Rodhan and Stoudmann 3). To compete with other countries in terms of economics, free trade becomes one of the most important mechanisms of globalization. For boosting the global political and economical system, many Thai people, including myself, seem to forget about how this rapid change has affected society, especially in the small units such as the individual, community, the uniqueness of each culture, and the people’s identity that begins to assimilate to other fashions as driven by a global economic model. Indeed, when the paradigm of society has shifted all of the sudden, there are always advantages and drawbacks. Globalization is a two-sided coin that is flipping between loss and profit all the time according the flow of the world market. Due to the impact of modernity and globalization in Thailand, I propose that Thai society has rapidly changed from an agrarian community to industrialized country. Rice rituals that used to enrich the rice fields and Thai farmers’ spirit have been in crisis of disappearing from Thai rice culture. Thai identity consisting of the three concepts of seniority, communality, and animistic Buddhism has encountered this shift as well. Therefore, there are a few questions that need to be answered in this section. What happened to Thailand from 1991 to 2014 when

45 changes due to globalization began to manifest a “the world without border?” How do these changes currently construct and deconstruct Thai identity in the rice field of Northern Thailand? What will be left for the next generation if the cultural roots become a vulnerable body that is about to vanish from community? When the globalization reached Thailand, the concepts of individualism, urbanism, capitalism, and industrialization have great impact on Thai cultural structure that form people’s behavior and customs in society. First of all, individualism seems to have most influence on Thai people’s way of life. This value does not only shake the whole idea of communality, but also deconstruct the main concept of Thainess Ð Buddhism and other religious beliefs. Even though in modern days seniority and hierarchical system are still regarded as the indicator of an individual’s social rank, still majority of young people in Thailand do not regard seniority highly any longer. As individualism makes people become more independent, people with education, skills, and material wealth are the ones who have power to push themselves to the highest level that they belong. For example, according to my interview with Thai farmers in Lampang, Boon12 asserted that the reason why she had to work in the field everyday was because of her children’s education. With rice, they can study. Last time, before she was able to sell her rice, she had a lot of debt. When she had enough money to pay the debt, there was nothing left anymore. However, she thought her life was a little bit better. At this moment, Thailand has another issue of emigration of highly trained and educated people from the country. Children in this generation are financially supported by their parents, scholarships, and other grants to obtain higher level of education either in bigger city in Thailand or another country. However, the issue greatly affects Thai agrarian community in rural areas, because these children do not have a desire to go back and develop their homeland. I cannot wholeheartedly criticize this situation since I am one of the “brain drains” who is now in another country pursuing her future abroad. This is the reason why I conduct this research that relates to where I came from in order to raise awareness to other people, so that they will not ignore and erase their own roots.

12 In my research, I use pseudonyms for all research subjects that I interviewed. The six of them will be named Boon (female), Chat (male), Som (male), Pat (male), and Kaew (female).

46 The gap between “educated children” and rice farming becomes wider and less connected, because it is believed that the image of rice farmers equals to the idea of poverty. Being hopeful that government will help them out, Thai rice farmers have more debt than ever since rice farming now requires machinery, water, and chemicals to produce more rice. Therefore, all the educated children would rather stay in big cities to earn more money and send it to their parents. With the hope that education is the way to improve their status, the farmers are willing to ‘go with the flow’ or I would rather say it is actually the flow of globalization that has already embedded in the rural area of Lampang. This globalized current is not only the idea of higher education but also advanced technology that helps them connect with the world outside the village. According to the interview, Boon said that they (the rice farmers in Lampang) would be the last generation who still work in the field. With technology and the latest innovation of mobile phones, their children are usually clinging to their phone, playing games, surfing the Internet, and scrolling Facebook page all day long. This generation of young people is able to receive news and information easily. As the world turns, they are also moving in the same pace as the world. When new innovations take control of young people’s way of life, tradition, by the same token, is only a vulnerable body of the culture that soon will fade away. In addition, the value of rice rituals and the nature spirits become less important; seniority between “children in the field” and the “maternal nature spirits” are less interwoven as well since they have other advanced technology to guarantee the quality of their product. At this point not only rice that lost its spirit, Thai- ness in rice culture also lost its essence when liminality cannot be found in the rice field. From my interview, farmers expressed their hope for economic prosperity, and, at the same time, fear of these globalizing currents that will consume all ancient wisdom, customs and their rice rituals. Researcher: In the past, did people think rice is more or less important than people today? Som: People in the old days regarded rice very highly. Much more than people today. Boon: Now, young folks don’t eat rice anymore. They eat bread instead.

47 Chat: There was no ploughing machine. They used animals in the field. Som: Our parents think that rice is the number one food of our lives. Boon: I had to skip the school to help my parents in the rice field (Som et al. 2014). Education in the past seemed not to be more important than “food” they had to eat. Education, in one sense, is the learning system provided by the government for children in the country. However, knowledge can come from local wisdom of local people as well. The concept of being rich and wealthy is not measured by materials, but it is based on the rice they had … the rice that feeds their lives and also the culture and local wisdom that nourish their spirituality. Therefore, people in the old days have to ensure that the rituals would help them grow rice perfectly. Rice rituals were a medium to position people to perform their roles and serve their community. In some rituals, only the oldest would be assigned to lead the ceremonies. This is because age is the signifier of experience and wisdom. Nonetheless, the tables have turned. Young folks become an important strength of the community since they are the ones who can bring civilization that is economic prosperity and global capital to their home. While young people move into the city for their education and job opportunity, old people are left in their village in rural area. The further they live apart, the more rice rituals are endangered of disappearing from the community. Once, the old generation passes away, the rice rituals will be gone with them also. According to Suthira Chairaksa, a cultural-studies scholar, she claims that when western culture starts to assimilate with Thai life, the local and traditional culture is fading away from society, as people are excited about the new things. For instance, in Lampang, farmers used to conduct at least four main rice rituals annually. Today they have only a few left since younger people left their home; lacking of ritual members, older generation only have two rituals Ð the ritual of asking permission from the spirits to cultivate the land and the ritual of paying respect to Mae Phosop. Therefore, globalization, in other words, is the imperialistic revolution that gradually devours Thai-ness. In this 21st century, it is when the new ideas are replacing traditional values. Seniority, consequently, becomes only an ideal and old-fashioned way to indicate role and status of people in community and society.

48 New technology takes roles of the rice rituals that are local wisdom. Today, these rituals have changed. Some have been lost in the time of change and some are left for the next generation. There is no answer for the question whether the role of this advanced technology can fulfill the demand of people in this globalizing world … No matter how society has changed. Rice rituals will no longer be the same like the history that will never repeat again [translated by the author] (Thongdee 166). Globalization does not only make people in the new generation question the meaning and significance of seniority and other hierarchical systems in the community, it also destroys communality in rice community in Lampang. Their work in the field used to be a gathering place for friends and neighbors. Som, another farmer from my interview, said that when it was the time to grow rice, he and his farmer friends of around 20-30 people would help him work, and when it was his friend’s turn, everyone would go to another field and helped their friends in the same way. Their work was merely a labor that requires no payment; rather, it is friendship in the rice field where “your land is our land.” It is this life style of communal society before globalization that plays a role and changes the structure of rice community. Som claimed, “It used to be very fun to work with friends in the field. When we brought our lunch from home, we sat there, and ate together. It was very crowded. Now, I have to eat alone.” From his point of view, activities in the rice field, including rice rituals and rice farming, create communality among farmers community in Lampang since in the field it is the place the three phases of the rites of passage begin. Firstly, in preparation for the ritual, it is the time in which people will gather in one space and work as a group. They do not only prepare foods and items for the rituals but also prepare themselves to enter the rice realm of Mae Phosop later. This is the beginning of the rite of separation. Also, how they have lunch together in the field is the time when communality is created in the liminal stage of the ritual. Outside of the rice field, they might be kinsmen, friends, or neighbors. Once, they “sit together and have lunch in a crowded space,” they become the members of the field…of the ritual. Their social status starts to assimilate altogether during this threshold period. A cultural anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney wrote in her book Rice as Self that the idea of commensality is a significant cultural constitution, because sitting and eating

