Roadside Memorials in Northeastern Thailand

Datos Bibliográficos

ID13628799
AutoresErik Cohen (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen66
Número4
Páginas343-363
Fecha de publicación2013-04-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaOMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2190/om.66.4.e
PMID23785985
OpenAlexW2050996812
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas20

In Thailand spirit houses are often established at places of fatal accidents, but these are generally anonymous. Personalized roadside memorials for accident victims are rare. This article analyses three roadside memorials, located on main roads in northeastern Thailand, in a comparative framework. Like in the contemporary West, such memorials commemorate a suddenly and violently killed person, but manifest a dynamics very different from that of Western roadside memorials: rather than private and temporary, these are permanent shrines, in which the spirit of the deceased is worshipped and supplicated by members of the public. The spirits and their shrines tend to become incorporated into the popular Thai magico-religious complex. While the literature offers a binary distinction between formal public monuments and informal, private and temporary (roadside) memorials, it is suggested that the informal, but public and permanent memorial shrines in Thailand exemplify a third type of edifices to commemorate the deceased in road accidents

Accident (philosophy · Geography · Asian Studies and History · History · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies