Paul T Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 72559 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul T Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul T |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN P T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Paradigm Conflict: Village Health Volunteers and Public Health in Thailand
Reformist doctors in Thailand have combined to create a primary health care system in rural areas in which village health volunteers play a major role. Consistent with the WHO whole-of-society approach, these doctors have envisaged a decentralised system that emphasises volunteers as community oriented, self-reliant agents of change. Our ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, reveals that these ideals of village health volunteer empowerme…
Western and Traditional Medicine in India, Myanmar and Thailand: Engagement and Contestation
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
Grant Evans: Political engagement and intellectual legacy
Reflections on Grant Evans’ The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975
In this article I reflect on Grant Evans’ landmark and influential The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975 , the way in which this book relates to the transformation from socialism to post‐socialism in the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( LPDR ), to the crisis of legitimacy of the communist regime, and to issues of social memory, Buddhism, nationalism, iconography, and ethnic minorities. I also consider how other scholars have e…
The death of a Northern Thai hermit: A case study of religious transition and schism in a Buddhist community
This article examines the life and death of Phra Pho Pan, a charismatic hermit of northern Thailand whose Buddhist beliefs and utopian philosophy reflect the dissident holy man (ton bun) tradition of Lanna Buddhism and, in particular, that of the renowned forest monks Khruba Siwichai and Khruba Khao Pi. Phra Pho Pan's death in 2016 has led to a radical shift in the religious affiliation of his hermitage. I argue that a major agent of this transfo…
Fields of Desire: Poverty and Policy in Laos
High's argument is based on long-term fieldwork in a village in Laos. The village was identified as poor and was the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development interventions. This book looks at how these policies were implemented on the ground, particularly at why such apparently beneficent interventions were received locally with suspicion and disillusionment, often ended in failure, and yet, despite this, were also able to recapture …
Symbolic dimensions of the anti‐opium campaign in Laos
This article is concerned with the campaign to eradicate opium consumption and cultivation among highland minorities of northern Laos. The campaign has attracted political explanations that emphasise external pressure and enticements from the United States and the United Nations as part of the global War on Drugs. I argue that such explanations ignore the symbolic aspects of the domestic process of Laoisation in post‐socialist Laos that has margi…
From Moral Regeneration to Confrontation: Two Paths to Equality in the Political Rhetoric of a Northern Thai Peasant Leader
Paeng Baan: The Purification and Regeneration of a Village in Northern Thailand
A Bodhisattva on Horseback: Buddhist Ethics and Pragmatism in Northern Thailand
In Theravada Buddhism temporal power is viewed as indispensible to the creation of political and economic conditions for spiritiual advancement. But it is a necessary evil. The Buddhist response to the misuse of power is to subordinate it to Buddhist ethics and to deny politics autonomy from religion. Yut, in Buddhist Thailand, there is another tradition which justifies pragmatism and even the use of force. This paper concerns a local leader in N…
The post-opium scenario and rubber in northern Laos: Alternative Western and Chinese models of development
Are the Spirit Cults of Northern Thailand Descent Groups
Opium‐Reduction Programmes, Discourses of Addiction and Gender in Northwest Laos
In Muang Sing district of northwest Laos, a community- based detoxification programme was recently launched among the highland Akha. The Akha grow almost all the poppy in the district and have high rates of opium addiction. Whereas the attitude of the Akha to opium is generally one of ambivalence, the detoxification programme portrays opium in unambiguously negative terms, with the consequent inculcation of an addict identity and a strong sense o…
Buddhism Unshackled: The Yuan ‘Holy Man’ Tradition and the Nation-State in the Tai World
