People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests r... more People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange—giving, taking, and returning—with the notion of expectations. From this perspective, three contingencies constitute gift exchange: gifts create futures that remain indeterminate; they presuppose a social whole whose boundaries are unclear; and they visibly constitute opaque persons. Reconsidering gift exchange in these terms provides a set of analytical terms, like strong and weak expectations, moral horizons of value systems, and the opacity of personhood, that can be applied to sharing and commodity trade as well. This constitutes a dynamic and expansive theory for the analysis and comparison of case studies that understands society as a shared project of expecting the future.
What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Sm... more What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Smith but by those of Mauss, Viveiros de Castro or their anthropological inspirations? This extrapolation would lead to counterintuitive utopias, to institutions that are always in the making, but that nevertheless offer alternative ways of dealing with xenophobia, capitalism or the environmental crisis. Xenophobia would be countered by the model of the stranger king, the integration of the stranger as a necessity for a complete society. Capitalism would be restricted to the market and subordinated to the principles of gift exchange. An objectifying notion of nature would be complemented by practices of animism that enable a moral relationship with non-humans. The value of otherness and concepts of personhood unite these three approaches.
People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests r... more People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange-giving, taking, and returning-with the notion of expectations. From this perspective, three contingencies constitute gift exchange: gifts create futures that remain indeterminate; they presuppose a social whole whose boundaries are unclear; and they visibly constitute opaque persons. Reconsidering gift exchange in these terms provides a set of analytical terms, like strong and weak expectations, moral horizons of value systems, and the opacity of personhood, that can be applied to sharing and commodity trade as well. This constitutes a dynamic and expansive theory for the analysis and comparison of case studies that understands society as a shared project of expecting the future.
What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Sm... more What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Smith but by those of Mauss, Viveiros de Castro or their anthropological inspirations? This extrapolation would lead to counterintui-tive utopias, to institutions that are always in the making, but that nevertheless offer alternative ways of dealing with xenophobia, capitalism or the environmental crisis. Xenophobia would be countered by the model of the stranger king, the integration of the stranger as a necessity for a complete society. Capitalism would be restricted to the market and subordinated to the principles of gift exchange. An objectifying notion of nature would be complemented by practices of animism that enable a moral relationship with non-humans. The value of otherness and concepts of per-sonhood unite these three approaches.
Ursula Bertels (Hrsg.): Einwanderungsland Deutschland: Wie kann Integration aus ethnologischer Sicht gelingen?, 53-65. Münster: Waxmann. , 2014
Mit den Fragen von Migration und Integration hat sich die Ethnologie schon immer und aus untersch... more Mit den Fragen von Migration und Integration hat sich die Ethnologie schon immer und aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auseinandergesetzt. Fur die Losung dieser Fragen kann diese Wissenschaft daher einen wertvollen Beitrag leisten. indem sie Stereotypisierungen entgegentritt, zum einen dUTch die Analyse von Stereotypen und deren Funktionen, zum anderen dUTch die Vermittlung von differenzierten Einblicken in Lebenswelten von Menschen mit unci ohne Migrationsvorgeschichte. Die Akademie Franz-Hitze-Haus begriiflt daher die Publikation der Ergebnisse der gemeinsam durchgefuhrten Tagung, bedankt sich fur die gute Zusamrnenarbeit, verbunden mit clem Wunsch, class diese auch in Zukunft fortgesetzt wird.