49 together create the sense of belonging. Instead of “they”, “we” establish a social group through the food we shared together (9). However, the food and rituals that reinforce the concept of togetherness become less important since there is nobody left in the village. Today, Som has to be alone in the field. When his friends once worked together in the field to grow rice, now he has to struggle to survive by himself. It is the loneliness I see in this 21st century. Further, if we look at the contemporary religious scene, many people start to seek new ways to perceive religion. Mulder asserted that among urban intellectuals, they seek to “bring modern relevance to old practices” (Mulder 107). Because Buddhism is part of their traditional identity, people now prefer to merge modernity with their culture, but not too extremely distinguish from the old beliefs. At some point, it is difficult to say that old culture is completely gone from Thai society as Buddhism is still in control of cultural constitution for Thai people. To be accurate, young generation just walks too far from religious realm due to technology, modernity, and a desire to be equal to other people from other parts of the world. One example that can explain this phenomenon clearly is the story of myself. My grandmother always brought me to the temples in every religious occasion and dressed me with her Burmese-style clothes. We identified ourselves with the culture we have and the clothes we wear. Today, I rarely go to the temple, because my grandmother has already passed away as well as her tradition of bringing her children to Buddhist temples. It is similar to the situation of young people today; they can only identify themselves as Thai due to their nationality and being a Thai Buddhist. People are bringing back the campaign of wearing traditional Thai costumes in high schools. Being obligated by the rules, students today do not truly understand how traditional costumes reunite and identify people in society as a group of “our own kind.” People in the past wore these clothes not because they were obliged to do that, but those clothes were their routine and way of life. Wearing the same thing, thus, creates the sense of belonging among people in that particular culture. This is similar to the notion of rice rituals before globalization affected traditional Thai culture. They are activities that are part of the farmers’ life. Today, though government tries to “reproduce” this cultural performance in special occasion in order to preserve this fading culture, rice rituals lose the essence of

50 performing as Turner says “the work for god.” Rather, they are cultural exhibition that aim to preserve what is about to disappear from the nation. Rice rituals that create communality, in the same token, have been interrupted by this globalized mindset. When I asked the farmers about how they conduct rice rituals in their rice field, they only named only a few rituals that they still have today. The most significant rituals are the offering to the land spirit and the ritual to paying respect to Mae Phosop. Though some of them said that they still follow the tradition exactly as they used to, the essence and meaning of their rituals have disappeared from their community already. One of the farmers told me “we just do what our parents used to do. I don’t know why. We just have to follow how old people taught us to do it. If we ask for blessing from the spirits without offering something to them, we will get sick” (Som et al. 2014 2014). If rice rituals are something they are obligated to conduct, what are rituals for them except a meaningless symbolic act of community? Their identity that has been constructed by this culture, perhaps, has already been forgotten through time. However, the value of rice is still regarded as their identity. In Ohnuki-Tierney work’s, she explains how Japanese identity is interwoven with rice not because it is food they consume daily, but culture and the concept of self, as “every rice grain is a god” (Ohnuki-Tierney 62). Rice, according to Ohnuki-Tierney, is the food of the nation and the representative of the national identity of Japanese people. Therefore, the rituals for rice, in my view, are the rites of constructing “self” and “identity”. In ancient Japan, human reproduction and agricultural production were conterminous; the same term was used for sexual intercourse and growth under the sun. In addition, ritual and polity were synonymous. Harvest rituals both among the folk and at the imperial court have been a major cultural institution, an important agent in constituting and reconstituting the importance of rice. These agrarian rituals enact a cosmic cycle of gift exchange during a new crop of rice is offered in return for the original seeds given by the deities. Because rice embodies a soul, harvest rituals celebrate cosmic rejuvenation through an exchange of their souls, that is, selves, as objectified in rice and, possibly semen (Ohnuki-Tierney 9).

51 Rice is not just food, but the sacred plant from the goddess that provides life Ð food and product that can feed their families. The production of rice is the reproduction of life. Without the rites of passage, identity cannot be construct within the realm of rice culture. All the rice rituals that transform status of the farmers to be the member of the group and they also transport the “transformed” members into the sacred space of rice performativity. However, the image of rice that have been nourishing life in the field has changed since technology provide a shortcut for farmers to produce rice as product…the commodity that is feeding the capitalist system rather than actual life of people in the country. In addition, capitalism Ð along with industrialization and urbanization, is another factor that causes drastic socio-economic changes in Northern Thailand. Rice itself turns into a product, a commodity in mass production. As in the past people depended on seasonal rain for their rice farming, they grow and harvest rice according to the weather which mean the entire the process takes a whole year. However, in these days farmers cannot continue producing rice in this way anymore, because the demand of the market that requires rice to circulate as the economic mechanism. From now, mass production will have advanced technology to control the production. The process will be faster and use fewer resources (Naipinit 6). Even though my home is located next to the rice field, I have never seen any rice rituals in my life since machines are used to replace human labor. When there are no people, there are no rice rituals as well. The farmers I interviewed all agreed that they cannot escape industrialization and capitalism. The more they can produce rice, the more they feel secure economically. Instead of building communality in their community, they are forced to compete with their friends. Boon: We have to go with the flow. We can’t change anything because we are not alone in this world. Chat: We can’t use animals to plough the land anymore. Som: We used to have animals. Now, we have the machines. We have to change according to the mainstream. If other people use the ploughing machines, we can’t not stand alone among the others

52 Pat: When I don’t have enough money, I have to take the loan. If the rice is not good enough to sell, we will eventually end up in debt. We have to compete with each other (Som et al. 2014 2014). Due to the highly competitive market, farmers have to produce as much as possible which means that they also have to compete with their friends who once worked in the same field. The image of communality in their community is replaced by one man with one machine cultivating the land and harvesting the rice. Moreover, instead of having a ritual of inviting Mae Phosop and the rice to dwell in rice barn, now the farmers have nothing left in their land, and they are forced to see their rice become molded in the unknown place. The policy from the previous government “promised” to pay Thai farmers after the government sells the stocked rice to the world market. This rice subsidy scheme failed miserably since the government did not realize the fact that Thailand was not the only country that exports rice. When the rice was stocked for a long time, the quality of rice, indeed, would not be as good as it was before. For this reason, they could not sell any rice in the world market, and they could only leave the rice rotten in the warehouse.13 When rice, and as well as, its rituals become just commodities of industrialized society, we lost our Thai identity that was constructed by those rituals.

Lampang in the Liminal Period One of the reasons why I chose rice rituals as my topic of interest is that both I and the rice rituals in my hometown are all in the liminal phase Ð we are caught in the betwixt and between space where we can either move forward nor pace backward. It is very difficult for me to find a community in Lampang where people still have their traditional way of rice farming, and indeed, it is almost impossible to find a place where they still have the traditional rice ritual practices. From the previous chapter I explained

13 Due to the subsidy policy of Thai government, Thailand lost the first rank of the top rice exporter to India in 2012. According to the Thai Rice Exporters Association, Thai rice that has been stockpiled was at least eight million metric tons in 2013. It is because Thai government uses “a populist political measure”. They were severely criticized on how they managed the rice price in the wrong by paying off the farmers and stockpiling the rice instead of selling the rice to the world market. The author claimed that Thailand now has the rice around seventeen million tons in the stock and the government will sell the rice through “government-to-government contracts”. Therefore, the US Department of Agriculture predicted that this year Thailand would be the top rice exporter again in this season with at least 8 million tons of rice in the world market (Maierbrugger 2013).