Yuan Buddhism is a particular variant of Theravada Buddhism that prevails among the Tai-speaking people of the upper Mekong region. A salient feature of Yuan Buddhism is belief in ‘holy men’ who gain renown for their charismatic attributes and construction of religious monuments. I argue in this article that the modern ‘holy man’ tradition, initiated by the forest monk Khruba Siwichai, is a form of religious revivalism that combines the bodhisatt…
A Buddha Kingdom in the Golden Triangle: Buddhist Revivalism and the Charismatic Monk Khruba Bunchum
Khruba Bunchum Yanasangwaror, despite his youth, has already been proclaimed by many, in the Yuan Buddhist world of the upper Mekong region, to be a ton bun ('source of merit'). His charismatic reputation derives from his ascetic virtues, his assumed accumulation of merit in past lives and his Bodhisattva-like compassion for others. His compassion is expressed through dedication to the building of religious monuments that allows the laity to acqu…
Communal Irrigation, State, and Capital in the Chiang Mai Valley (Northern Thailand): Twentieth-Century Transformations
Transformations this century in communal irrigation in the Chiang Mai Valley, northern Thailand, are examined under the impact of political and economic changes such as state centralization, the intensification of capitalist agriculture, and urbanization. An anthropological political economy perspective is applied in placing anthropological subjects (irrigation weir communities and their leaders) at the intersection of local, national and global …
Robert William MacKenzie [1933–1992]
Briefly noted
Archie R. Crouch, Scholars’ Guide to China Mission Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States, Fascicle 1: Pennsylvania, Princeton Theological Seminary/Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1983. 84 pp. US$19.50. Kibbey M. Horne, Chinese Food For The Modern Marco Polo, Chinese Materials Center Publications, Asian Library Series No. 43, San Francisco, 1986. viii, 270 pp. Paper: n.p.g. Luke S.K. Kwong, A Mosaic of the…
Further conferences
Opium and the Karen: A Study of Indebtedness in Northern Thailand
This paper examines a system of economic relations in Northern Thailand linking Karen and Hmong communities in the western highlands with traders from the lowlands. I shall describe the salient features of this tripartite system as it existed in the late 1960s and argue that it was essentially a product of opium cultivation and commerce. I also argue that it contributed towards a serious level of indebtedness among Karen and that this indebtednes…
Obituary
Buddhism Unshackled: The Yuan ‘Holy Man’ Tradition and the Nation-State in the Tai World
Yuan Buddhism is a particular variant of Theravada Buddhism that prevails among the Tai-speaking people of the upper Mekong region. A salient feature of Yuan Buddhism is belief in ‘holy men’ who gain renown for their charismatic attributes and construction of religious monuments. I argue in this article that the modern ‘holy man’ tradition, initiated by the forest monk Khruba Siwichai, is a form of religious revivalism that combines the bodhisatt…
Are the Spirit Cults of Northern Thailand Descent Groups
Opium‐Reduction Programmes, Discourses of Addiction and Gender in Northwest Laos
In Muang Sing district of northwest Laos, a community- based detoxification programme was recently launched among the highland Akha. The Akha grow almost all the poppy in the district and have high rates of opium addiction. Whereas the attitude of the Akha to opium is generally one of ambivalence, the detoxification programme portrays opium in unambiguously negative terms, with the consequent inculcation of an addict identity and a strong sense o…
Fields of Desire: Poverty and Policy in Laos
High's argument is based on long-term fieldwork in a village in Laos. The village was identified as poor and was the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development interventions. This book looks at how these policies were implemented on the ground, particularly at why such apparently beneficent interventions were received locally with suspicion and disillusionment, often ended in failure, and yet, despite this, were also able to recapture …
Communal Irrigation, State, and Capital in the Chiang Mai Valley (Northern Thailand): Twentieth-Century Transformations
Transformations this century in communal irrigation in the Chiang Mai Valley, northern Thailand, are examined under the impact of political and economic changes such as state centralization, the intensification of capitalist agriculture, and urbanization. An anthropological political economy perspective is applied in placing anthropological subjects (irrigation weir communities and their leaders) at the intersection of local, national and global …
