The worship of the Thai monarchy
1000 Words / Shutterstock.com
Read an article today about the anthropologist Irene Stengs (*1959) who obtained her PhD in 2003 at the University of Amsterdam on the worship of the Thai monarchy. She is affiliated with the Meertens Institute and has been appointed professor of anthropology of ritual and popular culture at the Free University of Amsterdam since last month.
She investigates cultural phenomena and memorial rituals in Dutch society. And what are those rituals, I think to myself. The answer: the Huishoudbeurs, the annual commemoration of André Hazes, the king of the song of life; André Rieu, the king of the Viennese waltz, not to mention Rama V, the former king of Thailand.
“What I found interesting about Hazes is that his career took off enormously after his death and he came to number one posthumously,” says Stengs. Her Thai research mainly focuses on the worship of the monarchy and the role of visual culture in this.
Julius Kielaitis / Shutterstock.com
On 9 November last, Irene Stengs delivered her inaugural lecture at the VU University Amsterdam. When she was writing her text for this this summer, twelve football boys and their coach got lost in a cave in Thailand. From day to day the whole world sympathized with them. This event, which dominated the news for a month in the form of photos, animations, comics and videos, also ended up in Stengs' inaugural lecture. According to the professor, it illustrates par excellence how quickly cultural expressions emerge and change. She calls the way in which such an event is retold in all sorts of ways in word and image popularisation.
And although public opinion is quick to attribute these feelings to high versus low culture, this is much too simplistic, according to the professor. “You can see that, for example, in our research into the Passion. On the one hand, this includes the media spectacle The Passion, a popularized form of the passion story, to which all kinds of people are attracted. The same applies to the Matthew Passion, which also includes popularized forms, such as the sing-along Matthew.”
“A dichotomy between high and low culture therefore does not do justice to reality: popularized culture can go in any direction. In addition, opinions about what is high or low vary widely from one society to another. André Rieu is perhaps considered the flattest of the flattest by so-called connoisseurs of classical music. But in other parts of the world it is top of the bill.”
Stengs conducts research in the Netherlands and Thailand. If you look at the subjects, there is more than enough work for Mrs Stengs to do. And if she gets bored, I can certainly list a few hundred subjects. In the coming year, she is said to be investigating the type of foreign men who are fond of Thai female beauty and the differences between Dutch and Thai women. So men be warned!
Well, Irene Stengs did her research on the worship of the Thai middle class for King Chulalongkorn, Rama 5, not on the worship of the Thai monarchy in general. She did draw a comparison with the veneration for the late King Bhumibol.
Thanks Tino for framing this research 15 years ago.
The article that Joseph Jongen has read is very messy or this professor of anthropology Irene Stengs rakes together a lot of nonsense to make it seem interesting, unimpeded by any knowledge or depth.
You don't have to be a professor to realize that if you are a man over forty in the Netherlands, the women there look at you and treat you as if you have just escaped from a medieval plague.
Now, things are often not all right and wrong with the Thai ladies and their family supporters, but I know plenty of men here who have been particularly lucky in later life. Half a book could be written about the causes, key concepts include: The Thai man is less chaste in the relationship than the farang,
social safety net is missing, culture and behavior and finally the Farang is happy with his Thai beauty, and the Thai woman with the physical security that the farang offers and the continuity of the relationship. Conclusion if everything is right for both a better life ...