53 how the concepts of Thai identity have been processed through the rituals in the past. Seniority, communality and religious beliefs and practices are interwoven with rice culture clearly. As for contemporary farmers in Lampang, instead of having the four main rituals as their ancestors did in the past, today they have only a few left which are the ritual of offering food to the land spirit before growing and after harvesting, the ritual for Mae Phosop and the ritual of offering freshly harvested rice to the Buddhist monks at the end of the rice season. The first ritual in the rice field is liang naa or the food offering to the land spirit. After the interruption of globalization, this group of farmers still strictly continues conducting this ritual. They claimed that it is ‘a must’ for every person. It is the first step even before growing the rice, because they have to ask for permission to “cultivate” the land. Therefore, it can be said that this ritual is the “initial rite” of man and rice in order to fully engage into the production and cultivation. In Rites of Passage, Gennep explains this phenomenon as the Territory Rites (as I mentioned in previous chapter) where there will be certain marks or symbols that indicate the “zone” of the rites. Turner later explained “an extended liminal phase in the initiation rites of tribal societies is frequently marked by the physical separation of the ritual objects from the rest of society” (Turner 26). Gennep claims: The same system of zones is to be found among the semicivilized, although here boundaries are less precise because the claimed territories are few in number and sparsely settled … Because of the pivoting of sacredness, the territories on either side of the neutral zone are sacred in relation to whoever is in the zone, but the zone, in turn, is sacred for the inhabitants of the adjacent territories (Gennep 18). In Kwanfa Sriprapan’s work, he refers animism as a belief that reflects the idea of nature as a center of the universe. Nature is the origin of all kinds of life; she grants human beings life and prosperity. Therefore, human beings need to worship and pay respect to the nature. “Nature, at this point, becomes the god of all lives” (Sriprapan 25). However, it is not accurate to categorize both Lampang and Baan Boonler (which I will discuss later) as “tribal” societies. Rather, these two areas are more like a communal Buddhist-animist society where old beliefs are still lingering in the atmosphere. The ritual

54 marks, in this context, are the symbols of agrarian community in which “outside world” (the city regarded as “modernity”) is separate from the liminal rice world that blurs the boundary of time, space, and identity of both farmers and the spirits in the field. In order to be able to work in the land of Rice Goddess, farmers have to be humble and respectful to the earth that bears Mae Phosop seeds. This process has changed the least. Som said (though many rice rituals have disappeared already) “the spirits are still dwelling in the land.” They will use either two chickens or two pig heads (one raw and one cooked) as the offering items. He also said that in different places the land spirits are distinguished from one another as well. Some prefer raw meat; some like cooked meat. Thus, they have to know what their land spirits’ preferences are. Boon: we should not mess with the spirits. If we bribe them with food, we have to offer them the food in return. Som: This is our custom since our ancestor’s generation. Researcher: So this ritual is different or similar from the old traditions? Som: Everything is still the same. Research: What about the ritual of inviting the rice spirits to dwell in the rice barn. Chat: There is nothing like that any longer. Som: It’s long gone (Som et al. 2014). When main rituals are disappearing from the rice community, there is not sufficient time (shorter time to grow rice twice a year) and space (the lands that do not belong to the farmers) to develop the stage of liminality. According to Victor Turner’s notion of liminality during the process of ritual, it will create a phase of “betwixt and between”. It is a threshold where identity and status of the participants will transform into something else. For this reason, during the liminal time, it is an ambiguous condition that the members are “neither longer here nor there.” They are caught in between the two merging ritualistic phases, because “during the intervening ‘liminal period’, the characteristics of the ritual subject (the ‘passenger’) are ambiguous; he passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state” (Turner 359). In the rice field, those rituals prepare the individuals to become and take the role of the farmer whose duty is not only growing and harvesting rice, but also the “children” of

55 Mae Thoranee (the Motherearth) and Mae Phosop (the Mother Rice). The work in the ritual, therefore, is not merely a work in the field but the work for gods. [T]he ritual subjects in these rites undergo a ‘leveling’ process, in which signs of their preliminal status are destroyed and signs of their liminality Ð absence of clothing and names— other sign include eating or not eating specific foods, disregard of personal appearance, the wearing uniform clothing, sometimes irrespective of sex. In mid-transition the initiands are pushed as far toward uniformity, structural invisibility, and anonymity as possible … By the way of compensation, the initiands acquire a special kind of freedom, a “sacred power” of the meek, weak, and humble (Turner 26). Therefore the liminal space in rice ritual, especially liang naa significantly establishes the relationship between humanity and nature in the form of seniority. This relationship creates hierarchical system that nature is much superior than human, so that farmers are taught to respect the nature, or in other word, the mothers (all the spirits and the Rice Goddess) that nurture life and provide her sacred seeds to feed both animals and men. Working in the field is similar to being in a family in which children have to be obedient and respectful towards older people. However, the relationship between the “rice children” and the “parents” has changed due to globalization. Many lands in Lampang do not really belong to the farmers, because people from the city bought these lands and allow those farmers to rent and grow rice; in some cases the rice itself is the payment for renting the land. Lacking of land ownership, the responsibility towards the land becomes less important since the farmer might not have a sense of belonging to the rice field. In addition, familial relationship between the nature spirits and human beings are also vanishing through times. At this point, do farmers conduct liang naa ritual because of the love and respect for the land, or it is because the ritual is the guarantee for the best product? After a few interviews with them, I can barely find the answer to this question, since I am the “outsider” who has not experienced and faced the problems like they do. Still, I can see the how they reflect their past, which can never be the same when the rice land is already “cultivated” by the machines and the rice spirits are intoxicated with chemical fertilizers.

56 According to Turner, he separated “society” into two types. The first one as structured and hierarchical type; another is an unstructured where rules, laws, and norms cannot be applied in this society. Moreover, liminality created during the ritual process is another component that create communitas or the unstructured community in which every member shares the same status equally. This is because during the liminal phase their role and status are ambiguous. When one cannot define ‘who they are,’ roles and identities of participants (who are from different backgrounds) are blended into a temporary communityÐ in this case it is communitas Ð where everybody are all in the same phase of performative rituals. We are presented, in such rites, with a ‘moment in and out of time,’ and in and out of secular social structure, which reveals, however fleetingly, some recognition (in symbol if not always in language) of a generalized social bond that has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented into a multiplicity of structural ties…It is as though there are here two major "models" for human interrelatedness, juxtaposed and alternating. The first is of society as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of " more " or " less." The second, which emerges recognizably in the liminal period, is of society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders [emphasis added] (Turner 96). In almost every rice ritual, it requires labor. Friends, neighbors, and relatives will gather together to prepare the ceremony. Every part of the process will be taken care of by the person who is in charge of that role. This period of preparation still consists of roles and gender of the participants which means that during this time seniority and hierarchical system still play important part to keep the community in a proper order. Everyone, at this point, has not yet entered the threshold phase of rites. The sense of communality in this process, thus, is constituted under rules and norms of society as the structured society according to Turner’s point of view. However, when it is the actual

57 time of the rice ritual, the members of the community will have to be in the ritual space. The leader will conduct the ritual by reciting the rice songs or poems. Except the leader who has to lead the ceremony, everybody in that space will follow his lead to the threshold of rice ritual. Richard Schechner, a performance anthropologist, explained the idea of taking role as performance. Though he mainly focused on the ritual in theatrical performances, he mentioned that taking role is not being in that role but performing under a “mask.” He wrote: I call performances when performers are changed ‘transformation’ and those where performers are returned to their starting places ‘transportations’ Ð ‘transportation,’ because during the performance the performers are ‘taken somewhere … The performer goes from the ‘ordinary world’ to the ‘performative world,’ from one time/space reference to another, from one personality to one or more others … he is transformed, enabled to do things ‘in performance’ he cannot do ordinarily (Schechner 126). During this time the liminal phase will begin. The participants are no longer their relatives, friends, or neighbor, but they are sharing the same status, the similar identity as the “member” of the ritual. Liminality of ritual transfers and transforms them to another realm which is, in this context, the communitas. They will be all transported to the realm of rice performance which their performative role in the rituals. For this reason, rice rituals create two kinds of society: one that consists of roles, and social status, and another without any social structure where everyone shares the same identity. For this research, one important notion that I will use to summarize the wholeness of Thai-ness is the concept of performativity; the term was coined by a gender theorist Judith Butler to explain how “identity” is constructed through the act or performance of the individual. To do, to dramatize, to reproduce, these seem to be some of the elementary structures of embodiment. This doing of gender is not merely a way in which embodied agents are exterior, surfaced, open to the perception of others. Embodiment clearly manifests a set of strategies or what Sartre would perhaps have called a style of being or Foucault, ‘a stylistics of

58 existence’… Consider gender, for instance, as a corporeal style, an ‘act,’ as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where ‘performative’ itself carries the double-meaning of ‘dramatic’ and ‘non-referential’ (Butler

521-2). For example, being Thai does not only rely on the ethnicity and nationality of that person, but to be Thai means that the person has to act like Thai people do— farmers in Lampang, in the same token, are performing their roles as farmers, leader, friend, and even the “children of nature” in order to form their Thai identity consisting of the concepts of seniority, communality, and religious practices— through “wearing masks” or taking roles of something to be somebody. For example, the farmers are taking role of the ritual members in order to gain their status as a “rice children” during the liminal entity of the rice rituals. Due to the changes from globalization, their identities may have also changed through circumstances. As they said “go with the flow,” their rice identity is going along with the currents as well. In this globalized community, the liminal entity of rice farmers in Lampang is their ambiguous identity that is created in this liminal time. Though they succeed in going through the rites of separation, their liminal rites are not created since they no longer conduct other rituals after Haek Naa ritual. The rituals that used to bridge the pre-liminal rite (Haek Naa) and the post-liminal rite (Tann Khao Mai) have already disappeared from rice community in Lampang. At this point, the only two phases of rice identity are marked by only these two rituals. Then, seniority (the relationship between the Rice Mother and the rice children), communality (how they become ritual members who, altogether, conduct a ritual as a work for god), and religious practices (Tann Khao Mai) have not, yet, fully constructed through the process of ritualization during the rice season. Their identity in the field becomes only a past-time ritualistic creation that has lost in this contemporary globalized Thailand.

