In summer 2011, I had the pleasure of co-teaching a Sociology/English class for American students in Thailand.  One of the real pleasures was using novels to illustrate sociological principles.  It was kind of like profession (sociology) meets hobby (reading novels).  I hope that the students liked it—I certainly did, and this blog is about what was my favorite Thai novel of the summer, Behind the Painting.  It proved to be ideal for discussing a wide range of subjects stretching across both sociology and literature, particularly the meaning of duty and love in structuring Thai and American society.

Behind the Painting by Siburapha is a classic Thai romance novel used to teach literature in Thai high schools.  The first half of the book was published in 1937-1938 as a serial in the newspaper Prachachat, and the entire book later in 1938.  The English translation by David Smyth was completed in 1995, and published by Silkworm books in 2000.  The story drips with references to the Thai aristocracy; indeed, the lead female character in the story, as well as her husband, are always referred to by their aristocratic titles in Smyth’s translation.

Set in the 1930s Japan, Behind the Painting is about a young Thai student Napporn and his relationship one summer with the newly-wed wife of a family friend.  Napporn at the time the main story is set has been in Japan already for three years, seeking entrance to the upper class status that a foreign university education provides ambitious Thai.  As with all well-born Thai, Napporn and his father consider such study abroad as a means to pull their impoverished country into modernity, and an entrance to the Thai ruling class.  Still, Napporn’s father knew that there was risk to such a trip; in preparing Napporn for his long trip abroad—it will last eight years—so Napporn was betrothed to a woman chosen by his father, to preclude Napporn seeking out a Japanese wife.  Completing the setting for the novel, are two visitors from Thailand who arrive in the summer of Napporn’s third year in Japan.  They are a widower with the title Chao Khun Atikanbodi (roughly Lord University Dean), who Napporn knew previously in Thailand, and his new wife Mom Rachawong Kirati (roughly “Lady Kirati”).  They are in Japan to spend the summer and become better acquainted following their marriage.  At 22, the commoner Napporn is a youthful host for the 35 year old Kirati, and the 50 year old Khun Chao.

Both Khun Chao and Mom Rachawong Karati are educated members of the Thai aristocracy, and are quickly swept into the swirl of social events in pre-World War II Japan.  What this means for Chao Khun is activities among his peers at men’s clubs, embassies, and the world of Thai and Japanese elite.  For his well-educated wife Mom Rachawong Kirati, it means pursuing her aristocratic passion for painting, and frequently being left in the company of the young student courtier, Napporn.  The two of them share an enthusiasm for the world of art, literature, public parks, nature, and intellectual life.  It is in this context that despite the differences in marital status and age, and even social status, the two find each other to be kindred spirits.  In wide-ranging discussions, they explore the beauty of the Japanese country-side and architecture.  More dangerously, the explore definitions of duty, loyalty, marriage, and love.  In the process of these dialogues, a picture of the elegant Mom Rachawong Kirati’s life as the idealized woman of the Thai nobility emerges.  This creates an increasingly personal dilemma for the now lovelorn Napporn who wrestles with the implications of being in love with a married woman, while he himself is engaged to his father’s choice.  In contrast, Mom Ratchawong Kirati, the question about the ideal of the loyalty to duty and class, or one rooted in the longing for the union between love and marriage is never in doubt.  Painfully for her the answer is clear: duty comes first.

How Mom Rachawong Kirati and Napporn both reach this conclusion is the heart of the book, as the tension between romantic love, marriage, and duty to class and family is explored.  In developing this point, there is actually much to be demonstrated for the western student who reflexively assumes that love and marriage are inextricably tied together, and trump broader loyalties to family and class.  They do not, as Mom Ratchawong Kirati, and even Napporn, demonstrate with their own arranged marriages.  Behind the Painting makes the point well that marriage is about duty, and preservation of society as much as love.  Love comes first only for the most fortunate—and the most craven.

