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This book considers recent developments in Thai history and historiography, examining why Thai studies had suffered under a combination of protectionism, uncritical learning, and unwillingness to engage with scholarship from abroad. The essays collected here explore, from Thai perspectives, innovations in theory and methodology in Thai studies, gathering critical insights from disciplines such as anthropology and cultural studies. The book may also serve as an entry to Thai studies, informing experts and non-specialist readers alike on topics such as access to Thai archives, the difficulties in conducting ethnographic research with Thai subjects, the (non-)development of scholarly disciplines in Thailand, and the challenges and opportunities presented by Thai studies as a whole for prospective scholars and graduate students.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- Part I. New Histories.- 2. Historiography of Thai Nationalism: A Critique of Debates over Lost Territory.- 3. Rethinking National Defense during the Reign of King Chulalongkorn.- 4. Papered Forestry: Leases, Laws, and the Enactment of Forest Administration.- 5. Ordinary Archives, Fragmented Scenes: Making Public Queer History at Museum Siam.- Part II. New Disciplines.- 6. Religion in Transition: From Buddhism to New Religious Movements and Invisible Religions in Thailand.- 7. Cultural Strategy as Status-Anxiety Management: Evidence from Thailand s Cultural Relations with Japan during the Pacific War.- 8. Sensitizing Thai Studies: (Multi)sensory Approaches to Thai History and Culture.- Part III. New Comparisons.- 9. Crematoria: King Rama V s Strategy of Hygiene and Western Hygiene Reform in the Late Nineteenth Century.- 10. Thailand and Japan s Comparative Centralization and Economic Development, 1850-World War I.- 11. George Orwell in Thai Political Landscape: The Global Texts and the Local Reception.- 12. Ideological Dichotomies: Thai Historiography in Representing Indochina during the Cold War Period.
About the author
Preedee Hongsaton is a Research Fellow at Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Sweden. He is currently a member of the collaborative research programme Imperial Expansion and Intercultural Diplomacy: Treaty-making in Southeast Asia, c.1750−1920.
Ying-kit Chan is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. He was formerly a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University. His latest book is Southeast Asia in China: Historical Entanglements and Contemporary Engagements (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023).