Paga K’yaw … People who Live a Simple Life When I began to conduct a research on rice rituals in my hometown, I found that those traditional practices almost disappear from Lampang. Therefore, in order to have a better understanding of rice rituals in modern days, I had to find a community in which rice culture is still essential and interwoven with people’s way of life, so that I would be

59 able to explore how the three concepts of Thai-ness are constituted in the rice field. I chose to go to this village because I once saw some photos of people threshing rice seed from my friend on Facebook. The photos are the image of many people gathering in one place, sitting in circle with the big pile of rice seed in the middle. Those pictures are full of laughter and filled with enjoyable atmosphere. It took me almost 8 hours to travel from my hometown, Lampang to Baan Boonler village in Sopmei District, Mae Hongson province; it was five hours on the bus and another three hours alone on the scooter up to the hill. The location of this village is pretty isolated from other villages. The closer we got, the fewer lights I could see. Therefore, when we arrived at the school, it was completely dark. The only place that seems to be brighter than other houses is the school. On the first day in the village, I woke up in a middle of the night as I heard a weird noise which echoed all over the village. I had to force myself to go back to sleep, because I was too scared to go out from my room and see what had happened outside. Thus, the first thing I did when I woke up is that I immediately asked one of my friends who is a teacher at the school about the noise in the middle of the night. He simply said it was a sound of the villagers pounding the rice in the early morning.

Figure 5: An old lady pounding the rice in Baan Boonler.

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Baan Boonler is a small village of Karen people who call themselves Paga K’yaw which means people who live a simple life. All members of the community have Thai citizenship for a long period of time.14 They religious belief is the combination of animism and Buddhism which was introduced to Baan Boonler around twenty years ago. There is only one Buddhist temple located at the top of the hill, a Thai school15, households and rice fields. Due to the isolated location, this village has not yet exposed to the outside world like other Karen communities in other regions that have already turned into tourist attractions. And there is one thing that hase never changed, according to my interview, all the rice rituals still have been practiced in traditional ways since their ancestor’s time. Poom16 said “Nothing has changed…nothing has gone. We live in the same way our ancestors do. Beliefs and religious practices are the most important culture of this society.” Rice rituals in Baan Boonler are very similar to how farmers in Lampang had conducted rites in former times. However, there is one different belief about the Goddess of Rice. For Paga K’yaw people the rice mother is not Mae Phosop but the rice spirit is the Eagle who always protects the rice fields from other animals that can harm the rice during the harvest time. Therefore, except the food offering rituals to the spirits of nature, they also have the ceremony to pay respect to the Eagle as well. Moreover, there is another interesting thing about the belief of the rice spirit. When I visited their houses, most of the time the male farmers are assigned to be the ritual leader of the families. There is only one case that they allow a woman to conduct the rituals. They said it was only because there is no male figure in her family anymore. I asked the male farmers about the gender of the Eagle. The answers I heard from them is that they did not know whether the Eagle was male or female. And many times the housewives would

14 In Thailand, there are several ethnic groups who dwell among hill stations in Northern Thailand, such as Karen, Lahu, Hmong, and many more. The issue of obtaining Thai citizenship is still unsolvable for some tribes. 15 The school is called Baan Boonler School and founded by Thai government in order to provide an opportunity for Paga K’yaw Children to pursue their education at a higher level. 16 A pseudonym of a male farmer in Baan Boonler.

61 immediately say that the Rice Spirit was definitely a female, because people saw the Eagle flying over the rice field, then it turned into a lady standing among the crops. Researcher: I’ve heard that there’s the eagle who protects the rice field. Is it a female or male? Translator: He’s (the male farmer) not sure. Researcher: Can I ask A Pi (the female farmer) instead? Translator: It’s a female eagle for sure. There’s evidence when we offer food to the spirit, only women can eat the food after the ritual is done. Men can’t eat the food. Researcher: Guys can’t eat the food? Translator: Men will put all foods on the shelf, but women will take care of the rest. Researcher: Can men eat the food? Translator: If there is no woman there, men will be allowed to do that (Poom 2014). This belief about the Eagle reflects the idea of gendered social hierarchy of Baan Boonler that women are regarded as the protector of the rice— the giver who provides protection for their “children” (people who eat the rice, including farmers and other people in community). From what people told me, the ritual leader is not the oldest person in the family, but the person who can actually work in the field, normally it is the “man of the house.” However, women still play important roles in the rituals too. They are the leaders in some occasions to provide space for everyone and to balance the roles for every gender. To explain the religious beliefs that are knitted with the rice culture, Buddhism that came to the village during 1990s has integrated with animistic culture harmoniously. Therefore, there are some slight changes about the rice rituals. Instead of using meat as the offering, some households where the members are vegetarians will use homemade desserts as the food offering to the spirit. This small change is not only because of the changing eating habit of some villagers, but it also relates with the economic status of the villagers. One farmer said:

62 We used to use meat, but since my son took over my responsibility he uses sweet snacks instead. Meat becomes very expensive these days. They used to belief that during the ritual they cannot eat chicken meat. And there’s a time when people use and eat chicken meat also. When Buddhism came into this village, people started to wai (paying respect) Buddha. So they become more flexible for the rituals. They use dessert not chicken. But it depends on each family. Some young people ask their family members whether they can change the food or not. They have to go to the shaman to ask for permission from the spirits. If they are not allowed to change the food, they have to stick with the old tradition (Poom et al. 2014). My friend claimed that there is one big annual event after the harvest period. It is a rice-threshing event in which almost everyone in the village will gather together, drinking and having a wrestling competition among the men during this time. Men will place a large square mat in the middle and put a bottle of homemade wine in the center. Then, the activity starts. Everyone has to thresh the rice and when the level of the rice is as high as the height of the bottle. Then, they will be allowed to drink the wine, have fun with friend and take a break from the work. They will do this for the whole night until the rice is all done. And on the next day, they will invite the rice spirit to dwell in the rice barn like farmers in Lampang do. The essence of this event is related to Turner’s idea of work, play and leisure in his concept of liminality. He explained that due to liminality of the ritual; even though the members are obligated to participate in to the ritual to work, the liminal phase of ritual does turn “work” into “play” as well. It is a time where participants can have fun during the work time. This rice threshing event, thus, is a merely a ritual that creates liminal phase where people can play, work, and create communal bonding regardless of gender, age, and social roles.

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Figure 6 Yamu, Somchai. The farmers in Baan Boonler are threshing rice with their kinsmen.

In Baan Boonler village, I heard about how they share rice with their neighbors when their friends are unable to produce rice for the family. Still, it does not mean that globalization has reached this village at all. Some families do have televisions at home, so that house will be the gathering place for the community. There is one time that a farmer told me about his experience in using chemical fertilizer on his rice field. He recalled how beautifully the rice has grown during the first few years. Nonetheless, when he realized that he had to purchase more fertilizer to make the rice better, the chemicals had already destroyed the fertility of his land already. From then on, rice farmers returned to the old way of rice farming Ð using animal manure to fertilize the rice and land. This is a journey of Paga K’yaw farmers from globalized world to the real home. However, these changes resulted from globalization do not greatly shape the perception of Paga K’yaw people on how they think about their beliefs, culture, and the way of life that teach “people who love a simple life” to respect and live with the nature. Their performative roles (as both farmer, ritual leader, and participants) in the rice field still reflect the concepts of Thai identity: seniority, communality, and religion.

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Figure 7 Yamu, Somchai: Life in the Rice Field of Paga K'yaw people.

Views from the “Young” Ones Another example I encountered that demonstrates the lack of understanding and connection with the rice rituals and culture is one of my close friend from Lampang who is now working in Bangkok. Most of her family members are farmers, including her grandparents and parents. For many years, I have heard her stories about how hard her parents had to endure with debt from the new system of rice market in Thailand. And lately, I asked her to draw one of the essential items used in a rice ritual, a plaited bamboo talaew since she works as a graphic designer as her part time job. I came to realization how severe the young generation has become disconnected with the rituals when she frankly told me that she did not know what it is and even worse, her parents have never seen it before in their lives. However, there are some young people who want to return to their hometown. My friend who was a translator during my time in Baan Boonler is one of an example of returning “home.” He came to the city to pursue his bachelor’s degree from a university in Lampang, my hometown. After he earned his degree, he found the way to go back to his hometown in Baan Boonler where his family is. Indeed, life in the city and the village is completely different. He recalled his reason why he decided to go outside that when he

65 was young, education here in the village was going nowhere until some volunteer teachers came to his hometown and founded the school for Paga K’yaw children. Since then, he said, he has always wanted to come back here and help provide the knowledge his has to the next generation of his people. He also emphasized how beliefs and religious practices are inseparably assimilated with people’s life style. Young people who go to study in the city have to come back home during the rice rituals. Rituals are the essence of rice culture there, he said. Life there in Baan Boonler is still rotating in the same cycle. Their identity as Paga K’yaw is still performed through their traditional conceptualization. I, as an outsider, saw with my own eyes how different life can be. Like I mentioned that the purpose of my study is not to compare the two regions, but to show another way to see another way of life in Northern Thailand where they are still untouched by the wave of globalization. At this point, these circumstances suddenly remind me about the idea of self and identity that have gone through different cultures and spaces. I, too, am a displaced and perhaps diasporic body who left home to pursue education in different continent. As people in my generation all have gone through rapid social changes in terms of economic and culture. I have constructed an identity of the diaspora that adapts and adopts different cultures in one body. Therefore, when I look back at my “rice history,” nostalgic moment emerged from the yearning of the past, or perhaps, it is the longing of home. In my point of view, this moment might have happened to my friend who came to realize that there is nothing left outside but home. My graphic designer friend, for instance, after I encouraged her to pursue her future in Bangkok, she found out that money cannot fulfill her spiritual needs which are her home and family. With the very fast pace of living, my friend told me directly that she wanted to go back home to have her own organic farm since she believes that the farm will also help improve the villagers’ economic condition as well. However, her parents, who are the farmers in her village, insisted that she had to be in Bangkok and earned money to support her life. As I mentioned in the previous section about how Thai farmers have to suffer from the failure of the government’s rice campaign. My friend’s parents, by all mean, agreed to send their children to pursue a higher education in college. In this transitional period where young people become the Human capital flight of the village. Knowledge which comes from the local wisdom is

66 replaced by national education system that encourages students to earn good grades and higher degree. At one point, when young people completely forget about their origin and homeland, traditions and Thai-ness will be certainly disappear from Thai rural communities such as Lampang, my hometown.

An onward journey of Thai rice identity Thailand right now is in a (post?)postmodern period where many people are getting tired of globalization and modernity, so that they begin to question about the originality of self and identity that has been disappearing from society. Among these thoughts, frustration, and questions, I, too, have asked myself several times why I would like to conduct this research. I believe these questions Ð about myself, my culture, and my country start to echo in my head since I stepped out of Thailand. It is the moment of alienation and loss when I myself become the Human capital flight…a disaporic body yearning for home. Therefore, I selected my memories of growing up near the rice field, consuming rice everyday, and paying respect to the seniors every time. I began my journey with the definition of Thai (as a person) and Thai-ness (as an identity) and I propose that there are three concepts of Thai-ness (as I refer to Thai identity) that are seniority, communality, and religious beliefs and practices. In chapter one, this research started with how identity is very important for people today when globalization started to deconstruct traditions and cultural roots, and then constructed new paradigm of individuality and modernity, especially, in Northern Thailand. Firstly, I addressed the problems of the disappearance of rice rituals in my hometown Lampang. Though I grew up next to the rice field, I have never seen any rice rituals in my life. Later on, I found that there is a village called Baan Boonler in Mae Hong Son Province. It is a village of Karen people; the ethnic group who still have a strong bond toward rice rituals as reflected in their life style. Thus, I started to conduct interview session with them in order to learn about their rice culture and way of life that relies on animistic beliefs. Guided by ethnographic method, this approach improved my understanding of how to conduct a research related to culture, life, and human beings with ethical principles. Since the dilemma of emic and etic perspectives are important, yet, dangerous if that particular scholarship creates biased and prejudice or even

67 misconceptualized ideas to other people. In addition, I also engage interdisciplinary scholarships from anthropology, cultural studies, and performance studies to decode the structure of Northern Thai rice rituals in order to study how rituals construct identity of the communal members who have gone through the process of liminality during the time of the “rite of passage.” Along with the notion of “transformed” and “transported” by Richard Schechner, his theory reinforces the idea of how space and time can bring the participant into the realm of sacred ritual in which identity, especially rice identity, is constituted. Therefore, in this section of my research the methodology and theoretical analysis are the lens that explain how rice identity is created in the rituals during the rice season and this leads to the next section where I specifically unfold and historicize the concepts of Thai-ness that are constituted through national history and rice ritual in Northern Thailand especially. Since the time of the old Kingdom of Lanna, the concept of seniority has been created through the ruling system. From father to son…from older brother to the younger one, seniority in the past has governed Lanna society with hierarchical system that has great influences on rice culture in Northern Thailand as well. Due to the religious beliefs and practices, animistic-Buddhism has created the hierarchical relationship between supernatural beings and human beings. During the rice season, Thai farmers had (and have) to conduct rituals to pay respect and to humbly thank the nature spirits, gods, and goddesses who have granted them prosperity in the rice field. Furthermore, this hierarchical relationship is not only a power relation between the mighty nature spirits and tiny human beings, but it is also a familial bonding between the Rice Mother and her children (the farmers), because they regard her as a mother who has been nurturing their lives. For this reason, the farmers’ community members are obliged (but not forcefully) to gather together and show their gratitude towards all lives in the paddy field. At this point, I argue that the ritual preparation is the rite of passage that prepares the farmers to enter the liminal phase of ritual, the realm in which their office, status and identity will transform into another stage; in other words, after the phase of liminality the farmers are not only the “labor” in the field, but the rice children, ritual participants, and communal members of the rice communitas. The last but not least of this chapter is animistic- Buddhism of Lanna people that shapes and combines local culture and religious practice

68 altogether. Starting from the Liang Pi ritual, all the farmers have to make a merit at Buddhist temples and offer freshly harvested rice to the monks. Therefore, I argue, at this point, Buddhism is another aspect that creates communality among village members owing to the activities they do together in their community. All of these three concepts, however, are interrupted by the socio-economic changes resulted by globalization and modernization in this 21st century. For this reason, I move to my last chapter which will explore the crisis of rice rituals that are disappearing from Northern Thailand. In chapter three, I discuss how globalization become the two-sided coin has grants economic development and technological innovation, but in the same time globalization has consumed Thai people’s spirituality and identity that can be found in our country…in our rice field. All the components of Thai-ness, seniority, communality, religion, have been deconstructed and forgotten since new paradigm Ð e.g. modernization, industrialization, and capitalization—has already replaced Thai traditions and cultural roots that were created in the field. Therefore, I recognize the necessity for exploring the voices of Thai farmers in my hometown and farmers from Baan Boonler. As I mentioned in the very beginning that this study is not a comparison between these two regions it is rather a research that the case studies that I aim to use to raise awareness among Thai people that the crisis of ambiguous Thai identity may not manifest itself at this particular time. Nonetheless, for the long-term effect Thai people may encounter the loss of culture, traditions, and identity that have been replaced by globalization and modernization. By all means, I would say that it is not, yet, a hopeless situation since many scholars and artists are trying to preserve rice culture by exhibiting it in the museum and performing rice story through theatrical performance; this will be a discussion in my epilogue. For all the journeys I have been through, I propose that Thai identity has gone beyond the point of liminality where performativity constitutes and combines cultures into one body. Perhaps, Northern Thai rice communities now are the post liminal phase of the globalization that turn liminal to something else (which I do not think it is a liminoid). Just like Gennep’s concept of the rites of passage, he described “consequently, I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world post-liminal rites” (Gennep 21). Rice rituals, in my

69 point of view, become a vulnerable body that is exposing to the strong currents of globalization. It is because each stage of rice rituals is similar to each step I took to be here; I found myself juggling and balancing between the lost and found. I am urged to find and reclaim my identity that has been in an ambiguous stage of being since I left my culture and my home. For me this study is not an end of one culture, but it is an ongoing process for Thai people…for me to find the balance between tradition and innovation…between self and the culture.

70 Epilogue “To Preserve or Not to Preserve, That’s the Question”: Tradition, Innovation, and Authenticity of Rice Culture in Thailand

After being interrupted by the globalized and industrialized currents, the occurrence of “liminality” of rice culture has changed Thai identity, which are seniority, communality and animist-Buddhism, into an ambiguous phase that has not yet been performed through the rituals. However, many institutions and government organizations have been trying to reinforce the idea of cultural preservation and encourage Thai citizens to reclaim their “national” identity by turning abstract concepts into actual activities. One of the most popular methods to preserve the culture is to make it an exhibition so that general people can view and select what they want to learn about Thai culture and identity. There are several examples of Thai culture transformation, such as, Thai Rice Foundation, a rice research center under Royal Patronage; the project aims to provide every aspect of rice culture from rice farming to Thai life style in the rice field. This organization once had a summer camp project that encouraged young people to participate in rice farming process (New York Times). Another two organizations that also attempt to make rice culture an archive are The Museum of Thai Farmers and Khao Kwan Foundation in Suphanburi province. At this moment, Kwao Kwan Foundation is inviting people who are interested in rice farming to participate in the ritual of paying respect to Mae Phosop. From this point, we can still see how people, scholars and the government are putting in effort to revive Thai rice culture. However, in order to preserve traditional events, performances and rituals, which are considered the “repertoires,” become the main question of whether we can or should preserve and archive traditional culture or we can only allow ourselves to adapt and produce rice rituals as reinterpreted performances. By putting them on display, waiting to be studied…to be looked at, rice culture now is likely an exhibition that aims to educate younger generation about the fading traditions. The question about accessibility and authenticity becomes the key point of this discussion. In this part, I would like to explore how theatre and performances in Thailand reflect how people think about rice and how artists and scholar provide alternative ways that can raise the awareness among Thai

71 audience about Thai traditions, life of farmers, and tales of Mae Phosop that almost fade away from modern Thailand. Meanwhile, performances are ephemeral; they will not last long according Diana Taylor, a performance studies scholar who introduced the notion of archive and repertoire. Taylor asserts that the debate about ephemerality and performance are political. She questions, “whose memories, traditions, and claims to history disappear if performance practices lack the staying power to transmit vital knowledge.” In the same token, when the traditions are about to disappear it means that it is the duty of people in the new generation who are bound to preserve the old wisdom which is regarded as the national treasure…the national identity of all Thai people. The issue is that people today, I argue, are looking at the tradition, especially the rice culture, with the etic point of view. They have never had the “real” first hand experience of being in the field, conducting the rituals and also participating them, as the rituals no longer belong to the fields but the museums instead. For this reason, with the concern of having a fixed perception on categorizing the rice performances into either an archive or a repertoire17, I attempt to find alternative choices, another way to perform the rice culture, in order to express Thai identity through movement in the performative rice field. I will explore two performances that, I argue, are attempts of Thai artists on preserving rice culture through “revisioning” the traditions. Firstly, the activity in rice culture that symbolically portrays the characteristics of Thai people, which is communality, is the gathering for growing and harvesting rice. The event is called Long Kaek18. It is the practice where the rice farm owner will gather neighbors and people in the village and ask them to help him grow and harvest the rice during the season. During the time of harvest, the farmers and villagers would create a performance to entertain the group. Ten Kam Ram Khiaw is created as a local dance, especially in Nakhon Sawan

17 Taylor wrote “the rift, I submit, does not lie between the written and spoken word, but between the 'archive' of supposedly enduring materials (i.e., texts, documents, buildings, bones) and the more ephemeral 'repertoire' of embodied practice/knowledge (i.e., spoken language, dance, sports, ritual)” (Taylor 19). 18 Long Kaek (gathering together in the rice field) is the tradition that has been practiced in various parts of Thailand, especially the center part of the country where the majority of the population tends to be the farmers and many areas are the vast rice fields.

72 province located in the center part of Thailand. They will sing and play while they are working and playfully wooing one another. The lyrics of Ten Kam Ram Khiaw that allows men to woo women in the group who are also from the same village genuinely reflect the lifestyle of people in rural areas. The participants imitate the gesture of reaping rice with a sickle in one hand and a small bunch of ripe rice in another one. The men and women sing the “repartee” song to show their creativity and skill of wordplay towards one another. Generally, men start wooing the women in the group, because they all know one another from the village. Then, the women act as they refuse the men at first, and they gradually reveal their true feelings towards men in the group through the verbal-battle songs. This performance is a cultural dance that has been practiced since ancient time. It does not only create the image of agrarian society, but also unite people in the community. Adrienne L. Kaeppler proposes in Human Action Signs in Cultural Context that dance is a “socially constructed movement system, and such system may be considered cultural artifacts” (Farnell 31). The notion of dance is inevitably associated with the cultural aspects that were transformed into gesture, movement, and imagery with the symbolic forms and bodily expression. Ten Kam Ram Khiaw, which is derived from gestures of the farmers, therefore, is one form of social and cultural artifacts that is blended in lifestyle and customs of people in Thai agrarian society. Kaeppler also says “The resulting products ... become chronicles of history and social relationships objectified in verbal and visual forms” (Farnell 39). At this point, the dance reflects the structure of the farmers’ community through the way the performers construct and choreograph patterns of the dance. With the songs and movements of growing rice in the field, this dance portrays an image of rural agrarian society in Thailand. I argue that Long Kaek and Ten Kam Ram Kiew, thus, establish the liminal phase during the performance, because these events are not only the product of the farmers’ labor, but also the production of the “play” where the group members enjoy dancing and performing the ritual. The space of work, later, turns into the stage of performance. The pre-ritual status of the farmers as the workers transforms into the performers of the dance as well. Therefore, the social role of the participants that the farmers are no longer the “labor” in the rice field, but instead they become the performers and the owner of the

73 ritual, whose duty is to create the sacred space and cheerful spirit among the group members during the rice performance. However, the gathering for growing and harvesting rice today has faded away through time. Nevertheless, there are several groups of people who try to revive the long- lost performance. For example, in August 2008, Thai farmers in a province in the center of Thailand, Ang Thong, held the rice ritual with the support from the Ministry of Agriculture to pay respect to the Rice Goddess in order to celebrate the upcoming Queen’s birthday and to encourage rice-farming families in the rural areas (China Post). From this point, instead of participating in the dance with farmers in the field, Ten Kam Ram Kiew turns into an archival cultural artifact that can be seen on the special occasion. The sense of repertoire still reflects through the dance; but the dance embeds the idea of the archive as well as it is meant to be watched rather than allowing the audience (participants) to join in. This particular performance, in my view, echoes the fluidity between performing and showing. In Cultural Democracy, James Graves discusses tradition and innovation in folk culture. He defines tradition as collective memories of the past that also embodies dynamics of the present as reflected through an individual’s worldview. Moreover, he claims that the individual’s identity is inseparable from the notion of tradition, because the self-image is constituted from the accumulated attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, and prejudices that are “the fruits of tradition” (Graves 41). When a person lives in a society or culture, he will absorb, accumulate and eventually construct his identity based on that place he lives in. Therefore, it is questionable if these cultural values and traditions can be shared with the outsiders or not. From this point of view, if Ten Kam Ram Kiew is the collection of memories in the past— a tradition which is long gone from agrarian society, I wonder whether it means that the way this tradition is performed now is an effort of the “insiders” to provide an access for the “outsiders” in order to claim their rice identity and preserve the cultural traditions in the same time. This model of folklife Ð the way it is lived by its participants and observed by outsiders Ð centers on affect, the moving power behind tradition…This is not to imply that artists don’t have many, and often mixed, motivations behind their work Ðsuch as money or function. It is focused instead on the