Opium and the Karen: A Study of Indebtedness in Northern Thailand
This paper examines a system of economic relations in Northern Thailand linking Karen and Hmong communities in the western highlands with traders from the lowlands. I shall describe the salient features of this tripartite system as it existed in the late 1960s and argue that it was essentially a product of opium cultivation and commerce. I also argue that it contributed towards a serious level of indebtedness among Karen and that this indebtednes…
Paradigm Conflict: Village Health Volunteers and Public Health in Thailand
Reformist doctors in Thailand have combined to create a primary health care system in rural areas in which village health volunteers play a major role. Consistent with the WHO whole-of-society approach, these doctors have envisaged a decentralised system that emphasises volunteers as community oriented, self-reliant agents of change. Our ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, reveals that these ideals of village health volunteer empowerme…
Western and Traditional Medicine in India, Myanmar and Thailand: Engagement and Contestation
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
The death of a Northern Thai hermit: A case study of religious transition and schism in a Buddhist community
This article examines the life and death of Phra Pho Pan, a charismatic hermit of northern Thailand whose Buddhist beliefs and utopian philosophy reflect the dissident holy man (ton bun) tradition of Lanna Buddhism and, in particular, that of the renowned forest monks Khruba Siwichai and Khruba Khao Pi. Phra Pho Pan's death in 2016 has led to a radical shift in the religious affiliation of his hermitage. I argue that a major agent of this transfo…
A Bodhisattva on Horseback: Buddhist Ethics and Pragmatism in Northern Thailand
In Theravada Buddhism temporal power is viewed as indispensible to the creation of political and economic conditions for spiritiual advancement. But it is a necessary evil. The Buddhist response to the misuse of power is to subordinate it to Buddhist ethics and to deny politics autonomy from religion. Yut, in Buddhist Thailand, there is another tradition which justifies pragmatism and even the use of force. This paper concerns a local leader in N…
Obituary
Opium and the Karen: A Study of Indebtedness in Northern Thailand
This paper examines a system of economic relations in Northern Thailand linking Karen and Hmong communities in the western highlands with traders from the lowlands. I shall describe the salient features of this tripartite system as it existed in the late 1960s and argue that it was essentially a product of opium cultivation and commerce. I also argue that it contributed towards a serious level of indebtedness among Karen and that this indebtednes…
Briefly noted
Archie R. Crouch, Scholars’ Guide to China Mission Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States, Fascicle 1: Pennsylvania, Princeton Theological Seminary/Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1983. 84 pp. US$19.50. Kibbey M. Horne, Chinese Food For The Modern Marco Polo, Chinese Materials Center Publications, Asian Library Series No. 43, San Francisco, 1986. viii, 270 pp. Paper: n.p.g. Luke S.K. Kwong, A Mosaic of the…
Further conferences
Robert William MacKenzie [1933–1992]
Communal Irrigation, State, and Capital in the Chiang Mai Valley (Northern Thailand): Twentieth-Century Transformations
Transformations this century in communal irrigation in the Chiang Mai Valley, northern Thailand, are examined under the impact of political and economic changes such as state centralization, the intensification of capitalist agriculture, and urbanization. An anthropological political economy perspective is applied in placing anthropological subjects (irrigation weir communities and their leaders) at the intersection of local, national and global …
A Buddha Kingdom in the Golden Triangle: Buddhist Revivalism and the Charismatic Monk Khruba Bunchum
Khruba Bunchum Yanasangwaror, despite his youth, has already been proclaimed by many, in the Yuan Buddhist world of the upper Mekong region, to be a ton bun ('source of merit'). His charismatic reputation derives from his ascetic virtues, his assumed accumulation of merit in past lives and his Bodhisattva-like compassion for others. His compassion is expressed through dedication to the building of religious monuments that allows the laity to acqu…
Buddhism Unshackled: The Yuan ‘Holy Man’ Tradition and the Nation-State in the Tai World
Yuan Buddhism is a particular variant of Theravada Buddhism that prevails among the Tai-speaking people of the upper Mekong region. A salient feature of Yuan Buddhism is belief in ‘holy men’ who gain renown for their charismatic attributes and construction of religious monuments. I argue in this article that the modern ‘holy man’ tradition, initiated by the forest monk Khruba Siwichai, is a form of religious revivalism that combines the bodhisatt…
Opium‐Reduction Programmes, Discourses of Addiction and Gender in Northwest Laos
In Muang Sing district of northwest Laos, a community- based detoxification programme was recently launched among the highland Akha. The Akha grow almost all the poppy in the district and have high rates of opium addiction. Whereas the attitude of the Akha to opium is generally one of ambivalence, the detoxification programme portrays opium in unambiguously negative terms, with the consequent inculcation of an addict identity and a strong sense o…
The post-opium scenario and rubber in northern Laos: Alternative Western and Chinese models of development
Are the Spirit Cults of Northern Thailand Descent Groups
From Moral Regeneration to Confrontation: Two Paths to Equality in the Political Rhetoric of a Northern Thai Peasant Leader
Paeng Baan: The Purification and Regeneration of a Village in Northern Thailand
A Bodhisattva on Horseback: Buddhist Ethics and Pragmatism in Northern Thailand
In Theravada Buddhism temporal power is viewed as indispensible to the creation of political and economic conditions for spiritiual advancement. But it is a necessary evil. The Buddhist response to the misuse of power is to subordinate it to Buddhist ethics and to deny politics autonomy from religion. Yut, in Buddhist Thailand, there is another tradition which justifies pragmatism and even the use of force. This paper concerns a local leader in N…
Symbolic dimensions of the anti‐opium campaign in Laos
This article is concerned with the campaign to eradicate opium consumption and cultivation among highland minorities of northern Laos. The campaign has attracted political explanations that emphasise external pressure and enticements from the United States and the United Nations as part of the global War on Drugs. I argue that such explanations ignore the symbolic aspects of the domestic process of Laoisation in post‐socialist Laos that has margi…
Fields of Desire: Poverty and Policy in Laos
High's argument is based on long-term fieldwork in a village in Laos. The village was identified as poor and was the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development interventions. This book looks at how these policies were implemented on the ground, particularly at why such apparently beneficent interventions were received locally with suspicion and disillusionment, often ended in failure, and yet, despite this, were also able to recapture …
Grant Evans: Political engagement and intellectual legacy
Reflections on Grant Evans’ The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975
In this article I reflect on Grant Evans’ landmark and influential The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975 , the way in which this book relates to the transformation from socialism to post‐socialism in the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( LPDR ), to the crisis of legitimacy of the communist regime, and to issues of social memory, Buddhism, nationalism, iconography, and ethnic minorities. I also consider how other scholars have e…
The death of a Northern Thai hermit: A case study of religious transition and schism in a Buddhist community
This article examines the life and death of Phra Pho Pan, a charismatic hermit of northern Thailand whose Buddhist beliefs and utopian philosophy reflect the dissident holy man (ton bun) tradition of Lanna Buddhism and, in particular, that of the renowned forest monks Khruba Siwichai and Khruba Khao Pi. Phra Pho Pan's death in 2016 has led to a radical shift in the religious affiliation of his hermitage. I argue that a major agent of this transfo…
Western and Traditional Medicine in India, Myanmar and Thailand: Engagement and Contestation
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
Paradigm Conflict: Village Health Volunteers and Public Health in Thailand
Reformist doctors in Thailand have combined to create a primary health care system in rural areas in which village health volunteers play a major role. Consistent with the WHO whole-of-society approach, these doctors have envisaged a decentralised system that emphasises volunteers as community oriented, self-reliant agents of change. Our ethnographic research in Chiang Mai, Thailand, reveals that these ideals of village health volunteer empowerme…
Political science (16 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (16 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works)