New Mandala

Last year I highlighted an interesting conference at Thailand’s Mahidol University on the topic of Buddhism and Science.�
The same institution, the College of Religious Studies at Mahidol, has now issued an announcement for a conference on Buddhism and consumerism.  It will be held at the Salaya campus from 1-3 December 2008, and hopes to attract 200 monks [...]

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There are reliable reports circulating via email that the major International Congress on Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences to be held in July in Kunming has been postponed. At present the website for the conference does not have any mention of this. As one colleage commented, perhaps the conference – in which ethnic minority issues would, no doubt, feature [...]

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At the recent International Conference on Thai Studies, my colleage Nicholas Tapp presented a paper  [tapp.pdf] on the work of anthropologist Andrew Turton . The paper discussed Turton’s work on ideology, violence and coercion and its relevance to an understanding of power relations in Thai society. In a long footnote/afterword to the paper, Tapp makes an extended comment on work by [...]

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Since the International Conference on Thai Studies, I have received a number of requests for the paper I presented on sufficiency economy. The paper was not included on the conference CD because I did not have time to submit it. So, here is the full text of my presentation. This is an edited version of a longer and much more detailed [...]

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Readers may be keen to know that Thailand’s Royal Institute is organising a conference with the theme “National Language Policy: Language Diversity for National Unity”.  Among many other topics it hopes to include material on “Language policy and socio-economic theory (with special emphasis on the Self-Sufficiency Economic Theory of His Majesty King Bhumibol of Thailand)”.�
According [...]

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This academic jamboree takes place every three years. All the usual subjects were on the agenda – Buddhism, weaving, democracy, the history of Ayutthaya, agrarian relations, and Thai arts. But there was also something new and different. Three panels were devoted to discussion of the monarchy. Another two focused on the sufficiency economy. And more [...]

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For various reasons I didn’t get to Day 3 of the Thai Studies Conference. So I will use this post to open up a general forum for comments, evaluation, critique, suggestions and reports in relation to the conference.

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Here is the full text of a Reuters report on the discussion of The King Never Smiles at the International Conference on Thai Studies.
Banned royal book stirs rare debate in Thailand
Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:19am IST
By Ed Cropley
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s banning of a rare “warts and all” biography of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej only stokes interest [...]

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Day 2 of the International Conference on Thai Studies here in Bangkok featured the keenly anticipated panels on the Thai monarchy. The first panel discussed some of the monarchy’s key supporting institutions – the abundantly rich Crown Property Bureau, the politically influential Privy Council, and the symbolically potent cult of King Chulalongkorn. The second panel [...]

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It has been a long day, so here is just a quick report on day 1 of the Thai Studies Conference. The openning by Princess Sirindhorn was brief and to the point. Plenty of sitting, standing, sitting and standing, presentation of gifts and various suited officials crawling around on stage. Her opening address was formal and [...]

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