74 emotional content of their work, which may or may not contribute to its utility but certainly adds value for an insider. Conveyance of affect provides the yardstick by which we may measure the ultimate success or failure of efforts to bring traditional culture into the public sphere (Graves 45). Furthermore, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a scholar of performance and Jewish Studies and a museum professional, claims that today people are arguing that traditional cultures are being staged as exhibitions. Thus, tradition has lost its authenticity and becomes only spectacle. When the quotidian turns into an exhibition, this reflects the concept of the museum where they can display the culture to offer an access for the outsiders to learn and see the “ordinary life” of the locals. She claims: For the quotidian, by virtue of its taken-for-grantedness, present itself as given, natural, just there, unnoticed because assumed. It becomes available for contemplation under special conditions, most commonly through the repetition that produces boredom, or through the comparisons (induced by contrast, incongruity, violation, and impropriety) that call the taken-for- granted into question (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 47-8). According to Graves and Kirshenblatt, I would like to discuss another example of how contemporary artists in Thailand attempt to raise awareness about the fading rice culture; meanwhile expressing their aesthetic and reflecting folk culture in Thai agrarian society. In this part, I will use the performance of Crescent Moon Theatre called Rice Now which was directed by Sineenadh Keitprapai as an attempt to perform rice culture in the form of theatrical performance. Crescent Moon Theatre is the one of the continuously active contemporary theatre companies in Bangkok, Thailand whose interest focuses on communication through theatre performances. The theatre group is founded as a dramatic and performing arts club by a group of students at Thammasat University who were interested in literature. Later, Kamron Gunatilaka and his friends began to cooperate with other students from many universities to explore the world of dramatic arts. During 1969- 1975 the group mainly worked on creating and presenting the works related to people’s livelihood and problems in certain rural areas. However, during the height of political

75 conflict from 1975-1985, Crescent Moon members put the projects on hold and officially reformed the group again in 1985 (Crescent Moon Theatre). From then on, the members continuously and actively create and explore various aspects of theatrical performances. They also have a black box theatre located in Pridi Banomyong institute in the center of Bangkok. Due to the rice subsidy scheme problems, this performance demonstrates the difficulties of Thai farmers who have to handle the instability of Thai economy. They are forced to use chemical fertilizer in order to grow more rice for the market, which means that rice becomes just a commodity. Rice Now is a physical expression and body movement that depicts the life in a Thai rice field. It narrates the story of a rice plantation where farmers are preparing the field for the rice with the movement of sorting the seeds and growing rice. Moreover, it tells the story of the Rice Goddess in the form of a woman who helps the farmers grow rice and blesses the rice field for fertility. During the period of rehearsal, Rice Now borrows the dance patterns from Butoh19. It is a Japanese contemporary dance that emerged in Japan after World War II in order to demonstrate the grotesque image of the world that was destroyed and distorted by war. Usually, Butoh dance will depict the theme of life and death. Rice Now is the performance that attempts to show the actuality of situation about rice in our present day through the distorted and dreadful bodily movements. When the rice field has become contaminated with the pesticides and other chemical substances that are harmful to animals in the field and to the humans who eat rice daily, the Rice Goddess transforms herself into the devilish goddess to punish the farmers who hurt the nature. At the end of the performance, there is an image of suffocated people moving in the fertilizer bags as the dreadful chemicals have intoxicated them. The dreadful bodies of the performers create anxiety among the audience members in order to remind them the reality and cruelty of the world.

19 Nanako Kurihara defines Butoh in her article “Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh” that it is “a cosmological dance with completely departed from existing dances and explore the darkest side of human nature...the word “butŌ” is used in compounds such as butŌ-kai, a European-type ball dance, or shi no butŌ, the medieval European dance of death. That is, “butŌ” was used to refer to Western dance forms.” She also adds that with the ugly and deadly dance, it reveals the “beauty of life” (Kurihara12).

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Figure 8 Chiarakul, Cheeranut. The distorted figure of the performer.

With groteques movements of Butoh, Rice Now does not only demonstrates the beauty of the rice and the sacredness of Mae Phosop whose life is interrupted by industrialization and capitalism in modernized society, but also shows fear and anxiety of farmers who grow rice and people who consume it as well. When Rice Now ends with the image of dying animals that are trapped in the bags of fertilizer, Butoh dance depicting the darker side of human nature reflects the image of Thai farmers whose life is similar to the intoxicated insects. The farmers, in the same token, are caught in vicious capitalist cycle where they have no way to be free from the illusionary industrialization. This performance acts as the means of entertainment that reminds and encourages the audience to realize how rice (food and the Goddess) becomes a commodity of capitalist mechanism. Meanwhile the globalized currents are consuming the farmers’ traditional and harmonious life style, which depends on nature and community, rice culture and rice identity, reflected through the ritualistic performances, are also assimilated with modernized manners that focus on moving towards socio-economical development. This performance from Crescent Moon Theatre captures the spirit of rice in the 21st century in which human bond and beliefs in the rice field are replaced by the machines and money.

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Figure 9 Chiarakul, Cheeranut. Mae Phosop trnasforms into the demon goddess.

Rice Now, therefore, poses an open-ended question to the audience whether Thai people need to remember, realize, and reconceptualize their perception towards rice, as it is the food, belief, and Thai identity. For the concept of seniority in rice culture, Rice Now directly demonstrates the figure of the Rice Goddess whose duty is to protect the rice field and her children (the farmers and animals in the field). Thus, the picture of her nurturing the baby at the very beginning suggests the idea of mother-centered culture of Thai rice community. Her body standing firmly in the center of the stage implies that when seniority system in the rice field collapses, not only Mae Phosop has been affected and transformed, but also all the living creatures in the field that have to suffer the consequences. Moreover, the notion of communality in this performance, Turner claims that during the performance of ritual, the transitional liminal state also generates a micro- society where there is not any socially constructed rule. The whole group of performers will establish communitas. For instance, the gathering for growing and harvesting rice creates communitas for the farmers whose social hierarchal identity is blended with the role of performers through the dance Ten Kam Ram Khiaw in its liminal phase. Similarly, if communitas is a liminal space where participants are sharing the moment together, Rice Now, in the same token, establishes the ritualized space where the performers and audience are led to the rice field of farmers whose performers imitate the gestures of

78 growing rice in the field. There is also one scene where the performers gradually show the small rice bags with the fertilizer formula and give them to the audience one by one. The interaction between performers and audience, therefore, creates liminal space in which audience becomes a part of the show.

Figure 10 Keitprapai, Tawit. Performers pull the fertilizer tags attached on the rice bags.

In addition, the location of the performance helps the performers create the liminal connection to the audience as well. Instead of using a real performance stage, Rice Now was performed on a sidewalk in Bangkok which allows random audiences to gather in one place, watching the performance together. With the realistic theatrical performance of building an imaginary fourth wall separating the audience from the performers, Rice Now, instead, breaks down this boundary by inviting the audience to feel and to share the “sacred moment” where both of them are performing the rice ritual through acting as the performers in Rice Now. At this point, this performance is not only the liminoid, but also the liminal in which the participants’ social role and identity become transitory in this performative ritual. Both audience and artists share the same status; they are all performers of Rice Now.

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Figure 11 Rice Now performance on Ratchadamnoen Road, Bangkok.

