Alan Klima
Biographic Data
| ID | 211482 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Klima |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Klima |
| SIGNATURE | KLIMA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 7 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Corpore Obscuro
Objects, reflecting light, press outward from themselves, leaving their imprints on photographic negatives like footprints in the sand. Or, as André Bazin said of the ontology of the photographic image, like the face of a corpse on a death mask. 1 And so is it with Buddhist meditation on death among the nuns and monks in the central Thai monastery of Toong Samakhi Dhamm Temple (Wat Toong). In fact, corpses are of the greatest worth for impressing…
Ethnography #9
As Alan Klima writes in Ethnography #9 , “there are other possible starting places than the earnest realism of anthropological discourse as a method of critical thought.” In this experimental ethnography of capitalism, ghosts, and numbers in mid- and late-twentieth-century Thailand, Klima uses this provocation to deconstruct naive faith in the “real” and in the material in academic discourse that does not recognize that it is, itself, writing. Kl…
Ethnography #9
Spirits of 'Dark Finance' in Thailand
Moral discourses condemning Asian finance since the 1997 Thai currency crash have trickled down to small-time financial practices within informal money markets of Thailand. These practices include personal moneylending, gambling, underground lotteries, and number forecasting by spirit mediums. Moral devaluation of these socially complex practices, even inadvertently by anthropologists who might classify them as 'occult' or as 'casino capitalism',…
Being a Buddhist Nun
American AnthropologistVolume 107, Issue 3 p. 529-530 Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 2005 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.529AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShar…
Thai Love Thai
Since the crash of the Thai baht in 1997, Buddhist mass rituals of money and passion in Thailand are addressing the emotional predicaments of globalization with technologies of community that refigure the nation - from a geo-spatial body into a monetary spirit. Buddhist donation ceremonies, intended to shore up the national currency reserves, as well as mass rites staged to aid the spirit of the nation's leader, represent emerging practices of mo…
The Funeral Casino
The Funeral Casino is a heretical ethnography of the global age. Setting his book within Thailand's pro-democracy movement and the street massacres that accompanied it, Alan Klima offers a strikingly original interpretation of mass-mediated violence through a study of funeral gambling and Buddhist meditation on death. The fieldwork for the book began in 1992, when a freewheeling market of illegal "massacre-imagery" videos blossomed in Bangkok on …
Thai Love Thai
Since the crash of the Thai baht in 1997, Buddhist mass rituals of money and passion in Thailand are addressing the emotional predicaments of globalization with technologies of community that refigure the nation - from a geo-spatial body into a monetary spirit. Buddhist donation ceremonies, intended to shore up the national currency reserves, as well as mass rites staged to aid the spirit of the nation's leader, represent emerging practices of mo…
Spirits of 'Dark Finance' in Thailand
Moral discourses condemning Asian finance since the 1997 Thai currency crash have trickled down to small-time financial practices within informal money markets of Thailand. These practices include personal moneylending, gambling, underground lotteries, and number forecasting by spirit mediums. Moral devaluation of these socially complex practices, even inadvertently by anthropologists who might classify them as 'occult' or as 'casino capitalism',…
Being a Buddhist Nun
American AnthropologistVolume 107, Issue 3 p. 529-530 Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 2005 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.529AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShar…
The Funeral Casino
The Funeral Casino is a heretical ethnography of the global age. Setting his book within Thailand's pro-democracy movement and the street massacres that accompanied it, Alan Klima offers a strikingly original interpretation of mass-mediated violence through a study of funeral gambling and Buddhist meditation on death. The fieldwork for the book began in 1992, when a freewheeling market of illegal "massacre-imagery" videos blossomed in Bangkok on …
Thai Love Thai
Since the crash of the Thai baht in 1997, Buddhist mass rituals of money and passion in Thailand are addressing the emotional predicaments of globalization with technologies of community that refigure the nation - from a geo-spatial body into a monetary spirit. Buddhist donation ceremonies, intended to shore up the national currency reserves, as well as mass rites staged to aid the spirit of the nation's leader, represent emerging practices of mo…
Being a Buddhist Nun
American AnthropologistVolume 107, Issue 3 p. 529-530 Being a Buddhist Nun: The Struggle for Enlightenment in the Himalayas ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author ALAN KLIMA, ALAN KLIMA University of California, DavisSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 2005 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.529AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShar…
Spirits of 'Dark Finance' in Thailand
Moral discourses condemning Asian finance since the 1997 Thai currency crash have trickled down to small-time financial practices within informal money markets of Thailand. These practices include personal moneylending, gambling, underground lotteries, and number forecasting by spirit mediums. Moral devaluation of these socially complex practices, even inadvertently by anthropologists who might classify them as 'occult' or as 'casino capitalism',…
Ethnography #9
As Alan Klima writes in Ethnography #9 , “there are other possible starting places than the earnest realism of anthropological discourse as a method of critical thought.” In this experimental ethnography of capitalism, ghosts, and numbers in mid- and late-twentieth-century Thailand, Klima uses this provocation to deconstruct naive faith in the “real” and in the material in academic discourse that does not recognize that it is, itself, writing. Kl…
Ethnography #9
Corpore Obscuro
Objects, reflecting light, press outward from themselves, leaving their imprints on photographic negatives like footprints in the sand. Or, as André Bazin said of the ontology of the photographic image, like the face of a corpse on a death mask. 1 And so is it with Buddhist meditation on death among the nuns and monks in the central Thai monastery of Toong Samakhi Dhamm Temple (Wat Toong). In fact, corpses are of the greatest worth for impressing…
Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (4 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Buddhism (3 works) · History (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Anthropology (2 works)