Social sciences

ปรากฏการณ์การอพยพของชาวโรฮิงญาในทศวรรษที่ผ่านมาได้รับการพูดถึงทั้งในสื่อมวลชนระดับโลก และในวงวิชาการ ประเด็นดังกล่าวถูกจุดขึ้นอย่างต่อเนื่องและรวดเร็ว ความรุนแรงจากความขัดแย้งทำให้ที่ผ่านมาภาพของชาวโรฮิงญาถูกนำเสนอเป็นเพียงสองขั้วใหญ่ๆ กล่าวคือ หากไม่เป็นเหยื่อผู้อ่อนแอที่ถูกกระทำจากรัฐบาลพม่า ก็เป็นขั้วของกลุ่มมุสลิมหัวรุนแรงที่มีปัญหากับชาวพุทธยะไข่ในรัฐอาระกัน บทความชิ้นนี้มุ่งที่จะสนทนากับภาพของชาวโรฮิงญาในสื่อกระแสหลัก จึงเลือกนำเสนอภาพที่ต่างออกไปของชาวโรฮิงญาพลัดถิ่นในอำเภอแม่สอด พื้นที่ชายแดนไทย-พม่าที่ปัจจุบันพบว่ามีชุมชนเล็กๆ ของชาวโรฮิงญา ซุกซ่อนอยู่ภายใต้ชุมชนมุสลิมขนาดใหญ่ ซึ่งเป็นชาวโรฮิงญาที่อพยพเข้ามาในประเทศไทยเป็นระยะเวลาหลายทศวรรษแล้ว จากการศึกษาพบว่า ชาวโรฮิงญาพลัดถิ่นไม่ได้ให้ความสำคัญกับอดีตอันขมขื่นในมาตุภูมิดังเช่น “ภาพตัวแทน”ที่ถูกนำเสนอแบบตายตัว แต่ชาวโรฮิงญาเลือกที่จะถักทอกันเป็นเครือข่ายเพื่อทำธุรกิจและประกอบอาชีพต่างๆ ตามที่ความเป็นชายแดนจะเอื้ออำนวย นอกจากนี้ยังใช้เครือข่ายของกลุ่มช่วยเหลือญาติชาวโรฮิงญาที่อพยพเข้ามาใหม่ หรือขึ้นมาจากกรุงเทพฯ โดยการหางานและที่พักให้ อัตลักษณ์คนพลัดถิ่นของชาวโรฮิงญาที่ก่อตัวขึ้น  จึงมีนัยสำคัญอยู่ที่การสร้างเครือข่ายทั้งเครือข่ายจนเข้าเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของสังคมชายแดน ที่อาจกล่าวได้ว่าเป็น “บ้าน”หลังใหม่ อย่างไรก็ตาม ด้วยสถานการณ์ทางการเมืองที่เปลี่ยนแปลงอยู่ตลอดเวลาทั้งในฝั่งไทย และพม่า รวมถึงในรัฐอาระกัน  ทำให้ชาวโรฮิงญาต้องปรับเปลี่ยนความสัมพันธ์เชิงอำนาจที่เผชิญอยู่ เพื่อให้สอดคล้องกับบริบทที่แปรเปลี่ยนอยู่เสมอความเป็นโรฮิงญาในที่นี้จึงสัมพันธ์และเชื่อมโยงชาวมุสลิมในชายแดนอำเภอแม่สอด โดยเฉพาะมุสลิมเชื้อสายพม่าและบังคลาเทศ  และไม่ปรากฏชัดเจนดั่งเช่นชาวโรฮิงญาที่เคลื่อนไหวทางการเมืองในประเทศไทย

In recent years, Rohingya arrivals in Thailand have drawn tremendous public attention. While media and academia have been the main sources in representing the Rohingya image to the international community, self-representation by the Rohingya are emerging on alternative media through their negotiation. Since there has been more than a single wave of Rohingya migration into Thailand, the Rohingya in Thailand are very diverse in terms of social and economic status. Diversity of Rohingya in Thailand revolves around their field of interests including trade, religion or humanitarian aid. In the midst of scattered and overwhelming information, Rohingya issues have become more or less, a controversy serving religious or political ideals. This paper tries to show how Rohingya are represented through alternative media of organizations which are White Channel and Amnesty International Thailand. This study employs participatory approach and interview. Through the notion of Representation, it ex...