From the growing and harvesting rice ritual to Rice Now, it is a long journey that leads the farmers and Thai people to the process of social change. From traditional ritual to ritualized theatrical performance, the liminality entity of rice performances has been shifting among the liminal, tradition and interpretation through time. It is impossible that all those rituals can be performed and preserved in a traditional way all of the time. Graves points out that performing the culture has been problematic in terms of commercialization and destroying authenticity of the cultural practices. These notions about authenticity have invariably drawn prickly distinctions between traditional artists and interpreters who have learned the art form of cultures into which they were not born…Outsider interpreters of ethnic culture are viewed as tainted with forces of commercialization and modernity, which pose a threat to the real folk artists (Graves 50-51). I, as a young Thai generation and also one of the performers in Rice Now, have learned how the farmers work in the paddy field. Even though I have not seen the real performance of Ten Kam Ram Khiaw in the rice field, I still remember how my grandparents told me about the rice stories. All the research that I have been working on is merely, but, an etic perception towards the lost culture of my own hometown. When the structure of Thai-ness is deconstructed by new paradigm of modernity, it is my duty Ð as a performer and a young researcher who is trying to compromise between reading or

80 interpreting the text and seeing the real world—to raise an awareness of keeping the balance between preserving and exhibiting the culture. As there is only a thin line between maintaining the culture and altering it, a blurred boundary of the archive and the repertoire…the ambiguous phase of authenticity and interpretation; I, at this point, do not yet have an answer for the best solution of the vulnerable body of rice culture. Therefore, in my research “to ‘preserve’ or not to ‘preserve,’ that’s the question.” By using rice performances to return to our cultural roots, we resuscitate the ritualistic events to reclaim our national identity. Though Turner says “liminal entities are neither there nor here”, I will conclude that in performances we are all together in one hybrid space.

Figure 12 Chiarakul, Cheeranut. Sineenadh Keitprapai, Artistic Director and Performer of Crescent Moon Theatre, as Mae Phosop

81 Works Cited

Al-Rodhan, Nayef RF, and Gérard Stoudmann. "Definitions of globalization: A comprehensive overview and a proposed definition." Program on the Geopolitical Implications of Globalization and Transnational Security 6 (2006). Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. Bureau of Rice Research and Development. Khao Kap Khon Thai (Rice and Thai people). Bangkok: Sathaban, 1998. Butler, Judith. "Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory." Theatre journal 40.4 (1988): 519-531. Chairaksa, Suthira. “Communal Culture and Globalization (วัฒนธรรมชุมชนกับกระแสโลกาภิวัฒน).” Nakhon Sri Thammarat: Nakhon Sri Thammarat Rajabhat University, 2012. Print. “Chatchai Choonhavan; Former Thai Prime Minister.” Los Angeles Times. 7 May 1998. Web. 20 Feb. 2015. Chomchuen, Warangkana. “Thai Farmers Signal Willingness to Compromise on Rice Prices.” Southeast Asia Real Time. 9 Jul. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. Crescent Moon Theatre. “The History of Crescent Moon Theatre.” Crescent Moon Theatre. 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2014. Davis, Richard. “Tolerance and Intolerance of Ambiguity in Northern Thai Myth and Ritual.” Ethnology 13.1 (1974): 1-24. Print. Delcore, Henry D. “Development and the Life Story of a Thai Farmer Leader.” Ethnology 43, no. 1 (2004): 33-50. Forbes, Andrew, and David Henley. Khon Muang: people and principalities of North Thailand. Teak House, 1997. Fuller, Thomas. “Thai Youth Seek a Fortune Away From the Farm.” New York Times. June 4, 2012. Web. April 8 2015. Graves, James Bau. Cultural Democracy: The arts, community, and the public purpose. University of Illinois Press, 2004. Gunn, Simon. “Identity.” History and Cultural Theory. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006

82 Jong, Willemijn de. “Rice Rituals, Kinship Identities and Ethnicity in Central Flores.” Kinship and food in South East Asia. Ed. Monica Janowski and Fiona Kerloque. Copenhagen: Nias Press, 2007. Kaeppler, Adrienne L. “Dance Ethnology and the Anthropology of Dance.” Dance Research Journal 32, no. 1 (2000): 116-125. ---. “Visible and Invisible in Hawaiian Dance.” Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: the Visible and Invisible in Movement and Dance. Ed. Brenda Farnell. New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1995 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Destination culture: Tourism, museums, and heritage. University of California Press, 1998. Kurihara, Nanako. “Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh.” The Drama Review 44.1 (2000): 10-28. Print. Lib. of Cong. Thailand. U.S. Govt. Web. 10 February 2012. Naipinit, Aree, Patarapong Kroeksakul, and Thongphon Promsaka Na Sakolnakorn. “Adjustment under Globalization. ” SKRU Academic Journal 7.1 (2014): 1-12 Maierbrugger, Arno. “Thailand Wants Rice Top Spot Back.” Investine. 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. Mulder, Niels. Inside Thai Society. Pepin Press, 1996. Ongsakul, Sarasawadee. The History of Lanna. Chiang mai: Silkworm Books, 2005. Payomyong, Manee. The Twelve-Month Rituals in Lanna Thailand (ประเพณีสิบสองเดือนลานนาไทย). Chiang Mai: Sorsap Print. 1994 Penth, Hans. A Brief History of Lān Nā : Civilizations of North Thailand. Chiang Mai : Silkworm Books, 2000 Poom. “Personal Interview.” 5 June 2014 Raksasat, Urupong. “Chiang Rai 0250”. Youtube. 2012 Schechner, Richard. “Performers and Spectators Transported and Transformed”. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985 Seelawatara, Amnarj. “Tragic Life of Sakhlee Farmers.” Sarakadee. 10 Dec 1994: 106- 126. Print. Settho, Ratchaneekorn. Social and Cultural Structure of Thailand. Bangkok: Thai Wattanapanit, 1993. Print.

83 Som, Boon, Chat, Pat, and Kaew. “Personal Interview.” 24 June 2014. Sriprapan, Kwanfa. “The Philosophy of Rice Rituals of Lanna (ความคิดทางปรัชญาในพิธีกรรมขาวของลานนา).” Chiang Mai: Chiang Mai University, 2001. Print. Svetamra, Ariya. “Defining Communality in the Process of Pâa Bpàa Khao under Community Cultural Development in Phayao (การสรางความหมายเกี่ยวกับชุมชนในกระบวนการผาปาขาว ภายใตบริบทของงานพัฒนาแนววัฒนธรรมชุมชน ในจังหวัดพะเยา).” Chiang Mai: Chiang Mai University, 1999. Print. Taylor, Diana. The archive and the repertoire: Performing cultural memory in the Americas. Duke University Press, 2003. “Thailand Revives Worship of Rice Goddess.” n.p. The China Post. 11 Aug. 2008. Web. 8 Nov. 2013 Tongdee, Iam. “Types and Meanings of Rice Rituals.” Watthanatham Khao (Rice Culture). Nakhon Pathom: Reserch Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, 1994. ---. Rice: Culture and the Change (ขาว : วัฒนธรรมและการเปลี่ยนแปลง). Bangkok: Matichon Publishing, 1995. Turner, Victor. “Liminality and Communitas.” The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti- Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969. ---. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982. Wyatt, David K. Thailand: A short history. Yale University Press, 2003.

84 Interview Questions for Baan Boonler Villagers and farmers (Mae Hong Son, Thailand)

1. Would you tell me a bit about the geographical features of this area that have changed through time? 2. How do you feel about the change? How do you feel about the condition of farmers in your village? 3. Do you still attend the rice rituals that are held in this village? If yes, how many rice rituals have you ever participated? 4. Please give two examples of rice rituals that people still hold annually. How are they important to rice farming in this area? 5. What is people’s belief about rice? What is the significance of rice in your view? 6. In your opinion, have the rice rituals and other practices today changed from the past? How? And what do you think are the causes of the change? 7. Do you think rice rituals are related to your root and your identity? How? 8. Without rice rituals, what do you think will happen to the villagers? 9. Overall, how do you see the way of life in this village in the past and in this present day? 10. Anything else you would like to add?

85 Interview Questions for Farmers in the city (Lampang, Thailand)

1. Would you tell me a bit about the geographical features that have changed through time? 2. Are there any rice rituals held in the area? Do you still attend the rice rituals that are held in this city? If yes, could you please give me some examples of the rice rituals? 3. Would you tell me about your perception about rice? Why do you think so? 4. Do you think rice rituals are related to your root and your identity? How? 5. Without rice rituals, what do you think will happen to the farmers and people in this area? 6. How do you see people’s way of life in this area in the past and in this present day? 7. In your opinion, does economic and social change have effects on rice farming? How do you feel about the change? 8. Overall, how do you feel about the condition of farmers in this area? Why do you think so? 9. Anything else you would like to add?

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