Chaosua, khunsuk, sakdina, panyachon lae khonsaman (Tycoons, warlords, feudal lords, scholars and common folk) (2007) by Craig J. Reynolds with translation/editing by Waruni Otsatharom (ISBN: 9789747512038). This volume provides translations of selected works from the career of historian Craig Reynolds. The book came out just before the 10th International Conference on Thai Studies, where there were two sessions held to mark Reynolds’ contributions to Thai studies.
[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]
10 responses so far ↓
1 Srithanonchai // Mar 6, 2008 at 6:39 pm
It would be nice if Craig Reynolds could, from time to time, contribute to New Mandala. He a “warlord”? No, just the chief of a small fiefdom.
2 jonfernquest // Mar 7, 2008 at 4:38 pm
In an ideal world, areas studies works would be published simultaneously in both the western and local language. Furthermore, the medium of the internet does make this possible. No more paper limitations at publication time.
Srithanonchai: “He a ‘warlord’? No, just the chief of a small fiefdom.”
Yes, the **market** for specialised academic work is very limited.
If area studies specialists were “public intellectuals” as you advocate Srithanonchai (like Juan Cole, for instance) definitely would expand this limited market. If I was a management type at a university, I would be push this. Academic productivity is, quite frankly, apalling, but most intellectuals would argue that this “capitalist” logic does not apply to them, I guess, but witness intellectuals like Aung-Thwin declaring that anyone without a tenured academic position lacks credentials and legitimacy that reduces the field to like two people. Pretty cush.
There is such a limited demand in the west for Thai Studies or Burma Studies that some perverse incentives have arose, that people should really question more. Scholars brand themselves (marketing, not hot iron) with a blockbluster, like Aung-Thwin’s catch all “Mon Paradigm” instead of doing the painstaking work of collecting historical sources and publishing critical edited editions of them, one by one, and receiving peer feedback instead of setting the agenda and throwing out a trail of messy breadcrumbs that successors have to do the painstaking work to document and analyse and then not get credit for because it was the agenda setter who first thought of it. I really think the first thing these deconstructors have to deconstruct, is…themselves, but their absolute power in little feudal domains, of course, precludes this.
Academic capitalism:
http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/issue5p2/mazzolini.html
3 Srithanonchai // Mar 8, 2008 at 2:18 pm
“anyone without a tenured academic position lacks credentials and legitimacy” > I definitely lack this, because I don’t have any job, so I restrict myself to making comments on New Mandala.
“public intellectuals” > Some tenured scholars might think it is undignified to put something on a blog, even when it is attached to their own academic institution. Ever heard of outreach?
“There is such a limited demand in the west for Thai Studies” > Even in Thailand, there is little demand. But translations into Thai will make it a little harder for Thai academics to ignore works that were originally published in English. But, then, they also ignore what is written by fellow Thai academics who don’t happen to be in their own phuak…
4 jonfernquest // Mar 8, 2008 at 4:27 pm
‘…translations into Thai will make it a little harder for Thai academics to **ignore** works that were originally published in English…”
At least in the area that I do research in, it **isn’t intentional**, the western publishing system is and has been set up such that it is almost impossible to gain access to relevant texts here in Southeast Asia.
Like Brill’s handbooks which cost 170 US dollars and which they reputably burn any remaining copies of after they make some lucrative sales to western university libraries. Some university presses in the US also make little effort to get their books distributed in Southeast Asia, the result being that people simply don’t know about these books and they don’t make their way on to university library shelves.
The book that completely changed the way I look at early Burmese sources was Steven Collins “Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities” and the idea of a “Pali imaginaire” that is embedded in the Tipitaka and also Burmese literature. Since this is maybe the most important book on Pali literature in several years one would think it would be fairly widely distributed. One copy at Chiang Mai University!
Probably translation software from Thai into English, let’s say, would be really important. I’m slowly familiarizing myself with what an important German work has to say by using a combination of OCR and Google translate. Handcuffs for me?
5 Srithanonchai // Mar 8, 2008 at 7:09 pm
As a German: Yes, handcuffs, definitely (eyeshades as well)!
Most books and articles in the social sciences are not difficult to get in Thailand. This is not the main problem.
6 jonfernquest // Mar 8, 2008 at 10:03 pm
“Most books and articles in the social sciences are not difficult to get in Thailand.”
In the humanities they definitely are difficult, probably because so much publishing takes place in obscure ways like tiny low run edited volumes of papers or try to get the Indian Journal of Philosophy or the Buddhist Studies Review or even the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (one place that I know of: Thammasat Political Science Library). Pali Text Society and Journal of the Burma Research Society only at the Siam Society which has had its journals closed off for more than a year. Research in the humanities such as history or religious studies is difficult because access to the sources is difficult. There is pretty good general coverage, but the nature of research is usually that you absolutely need a few works or important papers that your paper amplifies on and you absolutely need to have that, and for some of the subjects most important to Thailand like “Theravadan” lineages of Buddhism, it really is very difficult to get the sources. Bechert’s “Pali Niti Literature of Burma” has apparently disappeared from the one library that had it. Will have to ask a friend for that. Or take economics which I have two degrees in and is a social science, I challenge you to find the full set of leading journals that define the field in all of Thailand, much less a single university.
7 jonfernquest // Mar 8, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Applied linguistics, also a social science, I personally participated in a Thai university programme of 30+ people, we could have and should have been doing research, but no journals to review the literature on research topics and no research mentors to guide one, JSTOR which is making its way into some universities helps, but old style paper journals could be used by low budget Rajaphat students and other people in society who need the background, government and journalists, for instance. JSTOR is attached to enrollment.
8 Srithanonchai // Mar 9, 2008 at 12:15 am
I agree that there are resource limitations, especially for information hungry foreign scholars. Re the places, I look at Bangkok as a unit, which includes at least Thammasat, Chulalongkorn, and NIDA. JSEAS is also at Chula Pol Scie. If you are a member at Thammasat, you can download almost every article (I was told a few days ago). The situation now is incomparatively better to what we had, say, 20 years ago. Specialized researches might be more difficult. But how many Thais do such research? For the great majority of students and lecturers, there is plenty of material available. The problem is that most of them are not research-oriented readers, not the lack of resources.
9 Srithanonchai // Mar 9, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Jon: Here is a link to the list of journals on economics that you might access if you are a member at NIDA. Not sure whether the journals you need are included, but the list seems long to me.
http://library2.nida.ac.th/serial/englishjournal/j-econ2004.htm
10 jonfernquest // Mar 14, 2008 at 9:16 am
The above topic was discussed today on the foremost humanities blog in the US:
http://crookedtimber.org/2008/03/13/academic-journals-thinking-from-the-south/
Thailand does have great universal access to materials compared to other countries like Japan an Korea. In the US I use U.C. Berkeley’s library after purchasing the $50 UC alumni card and its just a little bit more expensive for non-alumni. At Chula 20 baht gets access! A lot of fine resources don’t get used much, like the Siam Society, which is a pity. Academic publishing in terms of papers published is compared between countries by UNDP, at least according to a presentation I saw once. How to stimulate more of it certainly isn’t an easy issue though.
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