Roland Hardenberg, Jos Platenkamp, Thomas Widlok (eds.) Ethnologie als angewandte Wissenschaft: Das Zusammenspiel von Theorie und Praxis, 273-296. Berlin: Reimer, 2022
Hans-Peter Hahn, Anja Klöckner, Dirk Wicke (ed.) Values and revaluations. The Transformation and Genesis of ‘Values in Things’ from Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives. Barnsley: Oxbow. , 2022
Religious phenomena in Laos contain numerous examples of decentered and relational concepts of pe... more Religious phenomena in Laos contain numerous examples of decentered and relational concepts of personhood, manifest in shamanic trance, wandering witchcraft spirits and soul loss. Possession in particular represents a connection between non-Buddhist uplands and Buddhist lowlands. The Rmeet, Mon-Khmer-speaking uplanders, provide examples of folded personhood – persons whose various aspects sometimes represent a coherent whole and sometimes split off, forming separate person-like entities. Folded persons can be positively valued, like in shamans’ relationships with their helping spirits, or negatively, as in witchcraft spirits. Both forms are associated with other phenomena, like soul journeys and dangerous shapeshifters. These forms all relate to the manipulation of processes that recreate life, particularly marriage. This also links them to lowland Theravada Buddhist forms of witchcraft, that equally derive from an abusive form of a central exchange relationship.
Comparison is not only the foundation of anthropology, but may even be a human universal.It is a ... more Comparison is not only the foundation of anthropology, but may even be a human universal.It is a practice that emerges from the perception of cultural difference. Therefore, not only modern academics compare – comparison is always embedded in specific cultural relationships. This article shows how Rmeet uplanders in northern Laos and Jru’ in the south employ comparison when they talk about ethnic and religious difference. In particular, they compare their own ritual system with translocal and national Buddhism. They thus practice comparison in the sense that comparison is part of transcultural relationships and the valorization of cultural representations. This occurs in a framework of distinctions between Buddhism and its manifold “animist” others, which provides two bases of comparison – the otherness inbuilt into Buddhism and the adaptability of animism. Uplanders thus find themselves cast in the position of Buddhism’s other and construct the relationships in terms of reversible hierarchies.
The term "animism" is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a s... more The term "animism" is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as "animist" is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.
Zusammenfassung: Die Unterscheidung zwischen Natur und Kultur ist eine zentrale Denkfigur der abe... more Zusammenfassung: Die Unterscheidung zwischen Natur und Kultur ist eine zentrale Denkfigur der abendländischen Moderne. Dieser Gegensatz prägt seit der frühen Neuzeit das Denken über Wissenschaft, Ökonomie, Politik, Geschlecht und weitere Bereiche. Der Vergleich mit historischen und außereuropäischen Gesellschaften zeigt jedoch, dass er nicht die einzige Form ist, in der Menschen, Nicht-Menschen und Umwelten gemeinsam existieren. Seit über einem halben Jahrhundert wird der Dualismus daher auch in der modern-westlichen Wissenstradition hinterfragt. Insbesondere die letzten Jahrzehnte haben eine Reihe von neuen Begriffen hervorgebracht, die den konzeptuellen Gegensatz von Natur und Kultur zu überwinden versuchen. Dazu gehören die Naturkultur-Hybride von Bruno Latour, das Web of Life von Jason Moore, ein erweiterter Begriff von agency, der auch die Wirkmacht von Nicht-Menschen umfasst, sowie ein Konzept von Kollektiv, das Menschen wie Nicht-Menschen verknüpft.
Südostasien: Der Umgang mit Geistern wird von jenen, die sich modern nennen, oft verächtlich gema... more Südostasien: Der Umgang mit Geistern wird von jenen, die sich modern nennen, oft verächtlich gemacht: als angst-besetzt, als hinterwäldlerisch, als rückwärts gewandt. Dennoch bietet Animismus gegenüber Modernisierungs-Doktrinen oder Weltreligionen den Vorteil, dass er sich an der lokalen Alltagswelt der Menschen orientiert. Denn es geht dabei um Dialog statt um Indoktrination.
The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
Local traditions and world religions are prominent among a series of related dualisms which are e... more Local traditions and world religions are prominent among a series of related dualisms which are employed to analyze Southeast Asian religious practices and discourses. Others are indigenous and non-indigenous (Kirsch 1977), animism and world religion (Sparkes 2005), philosophy and practice (Leach 1968), syncretic and compartmentalized (Terwiel 2012), and so on. These dualisms are used experimentally and often only to be interrogated, relativized or entirely discarded. This is complemented by the different relationships between the terms, which have been variously described as two complementary systems (Spiro 1967), one system with different fields (Tambiah 1970), harmonious symbiosis (Zago 1972: 383), transformative dialectic (Holt 2009: 233), etc. In addition, there are tripartite models (Kirsch 1977) or monistic ones (Van Esterik 1982; Tannenbaum 1987). The following chapter situates itself within these debates. It makes the obvious point that both the terms and the relationships between them largely depend on the data, that is, on the local situation. The
Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and ... more Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and experimental framework for the analysis of multi-ethnic trading. It explores bazaars and trade as sites of the (re-)production of ethnicity through the perspective of gift exchange theory. On markets, transcultural differences can be identified and stabilized through the exchange of goods and money. This draws attention to the role of trade items as foci – and perhaps even as non-human agents – in the emergence of ethnicity and other forms of local identity. The value of items’ specific origins is thus linked to social structure. This helps us to see how the shaping of group identity can be better understood by considering how the goods they bring to market carry with them some features of the gift.
In mainland Southeast Asia, the center-periphery relation structures both upland and lowland soci... more In mainland Southeast Asia, the center-periphery relation structures both upland and lowland socialities and provides a background on which current ideas of indigeneity unfold. This relation is articulated in rituals, in the structure of settlements, and in myths and other cultural representations. However, there has been little attempt to compare types of center and periphery Relations between ethnicities. This article proposes such a comparison between the Rmeet of Laos and the Yao/Iu Mien, an ethnicity that has migrated from southern China across Laos to Thailand. It proposes that at least two types of center-periphery relation can be found among these groups, one characterized by continuity and replication, the other by contrast and boundary maintenance. It also proposes that besides the dominant method of articulating center and periphery in each society, subordinate models exist. This comparison is enabled by a synthetic series of theoretical models that structure analytical terms.
People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests r... more People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange—giving, taking, and returning—with the notion of expectations. From this perspective, three contingencies constitute gift exchange: gifts create futures that remain indeterminate; they presuppose a social whole whose boundaries are unclear; and they visibly constitute opaque persons. Reconsidering gift exchange in these terms provides a set of analytical terms, like strong and weak expectations, moral horizons of value systems, and the opacity of personhood, that can be applied to sharing and commodity trade as well. This constitutes a dynamic and expansive theory for the analysis and comparison of case studies that understands society as a shared project of expecting the future.
What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Sm... more What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Smith but by those of Mauss, Viveiros de Castro or their anthropological inspirations? This extrapolation would lead to counterintuitive utopias, to institutions that are always in the making, but that nevertheless offer alternative ways of dealing with xenophobia, capitalism or the environmental crisis. Xenophobia would be countered by the model of the stranger king, the integration of the stranger as a necessity for a complete society. Capitalism would be restricted to the market and subordinated to the principles of gift exchange. An objectifying notion of nature would be complemented by practices of animism that enable a moral relationship with non-humans. The value of otherness and concepts of personhood unite these three approaches.
People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests r... more People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange-giving, taking, and returning-with the notion of expectations. From this perspective, three contingencies constitute gift exchange: gifts create futures that remain indeterminate; they presuppose a social whole whose boundaries are unclear; and they visibly constitute opaque persons. Reconsidering gift exchange in these terms provides a set of analytical terms, like strong and weak expectations, moral horizons of value systems, and the opacity of personhood, that can be applied to sharing and commodity trade as well. This constitutes a dynamic and expansive theory for the analysis and comparison of case studies that understands society as a shared project of expecting the future.