This article analyzes media representations in Thailand of the Rohingya, an ethnic minority being persecuted in Myanmar, with a focus on those representations in faith-based media like the White Channel. Media representations help form people’s perceptions of others. Representations of the Rohingya as refugees and migrants, as a result of the interaction of rhetoric and ideology within the nation state, demonizes and paints the Rohingya as the ‘Other’, influencing public dialogue. However, individual Rohingya in Thailand are also steering the course for their own future by trying to tell their own stories. Keywords: Rohingya, Media and migration, Representation, Media portrayals, Faith-based organization.

The body of literature on leftist movements in Thailand contains only limited information about the Hmong as an active political group in the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) from the 1960s to the 1980s. Moreover, since the end of the Cold War, there has been no study that explores the so-called "Red Meo" despite the fact that the Thai government has put a great effort into development programs for this ethnic group. The present study focuses on the more recent "Red Meo" response of constructing a counter-memorial in honor of their own people who sacrificed their lives at the former battlefield, Doi Yao-Phamon, in northern Thailand. Data were collected primarily through ethnographic fieldwork from 2013 to 2015 along with secondary sources. The "Red Meo" are reinterpreting their involvement with the CPT as stemming from majority Thai and state oppression, hence, seeing their own struggle as a heroic fight against social injustice. This paper also examines how Doi Yao-Phamon has become a landscape of contested memories between the "Red Meo" and government officials. The paper argues that the emergence of a contested memory in this Hmong community is a form of soft fighting between the dominant majority Thai as presented by the Thai government and a dominated minority, the Hmong.

The Yunnanese from southwestern China have for millennia traded throughout upland Southeast Asia. Burma in particular has served as a "back door" to Yunnan, providing a sanctuary for political refugees and economic opportunities for trade explorers. Since the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949 and subsequent political upheavals in China, an unprecedented number of Yunnanese refugees have fled to Burma. Through a personal narrative approach, Beyond Borders is the first ethnography to focus on the migration history and transnational trading experiences of contemporary Yunnanese Chinese migrants (composed of both Yunnanese Han and Muslims) who reside in Burma and those who have moved from Burma and resettled in Thailand, Taiwan, and China. Since the 1960s, Yunnanese Chinese migrants of Burma have dominated the transnational trade in opium, jade, and daily consumption goods. Wen-Chin Chang writes with deep knowledge of this trade's organization from the 1960s of mule-drive...

The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization established in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security, and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment.

Book Reviews 472 closely with a twelfth-century story displayed on the bas-reliefs and other features of the Bayon temple (Ang 2007, 364-381). Apart from these issues, Traces of Trauma is clearly a groundbreaking work that takes a refreshing look at Cambodia's dark past of the 1970s and the long-term impacts of the violence on survivors. Through its interdisciplinary approach of examining a range of visual cultural materials, together with the author's broad knowledge of contemporary Cambodian history, art, culture, and politics, Ly's Traces of Trauma has many original contributions to offer to both Cambodian and Southeast Asian scholarship as well as the fields of art history, cultural studies, memory studies, cinematic and performance studies, and many more.

