Anthropologist Grant Evans has written a review of Handley’s The King Never Smiles. The review appears in the Far Eastern Economic Review (volume 169, issue 7). For those of you who cannot access the review on FEER’s public web site, here it is:
Evans review of The King Never Smiles
Grant Evans doesn’t like the book. I did, as I indicated in an earlier post. Grant’s review makes me want to go back and take another good look (a sure sign of a good review and, perhaps, a good book). I haven’t yet had a chance to do so, and given the pile of student essays I am slowly working my way through I don’t think I will have a chance any time soon. So, a couple of quick comments will have to do – one specific and one more general.
Grant is critical of Handley’s dismissive treatment of royal ritual:
…the book pivots on an old-fashioned polarity between the “rational” West and the “mystical” East with its ritualistic mumbo-jumbo. … That legitimacy is created by deliberate acts seems to puzzle Mr. Handley, who finds it hard not to see ritual as “irrational” and therefore its practice cynical. Dragging out another old cliché, Mr. Handley claims that only the “superstitious” peasants really fell for this. One wonders then what he makes of the hordes of urbanites who flooded the streets of Bangkok for the king’s 60th anniversary in June. That these rituals strike a deep chord across Thai society is clearly beyond Mr. Handley’s imagination, despite his years as a journalist there.
I have no doubt that Evans’ specific objections and quotations are spot on. But I must say that I did not come away from the book with the impression that, overall, Handley is so culturally insensitive about royal ritual. Quite the opposite, he seems to be at pains to document how such ritual has been revived, renovated and mobilised in the pursuit of royal legitimacy. Evans writes that Handley seems puzzled that legitimacy is established through deliberate acts. Puzzled he might have been, but the puzzlement (“it’s a puzzlement!” as Rodgers and Hammerstein put it) appears to have motivated a careful analysis of the way in which royal legitimacy has been constructed over the past half century. In good anthropological tradition Handley contributes to a historically specific contextualisation of how, in Evans’ words, the King came to represent the “the political and cultural unity of the nation.”
But there is a broader point. As Nicholas Farrelly notes in his post of earlier today, the Thai royal family is largely an academic no-go area. There is a limited and restrained body of scholarship on this important aspect of the Thai polity. In this context, Handley’s contribution is significant (a significance underlined by the banning of the book in Thailand). Of course, a good number of his sources are undocumented, but given the restrictions within Thailand on open discussion of royal matters this is hardly surprising. Evans’ acknowledges the value of Handley’s “important remarks on the uses and abuses of the lèse majesté laws.” But it is a much bigger issue than this. Handley has helped to open a discussion in which the royal imagery of “political and cultural unity” is put in its place, making room for a compelling account of political and economic partiality. If there has been some cultural insensitivity in the process, then so be it.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Bangkok Pundit // Sep 11, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Evans seems to downplay the monarchy’s role in politics, Evans is talking about the 50s and 60s and then in the same paragraph says that “[a]t no time was the palace in a position to challenge the successive military regimes itself”. I don’t doubt Evans is correct about the 50s and 60s time period – after the monarchy’s power had waned between 1932-1957. However, by the early 70s, the monarchy had regained a lot of power and had become very popular – largely due to the rituals reintroduced during Sarit’s rule and development projects which also (from memory) started during Sarit’s rule.
Evans briefly talks about the military’s role in 1973 and and then 1976, he largely ignores the rest of the 70s, 80s, and 90s (disclaimer: I haven’t read Handley’s book so it might be because of this). I wonder because of Evans lack of mention of events after 1976, does Evans now think that the monarchy was now in a position to challenge the successive military regimes?
Evans also states “[t]ypically Mr. Handley overestimates the political power of the monarchy. But as in all constitutional monarchies, the Thai King is strictly constrained”. According to the Constitution, yes, the King’s power is strictly constrained, but I think Evans seriously underestimates the political power of the monarchy if he is to think the Constitution reflects the King’s actual role in Thai society and influence in politics. Handley is not the first person to examine the role of the monarchy in Thai politics. McCargo’s recent article in the Pacific Review, “Network monarchy and legitimacy crises in Thailand”, also looks at the monarchy’s behind the scenes role – largely through Gen. Prem – in politics.
Btw, a few years ago, Evans also reviewed Bowie’s “Rituals of National Loyalty.”
2 New Mandala » The deva-raja // Sep 26, 2006 at 2:31 pm
[...] An interesting seminar this morning at ANU by historian Peter Jackson on the deva-raja (god-king) in Thailand. Too late for NewMandala readers to go to the seminar but the circulated abstract makes interesting reading in the light of some of our earlier discussion: God-King as Commodity: Thailand’s King Bhumiphol as a “Virtual Deity”. In this work-in-progress seminar I will discuss the re-emergence of the discourse of “deva-raja” (god-king) around the present King of Thailand, Bhumiphol. Historically the legitimacy of monarchical rule in Thailand drew both on Buddhist notions of “dhamma-raja” (righteous monarch) and Brahmanical notions of “deva-raja” (god-king). There was never a clearly formulated resolution of the tension between these different conceptions of kingship, with the alternative Buddhist and Brahmanical symbolisms of royal rule rising and falling in prominence in different periods. In the modern period, ideas of Buddhist kingship have generally been more popular and linked with notions of modernity, scientific rationality, and progressive democratic rule. In contrast, Brahmanical symbolisms have at times been critiqued for their historical association with “irrational” beliefs and “dictatorial” government. However, in the past couple of decades the notion of Thailand’s king as a “deva-raja” or “god-king” has begun to reappear in nationalist discourse, even if in the somewhat ironic idiom of a “virtual god-king” (sammuti deva-raja). [...]
3 Mariner // Jan 25, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Not content with exposing workers to lethal amounts of chrysotile asbestos dust, and local residents to an extended period low level exposure during the construction of various housing estates in the Nawong Rd. area, the ex-minister of commerce has now started on a new housing estate project in the same area.
Needless to say the asbestos products incorporated into the house designs serve a purely decorative function. Workers will not be supplied with adequate protection and local residents who have been exposed (and will now be re-exposed) will, presumably, not be alerted to the dangers -they weren’t in the past.
To put things in perspective: cutting ’shera’ with a hand held grinding disc releases up to 250 times the maximum amount of fibers permitted under USA law and 5 times the amount permitted under Thai law.
So what is to be done? No point in sending e-mails to the ex minister of commerce. He doesn’t seem to reply. Go to the local ampur? No luck their either.
I’m open to suggestions but also wary as to how this gentleman is going to act, now that he has been all but exposed.
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