What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Sm... more What if the institutions of modern society were not informed by the ideas of Descartes or Adam Smith but by those of Mauss, Viveiros de Castro or their anthropological inspirations? This extrapolation would lead to counterintui-tive utopias, to institutions that are always in the making, but that nevertheless offer alternative ways of dealing with xenophobia, capitalism or the environmental crisis. Xenophobia would be countered by the model of the stranger king, the integration of the stranger as a necessity for a complete society. Capitalism would be restricted to the market and subordinated to the principles of gift exchange. An objectifying notion of nature would be complemented by practices of animism that enable a moral relationship with non-humans. The value of otherness and concepts of per-sonhood unite these three approaches.
Ursula Bertels (Hrsg.): Einwanderungsland Deutschland: Wie kann Integration aus ethnologischer Sicht gelingen?, 53-65. Münster: Waxmann. , 2014
Mit den Fragen von Migration und Integration hat sich die Ethnologie schon immer und aus untersch... more Mit den Fragen von Migration und Integration hat sich die Ethnologie schon immer und aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven auseinandergesetzt. Fur die Losung dieser Fragen kann diese Wissenschaft daher einen wertvollen Beitrag leisten. indem sie Stereotypisierungen entgegentritt, zum einen dUTch die Analyse von Stereotypen und deren Funktionen, zum anderen dUTch die Vermittlung von differenzierten Einblicken in Lebenswelten von Menschen mit unci ohne Migrationsvorgeschichte. Die Akademie Franz-Hitze-Haus begriiflt daher die Publikation der Ergebnisse der gemeinsam durchgefuhrten Tagung, bedankt sich fur die gute Zusamrnenarbeit, verbunden mit clem Wunsch, class diese auch in Zukunft fortgesetzt wird.
Roland Hardenberg, Jos Platenkamp, Thomas Widlok (eds.) Ethnologie als angewandte Wissenschaft: Das Zusammenspiel von Theorie und Praxis, 273-296. Berlin: Reimer, 2022
Hans-Peter Hahn, Anja Klöckner, Dirk Wicke (ed.) Values and revaluations. The Transformation and Genesis of ‘Values in Things’ from Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives. Barnsley: Oxbow. , 2022
Religious phenomena in Laos contain numerous examples of decentered and relational concepts of pe... more Religious phenomena in Laos contain numerous examples of decentered and relational concepts of personhood, manifest in shamanic trance, wandering witchcraft spirits and soul loss. Possession in particular represents a connection between non-Buddhist uplands and Buddhist lowlands. The Rmeet, Mon-Khmer-speaking uplanders, provide examples of folded personhood – persons whose various aspects sometimes represent a coherent whole and sometimes split off, forming separate person-like entities. Folded persons can be positively valued, like in shamans’ relationships with their helping spirits, or negatively, as in witchcraft spirits. Both forms are associated with other phenomena, like soul journeys and dangerous shapeshifters. These forms all relate to the manipulation of processes that recreate life, particularly marriage. This also links them to lowland Theravada Buddhist forms of witchcraft, that equally derive from an abusive form of a central exchange relationship.
Comparison is not only the foundation of anthropology, but may even be a human universal.It is a ... more Comparison is not only the foundation of anthropology, but may even be a human universal.It is a practice that emerges from the perception of cultural difference. Therefore, not only modern academics compare – comparison is always embedded in specific cultural relationships. This article shows how Rmeet uplanders in northern Laos and Jru’ in the south employ comparison when they talk about ethnic and religious difference. In particular, they compare their own ritual system with translocal and national Buddhism. They thus practice comparison in the sense that comparison is part of transcultural relationships and the valorization of cultural representations. This occurs in a framework of distinctions between Buddhism and its manifold “animist” others, which provides two bases of comparison – the otherness inbuilt into Buddhism and the adaptability of animism. Uplanders thus find themselves cast in the position of Buddhism’s other and construct the relationships in terms of reversible hierarchies.
The term "animism" is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a s... more The term "animism" is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as "animist" is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.
