You also make audacious claims that not even a muck-raking journalist would make. For example, you credit the king with single-handedly “raising of Thailand from being one of the world’s poorest countries when Bumiphol came to the throne, to it now being one of South-East Asia’s richest.” Ignore everyone else. That’s just plain dopey, and not even the kindest researcher would claim such a royal miracle.

And then you get to a single fact that you think Handley gets wrong. In your view, the Sex Pistols “burst on the scene” with Anarchy in the UK, not God Save the Queen. Hang the point Handley is making. But are you right? Both songs were on their only studio album. Anarchy got to no. 38 in the UK whereas God Save the Queen made it to No. 2 (the highest the Pistols ever got) and was the song that caused so much controversy, made their reputation and charts another couple of times on re-releases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols#.E2.80.9CGod_Save_the_Queen.E2.80.9D) and this is what Handley is saying. So based on the facts, I’ll stick with Handley’s version of the Sex Pistols break out (and the point he is making by using this illustration.

Sorry to be so general-I know their is not much to be said to defend against my vague comments about culture.

And yes- It was me that posted the previous comments under the Pseudonym “carelus”.

klauskent

You Said,”

“The notion that Westerners should protect those of other less-developed cultures from basic information about the forces at work in their lives because it may demystify is patronising in the extreme.”

I say,

It has been my experience that contacts between the indigenous and “outsiders” usually result in the indigenous being mystified, and while this is not always the intention of the outsiders it is somehow a resultant condition.

Once mystified, and presumably open to suggestion, if the indigenous are then somehow brought to believe that their own paradigm is false and a new paradigm is introduced, I would consider this as a classic (yet perhaps formulaic) version of Colonialism, regardless if the intentions of the Colonizers sought to help the indigenous.

I tried a similar project in rural Cambodia by simply trying to increase crop yield in one very small village. Upon return to the University my colleagues were astounded at the stupidity of what I was attempting. I believe the comment was,

“YOU DONT KNOW WERE THAT WILL LEAD!!

One Professor was actually writing a paper on the leveling mechanisms inherent in cultures and suggested that, if I was to be ethical and actually succeed in doing good, years of research needed to be done before the inception of my project.

PS-I never meant to suggest, as you said that, “that Westerners should protect those of other less-developed cultures from basic information about the forces at work in their lives”

Actually I think your comment serves to perhaps prove my point that that intervention is a very serious responsibility perhaps best handled by a team of experts from various disciplines.

c

1)You Said, “Carelus’s rambling speech”,

Sorry that’s my style

2) You said, If he were more direct in what he was supposedly trying say it would most likely be something like:
“Handley’s book is subversive to Thai culture and politics – therefore potentially dangerous. Notions of honesty, transparency, and the right to question traditonal systems that may indeed be corrupt (and the propaganda machine that protects that corruption) are merely a “Western epistemological attempt to engage with a reality that is indigenous, existential and altogether unknowable by the author”.

Dear Mr. Freak,

Sounds like you already made up your mind on this before you read my stuff.

You also said , “Notions of honesty, transparency, and the right to question traditonal systems that may indeed be corrupt”

Try a regional analysis of the evolution of Social complexity in South East Asia during the last 1500 years and contrast and compare it with Western intervention during the last 500 years and see how things turned out for the indigenous populations. The methods employed by the “West” were not always transparent, legal or honest. Strangely enough the most dishonest western intervention into one particular South East Asian country resulted in a mass genocide primarily because it was halted by guys like you that like to see things in some sort of good-guy/bad guy howdy doody cowboy parade.

I think if we want to cry, “human rights abuse”, “corruption” etc., we really need to do our homework and make sure these terms mean the same thing across cultures.

You also suggest the book is, “subversive to Thai culture and politics”.

I hardly think it is a threat to Politics, but I was there when the Cambodians burned the Thai Embassy in Cambodia. No responsible country should openly invite a mob action. That aside, I believe most Thais are more interested in acquiring the luxuries of life, like food and some semblance of peace in a nation enduring the onslaught of Globalization.

I bet if you passed out a thousand books, most would end up in the garbage can because, (again my belief) that the majority of Thais simply don’t think the way you do. It has been my experience that they don’t want to either.

It is also my belief that these nations will follow along a path to what you perceive to be freedom. Let’s hope when they get there they aren’t all taking prozac in order to cope.

I here Rama 9 bridge is getting more popular.

c

Srithanonchai // Oct 24, 2007 at 1:59 am

carelus: Your comment meant as a parody, right?

Actually no, I merely cut and pasted some ideas from various papers I had written, into what became ultimately short on truth and long on verbose constructions and jargon ridden mumbo jumbo. I knew what I wanted to say but as you pointed out, in an academic forum it reads much like a parody.