Tracks and traces: Thailand and the work of Andrew Turton

Philip Hirsch and Nicholas Tapp (eds)

Tracks and traces: Thailand and the work of Andrew Turton

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010 ISBN 978 90 8964 249 3, €27.50 (pb)

Reviewed by Tomas Larsson, University of Cambridge

This little volume (159 pages) of nine essays grew out of a panel presented at the International Thai Studies Conference held in 2008 at Thammasat University, Bangkok. The authors use the works of anthropologist Andrew Turton as starting points for explorations of a wide variety of facets of Thai society and scholarship. Reflecting the fact that the chapters were written in the shadow of the political crisis that followed in the wake of the 2006 military coup, several of the authors seize the opportunity to reflect on the contemporary relevance of Turton’s writings that grew out of another highly turbulent period of Thai history – the 1970s.

Several of the authors find that Turton’s writings continue to offer informative perspectives also on contemporary Thai politics. Of particular interest in this respect is Turton’s essay ‘Limits of ideological domination and the formation of social consciousness’ from 1984, which is found to be of relevance for understanding contemporary phenomena such as the Thaksin Shinawatra government’s wars on ‘dark influences’ and drugs (Paul T. Cohen), the resurgent Thai-Lao ethnonationalism manifested in the ‘red shirt’ movement (in a chapter by Charles Keyes), and the ongoing ideological battle over the construction of the modern political subject (in a chapter by Jamaree Chiengthong).

The less Gramscian and more Marxist analysis of Thai class struggle found in Turton’s 1978 essay, ‘The current situation in the Thai countryside’ inspires Jim Glassman, who argues that current social and political conflicts are, essentially, a continuation of the class conflicts of the 1970s, with the difference that leftist movements, organisations, and political parties have been ‘displaced by right-wing populist political structures’ such as the (now dissolved) Thai Rak Thai party and its several reincarnations.

However, not all of the authors make as extensive use of the recent crisis of the Thai state in order to frame their contributions, but rather reflect on continuity and change in other longstanding debates in Thai studies. Anan Ganjanapan and Philip Hirsch explore the ways in which the notion of ‘agrarian transformation’ has itself been transformed through ‘globalisation’ as well as the introduction of new conceptual lenses. Nicholas Tapp seeks to situate Turton’s co-edited collection, Thai constructions of knowledge (1991), in light of post-stucturalist approaches to social analysis. Jonathan Rigg revisits Turton’s book, Production, power and participation in rural Thailand: experiences of poor farmers (1987). Craig Reynolds surveys the literature on slavery with Turton’s essay ‘Thai institutions of slavery’ (1980) as a starting point. Finally, Volker Grabowsky reviews the subsequent development of the field of ‘ethnography of embassy’ that was pioneered by Turton in a 1997 article published in South East Asia Research.

The volume also contains a very helpful bibliography of Andrew Turton’s writings.

In all, this pleasurable volume can be said to successfully serve a dual purpose. Firstly, it situates Turton’s writings in relation to recent developments in Thai society. Secondly, it situates them in relation to a broader set of intellectual currents and what we might call the history of ideas in Thai studies. The book provides a welcome introduction to a set of writings that remain highly salient.