Zusammenfassung: Die Unterscheidung zwischen Natur und Kultur ist eine zentrale Denkfigur der abe... more Zusammenfassung: Die Unterscheidung zwischen Natur und Kultur ist eine zentrale Denkfigur der abendländischen Moderne. Dieser Gegensatz prägt seit der frühen Neuzeit das Denken über Wissenschaft, Ökonomie, Politik, Geschlecht und weitere Bereiche. Der Vergleich mit historischen und außereuropäischen Gesellschaften zeigt jedoch, dass er nicht die einzige Form ist, in der Menschen, Nicht-Menschen und Umwelten gemeinsam existieren. Seit über einem halben Jahrhundert wird der Dualismus daher auch in der modern-westlichen Wissenstradition hinterfragt. Insbesondere die letzten Jahrzehnte haben eine Reihe von neuen Begriffen hervorgebracht, die den konzeptuellen Gegensatz von Natur und Kultur zu überwinden versuchen. Dazu gehören die Naturkultur-Hybride von Bruno Latour, das Web of Life von Jason Moore, ein erweiterter Begriff von agency, der auch die Wirkmacht von Nicht-Menschen umfasst, sowie ein Konzept von Kollektiv, das Menschen wie Nicht-Menschen verknüpft.
Südostasien: Der Umgang mit Geistern wird von jenen, die sich modern nennen, oft verächtlich gema... more Südostasien: Der Umgang mit Geistern wird von jenen, die sich modern nennen, oft verächtlich gemacht: als angst-besetzt, als hinterwäldlerisch, als rückwärts gewandt. Dennoch bietet Animismus gegenüber Modernisierungs-Doktrinen oder Weltreligionen den Vorteil, dass er sich an der lokalen Alltagswelt der Menschen orientiert. Denn es geht dabei um Dialog statt um Indoktrination.
The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
Local traditions and world religions are prominent among a series of related dualisms which are e... more Local traditions and world religions are prominent among a series of related dualisms which are employed to analyze Southeast Asian religious practices and discourses. Others are indigenous and non-indigenous (Kirsch 1977), animism and world religion (Sparkes 2005), philosophy and practice (Leach 1968), syncretic and compartmentalized (Terwiel 2012), and so on. These dualisms are used experimentally and often only to be interrogated, relativized or entirely discarded. This is complemented by the different relationships between the terms, which have been variously described as two complementary systems (Spiro 1967), one system with different fields (Tambiah 1970), harmonious symbiosis (Zago 1972: 383), transformative dialectic (Holt 2009: 233), etc. In addition, there are tripartite models (Kirsch 1977) or monistic ones (Van Esterik 1982; Tannenbaum 1987). The following chapter situates itself within these debates. It makes the obvious point that both the terms and the relationships between them largely depend on the data, that is, on the local situation. The
Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and ... more Drawing on ethnographic observations in Lao markets and bazaars, this article proposes a new and experimental framework for the analysis of multi-ethnic trading. It explores bazaars and trade as sites of the (re-)production of ethnicity through the perspective of gift exchange theory. On markets, transcultural differences can be identified and stabilized through the exchange of goods and money. This draws attention to the role of trade items as foci – and perhaps even as non-human agents – in the emergence of ethnicity and other forms of local identity. The value of items’ specific origins is thus linked to social structure. This helps us to see how the shaping of group identity can be better understood by considering how the goods they bring to market carry with them some features of the gift.
In mainland Southeast Asia, the center-periphery relation structures both upland and lowland soci... more In mainland Southeast Asia, the center-periphery relation structures both upland and lowland socialities and provides a background on which current ideas of indigeneity unfold. This relation is articulated in rituals, in the structure of settlements, and in myths and other cultural representations. However, there has been little attempt to compare types of center and periphery Relations between ethnicities. This article proposes such a comparison between the Rmeet of Laos and the Yao/Iu Mien, an ethnicity that has migrated from southern China across Laos to Thailand. It proposes that at least two types of center-periphery relation can be found among these groups, one characterized by continuity and replication, the other by contrast and boundary maintenance. It also proposes that besides the dominant method of articulating center and periphery in each society, subordinate models exist. This comparison is enabled by a synthetic series of theoretical models that structure analytical terms.
