Singapore: NUS Press; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press [distributor], 2017. xiii, 319 pp. (Table, maps, B&W photos.) US$32.00, paper. ISBN 978-981-4722-27-8.
This review opens with a clarification. Even though Ross King is identified on the book’s cover and front page as its sole author, its twelve substantial chapters besides the introduction and conclusion were co-written by King with as many Thai scholars and based on their doctoral dissertations. Hence, as King himself explains, more than that of an author, his actual role “has been as a heavy-handed editor—indeed, in some cases heavy to the point of effectively re-writing—in the process tweaking the material to bring it closer to addressing the guiding question: how might heritage arise and change in the intersections of memory and power?” (4). King’s frank account of the book’s genesis together with the recognition of the collaborative nature of the research presented therein in the Acknowledgments and the inclusion of a List of Contributors, raise major perplexities with regard to the attribution of authorship to him alone (clumsily qualified also on page 29).
King’s individually penned introductory and concluding chapters (superfluously termed Parts 1 and 4) discuss in dry social sciences jargon the conceptual linkage of heritage to memory and tourism, respectively. Setting out the book’s analytical framework, the introduction treads familiar ground by approaching heritage as “social construction.” While invoking as inspiration Pierre Nora’s seminal essay introducing the multi-volume work, Les lieux de mémoire (1984–1992; partially translated as Realms of Memory, Columbia University Press, 1996–1998) is hardly novel, there is little discussion of the literature of what some now call “critical heritage studies” (including recent publications on Thailand) and the definition of heritage and memory through the cursory analysis of Thai sites is muddled. In the offhand conclusion, a panoply of more or less current concepts (Urry’s tourist gaze, Deleuze’s assemblage, Bourdieu’s social distinction, Gilpin’s picturesque, Burke’s sublime) is superficially paraded to critique uneven development as the alleged basis of both the tourism and heritage in Thailand, even as economic and sociological analyses of it are ignored. The problem in King’s framing essays, echoed in his theoretical “tweaking” of the coauthored chapters, lies not in his attempt at theorizing (Thai) heritage, but in the manner of his theorizing, whereby the ideas of (invariably Western) cultural theorists are grafted loosely, often by way of the citation of citations, onto the discussion with little appreciation for either the complexity of such theories or for their congruence with the historical and ethnographic material presented in the case studies. Revealing in this sense is the marginal attention paid to Buddhist notions of time and space (and Buddhism generally), which are arguably crucial to understanding how memory, place, and power (as per the book’s subtitle) operate in Thailand.
Equally apportioned into Parts 2 and 3, titled after Nora’s contrasting notions of lieux and milieux de mémoire (i.e., mnemonic sites and mnemonic environments), the book’s twelve “‘data’ chapters” (29) condense material from the coauthors’ dissertations in lengths varying from thirteen to twenty pages. As a result, the discussion feels truncated at best, puzzling at worst. While examination of the place in local memory of the historic kingdoms of Chiang Saen (in chapter 2, with Weeraphan Shinawatra) and Lamphun (in chapter 5, with Ratchaneekorn Sae-Wang) as countering the national narrative, though suggestive, is only sketched, in chapter 3 (with Sompong Amnuay-ngerntra), the three royal palaces as expressions of the respective patrons’ conceptions of kingship, is better elaborated. The conceptual essay of chapter 4 (with Supatra Boonpanyarote) touches on little known monuments, but unfortunately verges on incoherence. The examination of the (past) Japanese military and commercial presence in Thailand in chapter 6 (with Sakesit Paksee) is hardly concerned with mnemonic sites as such, but rather with historiography and generic public spaces. Focusing on a small provincial town in Central Thailand, chapter 7 (with Rathirat Khewmesuin) is the most accomplished of Part 2, presenting a clear case study—bar the additional theorizations—of the relationship of the built landscape to local memory and identity.
In Part 3, the focus shifts away from historic and commemorative sites to ordinary cityscapes and cultural practices. Variously informed by the research methodologies of ethnography, sociology, and urban studies, its six chapters are rich in data but somewhat hard to fit in the book’s agenda. Valuable is the analysis of Bangkok’s waterways as means of transportation, tourist sights, and mnemonic environments in chapter 8 (with Cuttaleeya Jiraprasesertkun), and of its slums as reflecting the ephemeral and metamorphic nature of Thai urban space in chapter 9 (with Pumin Varavan). The material in these chapters is elaborated conceptually in chapter 10 (with Boonanan Natakun), which posits informality as the defining trait of Thailand’s cultural identity. Though many see informality as the main trait of its economy as well, the parallel is surprisingly ignored. In chapter 11 (with Pensiri Chartniyom), heritage is identified with the practice of craft-based communities, but the discussion draws unproductively on Walter Benjamin (cited repeatedly in the book) to argue a contrast between artisans and artists that has no historic foundations in Thailand. The final two essays further shift the notion of heritage from cultural practice to ethnicity. Chapter 12 (with Jinnapas Pathumporn), the weakest of Part 3, reprises the theme of hybridity by presenting the enclaves of Lao-speaking Phutai across Northeast Thailand as the bearers of a distinctive cultural identity that is said (expectedly) to be fluid. Finally, chapter 13 (with Sairoong Dinkoksung) argues through an ethnographic analysis of the tourism sector in a destitute northeastern village that rather than bringing benefits, tourism reinforces the village community’s dependency on regional and national centers. The analysis here is detailed but bears little relation to the book’s main theme.
The volume also suffers from poor copy-editing (there are several inelegant and awkward sentences, e.g. page 88: “Rama IV … placed another pillar that would be magical in its ritual”); typos (Parts 2 and 3 are erroneously referred to as 1 and 2 on page 34; O.W. Wolters is misspelt as Walters on page 128); incorrect indexing of the authors of parenthetic references as names cited in the text; unnecessary duplication of images (the Democracy Monument is pictured on both pages 15 and 257). The overall impression is that of a poorly executed project, whose laudable intent of making the dissertations of Thai researchers available to the international scholarly community is undermined by their abridgment and “tweaking” to better fit trendy conceptual schemata that often appear artificially superimposed on the empirical data.
Maurizio Peleggi
National University of Singapore, Singapore