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Possession, Professional Spirit Mediums, and the Religious Fields of Late-Twentieth Century Thailand

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Possession, Professional Spirit Mediums, and the Religious Fields of Late-Twentieth Century Thailand POSSESSION, PROFESSIONAL SPIRIT MEDIUMS, AND THE RELIGIOUS FIELDS OF LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY THAILAND A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Erick White August 2014 © 2014 Erick White POSSESSION, PROFESSIONAL SPIRIT MEDIUMS, AND THE RELIGIOUS FIELDS OF LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY THAILAND Erick White, Ph. D. Cornell University 2014 This dissertation substantively documents and analytically examines the subculture of Bangkok professional spirit mediums, a relatively novel religious actor on the Thai religious landscape. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Thailand, I argue that Bangkok professional spirit mediums are constituted as individuals, as a social collectivity and as a cultural category through the diverse, ambiguous and contradictory consequences arising out of their pragmatic transactions, symbolic relations and social positioning within a multitude of religious fields. Through the social and ideological labor of cultivating relations, managing boundaries and asserting distinctions of value vis-à-vis a variety of other religious and non-religious actors within a variety of Thai religious fields of action, Bangkok professional spirit mediums make distinctive claims to charismatic authority, authenticity and legitimacy which are only partially and selectively recognized or validated by Thais unfamiliar with their subculture. This dissertation employs an approach to the dynamics of religious fields inspired by Bourdieu’s practice theory in order to rethink a number of foundational analytic concepts, models and vocabularies typically utilized in the study of spirit possession in Thailand. I argue that rather than focus on “spirit cults,” “Buddhism,” “syncretism,” and “clients and the social dynamics of therapy,” greater interpretive clarity is achieved through an analysis that examines professional spirit mediumship in relation to “modalities of possession,” “regimes of Buddhist value,” “popular religiosity,” and “vocational careers and the social dynamics of entourage building.” In addition, this dissertation argues for a deeper and richer historical and sociological contextualization of professional spirit mediums, their ideological claims and their organization of social relations than has previously been achieved in the existing scholarship. By rethinking their historical emergence and social distinctiveness against a backdrop of Buddhist modernism and establishmentarianism, capitalist industrialization, democratization and urbanization, it is revealed that many cultural, social and religious innovations displayed by professional spirit mediums are shared by other actors on the post-World War II Thai religious scene. These include strategies of religious upgrading (“Buddhaization”), organizing a religious calling as a professionalized vocation, the use of devotionalism and esotericism, and embedding religious activities and hierarchies within a partially autonomous networked subculture. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Erick White was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1965. He graduated from Amherst College, summa cum laude, in 1988 with a major in Religion. After travels in Asia and work in Washington, D.C., he began graduate work in Anthropology at Cornell University in 1990. His dissertation research took him to Thailand between 1994 and 1996. In 2002 he took an extended absence from Cornell University during which he taught for many years on the Antioch Buddhist Studies in India program. In 2012 he returned to Cornell to finish his dissertation. Erick will be a visiting assistant professor in the Asian Studies department at Cornell University during the Fall of 2014. v Dedicated to the memories of Ronald L. White and A. Thomas Kirsch vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of the dissertation has taken many more years than originally anticipated. As a result, it would not have been possible without the generous support and guidance of many generations of advisors, scholars, colleagues and friends. I apologize in advance to those whom I have omitted inadvertently. I am especially indebted to my committee and all the support, encouragement, and guidance they have provided to me over the years. They never doubted or forgot me, even when I drifted away from the Anthropology Department. P. Steven Sangren, the special chair of my committee, has treated the intellectual life of academia, and my place in it, with rigor, vigor, honesty and seriousness ever since I first arrived at Cornell. I value his vision of the scholarly vocation and the respect he has shown me. Andrew