... der Gesellschaft. Die Gegensätze und Widersprüche des Wertesystems sind die wichtigsten Trieb... more ... der Gesellschaft. Die Gegensätze und Widersprüche des Wertesystems sind die wichtigsten Triebfedern der Reproduktion und Dynamik der Ge-sellschaft (vgl. Dumont 1980 [1966], 1991 [1983], Heesterman 1985). 1. 2 Der ...
This felicitation volume for Josephus D.M. Platenkamp brings some central concerns of anthropolog... more This felicitation volume for Josephus D.M. Platenkamp brings some central concerns of anthropology into focus: social morphology, exchange, cosmology, history and practical applications. Ranging across several disciplines and continents, the contributions look at a common approach that unites these diverse themes. In the view, the most constitutive relationships of society are based on exchange. Exchange and ritual articulate central values of a society, thus appearing as parts in relationship to a whole. These relationships encompass both human and non-human beings, the social and the cosmological domain. Thus, the study of these subject issues merges into a single project.
Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 2014
It is obvious to say that the relations between human beings and their nonhuman environment are c... more It is obvious to say that the relations between human beings and their nonhuman environment are complex, but it is important to draw attention to the way this complexity is modeled and which of the relevant actors and relationships are drawn upon for explanation-in particular when scholars, like the authors of these three volumes, intend to revise and reconceptualise humanenvironment relationships. These relationships are always formed under specific social and political conditions, which these studies aim to elucidate. The question is, which conditions are given more importance and which are less decisive in the models? Southeast Asia stands out for its great diversity of human-environment interactions, while at the same time its rapidly developing economies create an urgent need to reform and rethink them. These three important contributions to the study of political ecology centre on forests, their globalised and localised uses, the national and transnational claims made in regard to them, as well as the position of those who depend on and live in them. The three volumes do not shy away from the complexity of the situations they study, in terms of politics, local culture, ecology, history, and transnational
and violence of others. Later in life, he was frequently consulted for his knowledge of such magi... more and violence of others. Later in life, he was frequently consulted for his knowledge of such magic, even by local politicians and officials. Reynolds concludes by noting that "the social world. .. [Khun Phan] inhabited as he moved from post to post and town to town breaks down the distinctions between local, regional, and national that bedevil the entrenched categories that fragment writing about Thailand's past"-he succeeded everywhere he was sent and he succeeded in the national institution that enforced national law (p. 151). He did so in part because "the writ of central government stopped at the edge of the village and people relied on local forms of security unregulated by institutional constraints" (p. 157). While the implications of these conclusions are manifold, two seem particularly important. First, while it may be true that Khun Phan succeeded everywhere he was sent, there is no record in the book of Khun Phan serving in Bangkok. He did rise to the rank of major general and commander of Division 8, but we do know that he was not promoted to top positions in Bangkok. Khun Phan and his techniques made him a success in the hinterlands, but not at the center, even during a period when notorious police officers thrived under Police General Phao. Marrying the nakleng cosmos of the hinterlands to the institutional and political structures of the center to achieve success at the national level was no easy task. Second, scholars have generally argued that the modernizing reforms at the end of the nineteenth century, or the standardization of provincial administration during the first two decades of the twentieth century, brought about a form of internal colonialism in Thailand, asserting the control of the center over the provinces. Yet, if central government power did not extend into the villages, if the power of the national police relied on the local cosmos and not national institutions and national law, then neither centralization nor internal colonialism extended to the vast majority of the Thai population living in villages until the Sarit period. The separation of police styles and police officers in Bangkok and the provinces reflects the slow pace of centralization and internal colonialism. Reynolds's ability to link the biography of Khun Phan to a wide range of key themes in Thai studies should give it a broad-based appeal to historians, anthropologists, and social scientists. Reynolds also makes comparative references to other Southeast Asian nations, and more broadly. Written in clear, straightforward language, the book is also readily accessible to readers with different levels of expertise on Thailand.
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