 

Mom Rachawong Kiratis’s Marriage

Mom Ratchawong Kirati was one of three daughters raised by a father who was a royal administrator during the days of absolute rule in Siam.  Aristocratic girls in that day were raised in a protected environment, with the expectation that they would find a suitably aristocratic husband, who would both enhance the status of their family and hopefully also be a love match for the daughter.  It was a cloistered world, or as Mom Ratchawong Kirati describes the situation:

Before the change of government [in 1932], the aristocracy lived in a world of its own….When I finished school my father drew me into that world with him and forbade me to associate with people beyond it….I continued my studies with an elderly foreign governess…you may imagine the sort of conversation to which I was exposed…The virtues of a lady… the proper conduct of a household.  I had McCall’s and Vogue magazines to read, from which I learned to preserve my beauty and care for it well…something like caring for a hydrangea in a vase…We are born to decorate the world and to pander to it.  I do not say this is our only responsibility, but you cannot deny its importance.  Pp. 123-125

But Mom Rachawong Kirati’s success as a “hydrangea in a vase” was bittersweet; her cultivated beauty attracted wide notice, but no eligible man stepped forward to ask her father for her hand.  Thus, despite younger sisters finding husbands who both loved them, and met the approval of the families, she remained in her father’s household virtuous, lonely, and unloved.  Finally, at age 34, her father suggests that she marry his good friend Khun Chao who was recently widowed, even though he was almost 50 years old.  As she notes Khun Chao was a good man, but regretfully not one whom she can love; any hope that she can have anything but a dutiful but loveless marriage is sacrificed to the expedience he provides.  So she dutifully enters into matrimony, and the two embark on the trip to Japan where she meets Napporn.

Oddly the age difference between the 35 year old Kirati and 22 year old Napporn is similar to that between that of Kirati and her husband.  Nevertheless, the relationship becomes very different.  It is through the words of Napporn that we learn how he falls deeply in love with Mom Ratchawong Kirati, while knowing full-well that her duties are first to her husband, and his own to his family and his fiancé in Thailand.  This is the context as the friendship between the two blossoms. She confesses to him that she is in a marriage that is unlikely to develop a true love due to the difference in age; she even confesses that Napporn is her best friend.  And in the process Napporn becomes infatuated with her, and in a private space at the park at Mitake, he steals a passionate embrace and kiss from the older woman, while confessing his love to her. He pleads with her that she reciprocate his love, but she avoids the question.  Mom Ratchawong Kirati, despite Napporn’s entreaties, refuses to confess that she too loves the forbidden Napporn and entreats him to look at her as an older sister.

 

The Healing Effects of Time and Duty

Behind the Painting is particularly effective in expressing the heartbreak of such youthful love on Napporn, a conviction quickly described by in a dialog between the two (p. 132):

Kirati: “….I shall consider you a friend for life”

Napporn protests “But I shall gone on loving you, all of my life.”

Kirati: That is your choice, of course; but in time, you will renounce that right, and you will do it of our own accord.

Napporn: I know otherwise

Kirati: The very young have such faith in themselves; I congratulate you on that enviable faith, Napporn.

 

Within days of her departure, Napporn writes Mom Rachawong Kirati two long love letters, which she receives after her return to Bangkok.  In her response Mom Rachawong Kirati again protests that there relationship be that of an older sister and younger brother, a common and appropriate relationship in Thai society.  And her protestations are successful—Napporn’s letters from Japan to Thailand become less frequent, and eventually are only sent at the rate of about three per year. Napporn’s love does indeed wane, as indeed Mom Ratchawong Kirati predicted.  This slow-down even continues after the death Chao Khun two years later, an event that leads the widowed Mom Rachawong Kirati to withdraw from society, and become a recluse in an aristocratic Bangkok neighborhood.

But to his surprise, and despite Napporn’s loss of interest, Mom Ratchawong Kirati is among the small group greeting Napporn at the quay upon his return from Japan at age 28, as indeed is his father, and a strange woman he doesn’t even recognize as his long-waiting fiancé.  Thus, the relationship between Napporn and Mom Ratchawong Kirati is re-established as she wished as that between an older sister and younger brother; for Napporn at least, the infatuation of his youth died as indeed she predicted it would.  His father’s arrangement for Napporn’s wedding proceeds, and Mom Ratchawong Kirati is invited; it is only at the last minute that she cannot attend due to ill-health.

Thus as a married man, Napporn strives to create a loving relationship with his new wife.  But then unexpectedly, Mom Ratchawong Kirati calls her old friend Napporn to her bed where she presents him with a painting—of that glen in Mitake where he so passionately kissed her.  Near death she mysteriously explains: “Your love was born there and it died there, but loves thrives in another body—one that is ruined and soon will be no more.”  And indeed, Napporn was called to her deathbed seven days later where, unable to speak, she scrawls on a piece of paper tragic words that are central to Thai romantic literature “Though I die with no one to love me, still my heart is full…for I die loving someone.”

 

Love, Marriage, and Duty in Behind the Painting

Mom Ratchawong Kirati’s story is a well-known in Thai literature, Thai film, and is required reading in schools.  It is important because indeed, Thai society often wrestles with the tension between familial duty, and matters of the heart.  In describing this tension, it is apparent that the conservative nature of Thai society is not simply the result of pseudo-Victorian sensibilities that the Thai aristocracy brought back from Europe (or Japan).

An alternative interpretation is that such literature is also about the virtue found in denial of self, and duty to a broader social honor.  Notably such themes are central to the doctrines of Theravada Buddhism which then, as now, permeate Thai society.

Thus, as much as being about love lost, Behind the Painting is also about duty fulfilled—albeit at a steep cost in terms of the immediate happiness of Napporn and Mom Rachawong Kirati.  Or as Mom Ratchawong Kirati beseeches Napporn “Napporn, I beg you to believe that you must confront reality and only reality; let it be your judge and your guide in life.  Idealism is far more attractive—but believe me, it is of little worth in practice.”  Napporn’s response is not that of the scorned, but of one who believes in the wisdom of such self-denial.  Napporn responds in a fashion which seems, ironically quite modern in the context of the changed status of women, and not as a scorned lover: “I realized that I was looking into the eyes of a woman so intelligent and so wise that I could not begin to follow her.  Such a woman should have been a great figure in history, not merely Khunying Kirati.”

 

Reference

Siburapha (1938/2000).  Behind the Painting, and Other Stories, translated from the Thai and introduced by David Smyth. Silkworm Books: Chiangmai.

 

 

 

Explaining why people do things, even when it doesn’t seem reasonable to an American undergraduate is what I do for a living.  I’ve explained why people don’t agree with their political views, the persistence of “irrational habits,” why most people don’t want to move to America, why poverty persists in a world of abundance, and a whole bunch of things that the many undergraduates do not want to believe.  And after I’m done they undergraduates still don’t generally understand how people could have such persistent beliefs and practices which to them are just not logical.

I’m always looking for ways to explain to the American undergraduates why people are different, or just not “logical” by American standards.  And I found a new way to do this in a village of Mlabri people here in Thailand where I took eight American undgraduates last weekend, where an American missionaries Bunyuen Suksanae and his wife Wassana have been working for the last 30 years.  For anthropologists, the Mlabri are particularly interesting because until recently a big part of their economy was in hunting and gathering.  Indeed until the early 1980s about the time Bunyuen and Wassana first made contact with them, the Mlabri had an economy which included hunting, gathering, and laboring for local farmers in exchange for clothing.  They moved frequently, as hunter gatherers do, and were often victimized by the more powerful horticultural people in the area.

Since the early 1980s, the Mlabri have “settled” into four settlements in Nan and Phrae Provinces of Thailand; in one of these the Suksanae’s live with the Mlabri.  By settling down, the Mlabri moved into concrete block houses, gained access to health care, sent their children to school, and begun to participate in the local economy.  Still, though, the Mlabri retain many of the cultural characteristics associated with hunters and gatherers.  They are skilled in the ways of the forest, and will often spend time in the remaining forest seeking food.  They also remain in exploitative relationships with local farmers, even though land is now available to them for farming.

Last week when we visited the Mlabri Village with eight American undergraduates, the question inevitably came from the students, who asked Bunyuen: “Why don’t the Mlabri simply adopt the ways of the neighboring groups, and take up farming, sending their children to school, and so forth?” Bunyuen had pointed out that the Mlabri did things like abandoning fields due to fears of spirits, were unwilling to challenge non-payment by “employers,” reluctant to accept (and plant) readily available agricultural land, and disappear from the village at any sign of conflict.  Bunyuen pointed out that such practices are normal for a group which had recently lived in the forest.

