New Mandala readers keen to follow discussion of the proposed 2008 Thai Studies conference “anti-boycott” will find value in Chutimas Suksai’s “Subversive Acts“, which was published two weeks ago. Written from the perspective of a Thammasat graduate, she draws together many important threads.
More comment on the Thai Studies “anti-boycott”
April 16th, 2007 by Nicholas Farrelly · 1 Comment
Tags: Conferences · Sufficiency Economy · Thailand
1 response so far ↓
1 Jeh luay // May 2, 2007 at 6:13 pm
More critically question, what is the difference between ‘Sufficiency Conference’ held by Chulalongkorn and the controversial ‘Thai Stidies Conference’ of Thammasart?
Is the conference boycott relevant to institutionalism? I means the former is royalist and the latter was founded by the commoner. I was an alumni from both institutions and see it is nonsense to ban the Thai Studies conference in Bangkok.
This also relates to Andrew comments on sufficiency economy and the negative responses regarding ‘how can the farang criticize Thai King?’ or something along this line. (though Andrew’s correlated statistic seems unsound and needs more indexs to support.)
Recently, I got forward mail from one of my Thai friend about time magazine vote for the most ‘influential person’ in the world. The king was nominated as a candidature. I posted this link to many friends and also got negative feed back on ‘lese majesty’.
I understand that it is not a good time to touch symbolic meaning of Thai people but I do want to see more ‘open minded’ Thai academic communities.
I am one of Thai academic who want to see academic freedom in my country. In fact, Thai Studies’s themes are broadly concerns under the main theme ‘transnationalism’.
My point is if the Thai and non-Thai can’t speak or discuss this issue in Thailand because of that law. Should it be otherwise discussed elsewhere? I’m sure it is under discussion everywhere accept Thailand!! Why?
Should we reconsider the issue of liberal thought, idea and constructive criticism in Thailand? Or should we reconsider lese majesty law?
I think we have many critical Thai academic like Ajarn Thongchai who feel free to be critical from outside his/her homeland.
I read HM’s speech posted in new mandala somewhere. Even his majesty himself understood the distinction between argument and consultation. Why most Thai interpret everything into ‘insult’?
I do support this conference and did submmit my propersal to Thammasart for the sake of intellect that detachs itself from politics.
Jeh luay
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