I began pursuing the idea of doing fieldwork among the Tai ethnic minority 1 group in Yunnan twenty years ago when I was a graduate student at Berkeley. China later became a tempting destination left off the itinerary in the early 1980s when a graduate student from Stanford published an article in a Taiwanese newspaper on abortion practices in China. After that it became increasingly difficult for students from American institutes to obtain permission to do field research in rural China. But the prospects remained within me throughout the years and when Professor Chatthip Nartsupha, head of the Tai History and Culture Studies Project, invited me to join him on a trip to Daikong, Yunnan, I readily accepted his invitation. In March 1997, I bid him goodbye in Kunming and took my family to Muang Khon in Daikong prefecture. The task I had set myself-indeed, the general theme which sustains my study-is to discover how, over the last four centuries of Chinese domination, the Tai groups in Daikong managed to maintain a strong sense of cultural continuity and ethnic identity. After a brief survey of Tai villages in Muang Khon, Muang Wan, Muang La, Muang Ti and Muang Mao, I chose Lak Chang village as my research site for several reasons. First of all, compared to other villages in Daikong, Lak Chang was rather small (203 households) and hence more manageable as a research unit. More importantly, the villagers of Lak Chang impressed me in various ways. Even though most villagers now live in wattle and daub houses with cement floors and 1 I use the term Tai to refer to various Tai ethnic groups in Southeast Asia and its periphery, such as the Tai Ahom of Assam in India, the Shan of Shan State in Myanmar, the Tai Daikong in Yunnan, the Tai Lue in Laos, the Tai Dam, Tai Dang and Tai Khao in Sipsong Chu Tai and Vietnam, including the Zhuang and the Dong of Kweichou, Hunan and Kwangsi in China, etc. Chinese scholars invariably call these ethnic groups 'Dai'. The word Thai, on the other hand, refers to the Thai people in Thailand, who are a part of the Tai ethnic groups in Southeast Asia.

The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization established in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security, and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment.

Book Reviews 472 closely with a twelfth-century story displayed on the bas-reliefs and other features of the Bayon temple (Ang 2007, 364-381). Apart from these issues, Traces of Trauma is clearly a groundbreaking work that takes a refreshing look at Cambodia's dark past of the 1970s and the long-term impacts of the violence on survivors. Through its interdisciplinary approach of examining a range of visual cultural materials, together with the author's broad knowledge of contemporary Cambodian history, art, culture, and politics, Ly's Traces of Trauma has many original contributions to offer to both Cambodian and Southeast Asian scholarship as well as the fields of art history, cultural studies, memory studies, cinematic and performance studies, and many more.

I began pursuing the idea of doing fieldwork among the Tai ethnic minority 1 group in Yunnan twenty years ago when I was a graduate student at Berkeley. China later became a tempting destination left off the itinerary in the early 1980s when a graduate student from Stanford published an article in a Taiwanese newspaper on abortion practices in China. After that it became increasingly difficult for students from American institutes to obtain permission to do field research in rural China. But the prospects remained within me throughout the years and when Professor Chatthip Nartsupha, head of the Tai History and Culture Studies Project, invited me to join him on a trip to Daikong, Yunnan, I readily accepted his invitation. In March 1997, I bid him goodbye in Kunming and took my family to Muang Khon in Daikong prefecture. The task I had set myself-indeed, the general theme which sustains my study-is to discover how, over the last four centuries of Chinese domination, the Tai groups in Daikong managed to maintain a strong sense of cultural continuity and ethnic identity. After a brief survey of Tai villages in Muang Khon, Muang Wan, Muang La, Muang Ti and Muang Mao, I chose Lak Chang village as my research site for several reasons. First of all, compared to other villages in Daikong, Lak Chang was rather small (203 households) and hence more manageable as a research unit. More importantly, the villagers of Lak Chang impressed me in various ways. Even though most villagers now live in wattle and daub houses with cement floors and 1 I use the term Tai to refer to various Tai ethnic groups in Southeast Asia and its periphery, such as the Tai Ahom of Assam in India, the Shan of Shan State in Myanmar, the Tai Daikong in Yunnan, the Tai Lue in Laos, the Tai Dam, Tai Dang and Tai Khao in Sipsong Chu Tai and Vietnam, including the Zhuang and the Dong of Kweichou, Hunan and Kwangsi in China, etc. Chinese scholars invariably call these ethnic groups 'Dai'. The word Thai, on the other hand, refers to the Thai people in Thailand, who are a part of the Tai ethnic groups in Southeast Asia.