In response Bunyuen asked the students to quickly clasp their hands together, an action they undertake many times every day.  Then he asked them which thumb was on top.  Of the six of us who were sitting there, four of us had the thumb from the right hand on top, and two of us had the thumb from the left hand.  Then Bunyuen said, “quick now pull apart your hands, and clasp them quickly together while putting the other thumb on top!”  In doing this, our hands quickly got tangled up in new ways.  “Now,” he said, you know why it is so hard for the Mlabri to change many habits, even when it would be advantageous (at least from an American undergraduate perspective) to doso.

For readers with a more social theoretical background, Bunyuen was describing what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “habitus”.  Habitus are the various dispositions of perception, thought, interaction, and values we as individuals develop in response to the practical conditions we encounter as we are mature.  Such habitus often have an unthinking automaticity to them, just like when we automatically put a particular thumb on top when folding our hands together.  The Mlabri have such habitus too, developed in the context of their decades or centuries of hunting andgathering.  Much of this habitus is different from what my American undergraduates habitually assume to be “rational”.  But isn’t such automaticity normal?  Remember how difficult it was to put the opposite thumb on the top?

 

Karen Connelly was a Rotary Exchange student in Phrae Province, northern Thailand, in 1986-1987 as a 16 and 17 year old. She published an enchanting memoir about her experiences in Phrae Province Dream of a Thosuand Lives: A Sojourn in Thailand in 1993, a book that won the coveted Governor General’s prize for Canadian Literature.  I can indeed understand well why the book won the prize.  Her descriptions of Phrae bring alive the world of northern Thailand in the 1980s.  She describes well work elephants, water buffaloes, rice fields, the unusual food she ate (chicken feet!), and the beautiful Buddhist temples. Accordingly, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Thailand, living abroad, exchange students, or culture shock.

But most effective are Connelly’s descriptions of her relationships with the Thai people she met: her host mother, Rotary Club “fathers,” teachers, friends, and others she met during the year.  In her description, Connelly relates well the difficulties in learning the Thai language, and adapting to the culture of Thailand.  Her capacity to do this in my view is outstanding—and I have special knowledge of this too, because I also lived in Phrae in the early 1980s.  In my case I was a 22-24 year old Peace Corps Volunteer.

Admittedly, when I lived in Phrae, I was different: a little older, and of course male.  Nevertheless, Connelly’s description of life in Phrae, and especially the playful relationships she established with the people of Phrae resonated deeply with me.  So did her frustrations with being a young expatriate in a sea of Thais, as she struggled to learn a difficult language, while dealing with the many stereotypes Thai had about farang, Canada, and the rest of the world.  We also shared a need to separate ourselves from the enthusiastic sociality of Thai society and bury ourselves in books, writing, walks, daydreaming in order to satisfy the western need for a solitude which was inevitably interrupted by Thais concerned that we were “lonely.”

I do though take exception to one point that Connelly makes in an introduction to the book she wrote for the American edition in 2001.  She claims that the world she observed in Thailand in 1986-1987 is now in the past, irretrievably so.  In large part this is because indeed, the charismatic elephants, water buffalo, and rural lifestyles that so enchanted her are disappearing from Thailand. I returned to Thailand in 2010 and 2011, and can agree that this is indeed the case.  There are indeed no more water buffalo in the fields—they have been replaced by various kinds of diesel-powered tractors. (Thai farmers have let me know that the “metal bufallos” are a lot easier to take care of then the real thing, less ornery, and can plow longer without rest and a wallow).  Really all that remains of the enchanting parts Connelly described during her Rotary year are the Buddhist Temples, and the ubiquitous monks in their orange robes. The charismatic elephants are around, but mainly for tourists to whom under-employed mahouts sell rides; no longer are random work elephants found walking down the road, as they were in the 1980s.

But in my eye, the really important things about northern Thailand have not changed as much as she claims.  Especially, the very human elements that Connelly describes so well are still evident.  There is still a playfulness in the relationships between people that is uniquely Thai.  There is also an open curiousness about the rest of the world couched in many of the same stereotypes Connelly and I dealt with in the 1980s.  The Thai are also just as quick to laugh, and have fun.  I suspect that they are just as quick to worry about expatriates who enjoy the solitude of a walk, or time alone with a notebook writing letters and diaries, too.

