National heritage and nationalist narrative in contemporary Thailand : an essay on culture and politics

In contemporary perception vestiges of the past are like endangered species: the ones still surviving have to be protected to avoid their possible disappearance. Hence, similar to animals under threat of extinction, relics are kept in enclosed areas that safeguard and allow their display while lists of crumbling monuments are drawn up to establish a Noah's Ark of cultural remnants. Removed from daily vicissitudes, heritage becomes an essential element of "extra-ordinary" life, holiday time, when visiting a museum or an exhibition is a more likely event. Yet, just as captivity changes animal behaviour, the survival of heritage in "cultural zoos" alters its character and value. Furthermore, memory, which allows people to relive their history, never has an idealistic nature. It always is a function of present and particular perspectives, at the personal as well as at the collective level. Nevertheless, conservation of ruins is nowadays implemented with global aims under the formula of World Heritage, a list of natural and cultural sites to maintain for future generations. World Heritage has UNESCO as its great sponsor and national governments as its main executor. It is thus clear that, despite the stress on antiquity from which relics emerge and the posterity for which they are preserved, the establishment and consumption of a world cultural heritage is a social and cultural phenomenon which matters essentially in the present

“The Power of the Copy: Rethinking Replication through the Cult Image.”

British Journal of AestheticsNAN

“When Shrines and Images Grow Tired: Towards a Theory of Devotional Restoration.”

Res: Anthropology and AestheticsNANAUnited State

A theory of devotional conservation: A preliminary proposal

10.20935/al189Academia Letter

A Case for Comparative History

10.3390/histories1010004Histories1110-1

Masked: the life of Anna Leonowens, schoolmistress at the court of Siam

10.1080/10357823.2016.1178097Asian Studies Review403473-47

Prehistory and Ideology in Cold War Southeast Asia: The Politics of Wartime Archaeology in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1954–1975

The two decades comprised within the partition of Vietnam and the end of the Indochina Wars surprisingly saw major advances in prehistoric archaeology in the region. This article examines the political context and implications of archaeological investigations conducted in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under the guidance of, respectively, American and Soviet specialists, as an aspect of the cultural Cold War. Archaeological discoveries in both countries debunked colonial archaeology’s account of prehistoric Southeast Asia as a passive recipient of Chinese cultural influence by documenting autonomous technological development. The article argues that the new image of mainland Southeast Asia’ prehistory that formed by the early 1970s reflected the superpowers’ objective of empowering the region’s postcolonial nation-states notwithstanding their political contrasts, yet it was not equally congruent with the nationalist narratives of Thailand and North Vietnam