Willford has always treated me as an intellectual peer, simultaneously challenged and praised my endevours, and gently provided necessary reassurances when I was in need of them. David Holmberg’s passion for ethnography and his commitment to teaching are infectious, and I hope I can embody both more fully in the future. Anne Blackburn joined my committee late in the game, but she provided timely, insightful, and careful feedback on drafts and chapters just as I was reinventing my dissertation in the closing stretch of the writing. My dissertation would not have been completed without her interventions, and so I am immensely grateful for her humane and generous spirit. A. Thomas Kirsch was the first chair of my committee and with grace and insight introduced me to the scholarship on Buddhism and Thailand. His questions and our discussions have lingered across the years, and they continue to echo inside this dissertation. I regret that he was not able to see the final shape of my responses to his inquiries. David Wyatt was another early member of my vii committee who fruitfully challenged me to think critically about how as an anthropologist I could and should use historical documentation and historiography. The research for this dissertation, carried out in Thailand between April 1994 and October 1996 and June 1998 and August 1998, was generously financed by the Fulbright Program, one year of a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, and a Cornell Anthropology Department Endowment Grant (for 1998). I also wish to thank the Cornell Southeast Asia Program for a Summer Thesis Write-up Grant. Numberous institutions and individuals in Thailand provided support and assistance that helped to make my research productive and bring this dissertation to eventual fruition. The Fulbright Foundation (and the Thai-US Educational Foundations) provided logistical, bureaucratic and financial support. The Thai Khadi Research Institute of Thammasat University provided an institutional home and office space. Ajan Paritta Chalermpow Koanantakool was an exemplary in-country advisor: generous with her time, astute in her observations, humane in her advice. To the many MA students of Thammasat University’s Anthropology Program who took an interest in my project, I can only offer my belated thanks for all of the long, rambling discussions about anthropology, religion, theory, and Thailand we held in the various university canteens and cafes of nearby Banglamphu. Of course I wish to express my deepest thanks to the many spirit mediums, disciples, and clients I met in Bangkok and who welcomed me into their homes, activities and ceremonial extravaganzas. They endured my ignorance, questions and clueless requests with typical good cheer and kindness, and were willing to share their hopes, fears, uncertainties and regrets with a sojourner merely passing through their lives. For that I will always be grateful. viii Various generations of staff in the Anthropology Department and the Southeast Asia Program provided the necessary administrative assistance and bureaucratic support which enabled me to successfully navigate and survive at Cornell University. Bonnie Blanding-May, Barbara Donnell, Margaret Rolfe and Donna Duncan were life-savers in Anthropology. Helen Swank, Teresa Palmer, Nancy Loncto, Thamora Fishel and Megan Pulver were equally instrumental in the Southeast Asia Program. Kurt Jordan as Director of Graduate Studies deserves special praise for reaching out to me and helping to make my reentry into the Anthropology Department so easy and stress free despite my long administrative absence. Over the many, many years of my participation in the intellectual life of Cornell’s Anthropology Department and Southeast Asia Progam, I have benefited from the curiosity and conversations, the friendship and moral support of many different generations of peers and colleagues. Karen Richter, Ann Russ and Jan Zeserson were kind and generous friends from my incoming Anthropology cohort who remained friends across the years. Hjorleifur Jonson and Edwin Zehner were early and perceptive guides to the scholarly literature about Thailand. Various peers provided advice, comraderie and good times during the years of coursework and the initial post-fieldwork years of writing up: Michelle Bigenho, Meenakshi Chakraverti, Thamora Fishel, Sam Flaxman, Sara Friedman, John Gibson, Sondra Hausner, Dixie Henry, Smita Lahiri, Leda Martins, Michael Montesano, Lisa McGraw, John Norvell, Cabeiri Robinson, Stefan Senders, John Stevens, Nora Taylory, Allison Truitt, Benito Vergara, and Abraham Zablocki. Some of the earliest feedback, criticisms and encouragment on my arguments about my fieldwork came via the Anthropology Department Writer’s Group: Larry Barnett, Neriko Doerr, Thamora Fishel, Sara Friedman, Susan Hagen, Julie Hemmet, Smita Lahiri, Robet Philen and ix Stefan Senders. Leda, Cabeiri and John N. deserve
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