 

 

 

I think that there is a difference between the nature of policing and the military rooted in the nature of legitimacy.  But does the US government in fighting in Afghanistan really understand this too?  See the discussion at CurrentIntelligence.net, where I posted “Differentiating Between Police and Military Action.”  Find out what Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the DC sniper, and the Unabomber all have in common.

     Mark Dawson commented on his Facebook page about attending the International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans this year, and promises to write something for this blog later this week.  This brought back memories to me.  I attended the ISA meetings about ten years ago in the hope that they would be interested in my research about the nature of NGOs and refugee assistance in Africa.  I was interested in what were the best ways to deliver refugee aid in a fashion which was efficient, effective, and culturally appropriate.  Sociology, which is where my Ph.D. is from, was nominally my platform; however, sociology has never done particularly with international in general, and Africa in particular.  As a result I was open to other approaches at the time, which is why I went to the ISA meetings first in Washington, D.C. (1999), and later in New Orleans (2002).

      Wobbly about being a sociologist, I though that International Relations or maybe even anthropology, might suit me better.  The ISA meetings disabused me of my pretensions that that might be the field for me, as described here.  At the ISA, I found very few sessions interested in my brand of culturally appropriate NGO refugee assistance work.  Instead, there was emphasis on things like monetary policy, trade balances, military alliances, diplomacy, nuclear deterrence, and the uses of rational choice theory.  Few of them addressed issues of culture in a fashion reflecting my experiences in Tanzania.  Instead, culture seemed to be included simply as one of several quantified independent variables in a regression equation, or as a condition frustrating attempts at social engineering.  In other words, the conference addressed issues of International Relations, which I guess is fair enough given the nature of the International Studies Association.  Most sessions seemed to use some form of higher mathematics, and few dealt with NGOs, or culture as an interesting phenomenon for its own sake.  Many of the talks were about how to achieve foreign policy goals. 

      The highlight of my two ISA conferences was an invite to a side-meeting about the Nigerian elections of 1999 in Washington DC.  I had met a visitor from the Congressional Hunger Center in 1996 while working as a field worker with refugees in Tanzania.  I ran into him at the conference, and he asked me to come to a meeting about the coming elections in Nigeria which was being held at Congressional Hunger Center; there was concern in the US government that a humanitarian operation would be needed later that year to alleviate any suffering resulting from potential election violence.  I like the idea of such contingency planning, and agreed to come.  He asked me to come as a “representative” of NGOs, of whom there were to be few there.

       The meeting was chaired by a former ambassador of some sort, who asked us to introduce ourselves.  There were twenty or so of us in the room and, as it turned out only two of us from NGOs, myself formerly of Lutheran World Federation where I was pretty low on the totem pole, and a Vice President of some sort from World Vision.  The rest were from US government agencies of various kinds, including the Defense Department, USAID, National Security Agency, Congress, Department of State, and so forth.  The other NGO guy and I were the only ones there not in suit and tie.  We were also the only ones not dropping names of White House contacts, or mumbling about how we had such-and-such a security clearance from the US government buyt didn’t know what was happening in Nigeria.  I didn’t drop such information because I hadn’t known before that day known such things existed.  The main complaint from all the government guys was that despite their high level security clearances, they did not know what was happening in Nigeria.

       The only useful purpose I served was when one of the suits with a high security clearance asked me how I would find out what was going on in Nigeria.  I told him that I would ask a missionary, Peace Corps Volunteer, NGO worker, or someone living in the area.  There was then a long discussion about how US aid should be tied to requirements that NGOs, etc., be required to provide information to the spooks in the field.  I told them that many NGO-types would communicate such information to no one other than their bosses within the NGO.  And that anyway, most of us liked to avoid being thought of as branches of the US government.  (I didn’t use the word “spies” but thought it).

      Anyway, I never heard again from the Congressional Hunger Committee, or other such agency.  I guess that I was just not their type of guy.  I also stopped going to the ISA mainly because I realized that there wasn’t a focus on the way I saw the world, so why bother?  That doesn’t mean that I always see eye to eye with sociological or anthropological meetings, or journals.  But at least there are plenty of sessions exploring questions using a similar world view.  I guess that is why I am a sociologist who writes on an anthropology blog.