The Vegetarian Festival and the city pillar
The appropriation of a Chinese religious custom for a cult of the Thai civic religion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12724482 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Erik Cohen (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2012-02-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1476-6825 • E-ISSN: 1747-7654 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14766825.2011.637631 |
| OpenAlex | W2007768410 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 21 |
The Krabi Provincial Administrative Organization, in co-operation with the Krabi provincial government (southern Thailand), has since 2006 organized a conjoint street procession of the Chinese shrines in the province, in the course of their Vegetarian Festival, to a prayer at the Krabi City Pillar. Two heretofore unrelated rituals, one a popular Chinese custom, the other a cult of Thai civic religion, with roots in Indian Brahmanism, were thus amalgamated. The conspicuous conjoint procession, bringing together the discrete processions of numerous shrines dispersed throughout the province, transformed the character of the shrines' processions, and superimposed an encompassing Thai cosmography upon the localized cosmic images engendered by the festival rituals in the individual shrines. The spectacular event, featuring pierced or otherwise self-mutilating spirit mediums of the various shrines, made Krabi a potential competitor with the established centers of the festival, Phuket and Trang, for the patronage of domestic and Chinese diasporic devotees; but the ‘gruesome’ and repetitive character of the mediums' performances seems to impair the chances of the conjoint procession of becoming a major attraction for Western tourists. This article relates the context, process and consequences of this appropriation of a popular Chinese custom for a Thai civic cult and discusses it in terms of a comparative framework for the study of change in tourism-related festivals
Advertising · Ancient history · Appropriation · Archaeology · Bazaar · Business · China · Context (archaeology · Cult · Folk religion · Pillar · Procession · Sociology · Tourism · Anthropology · Engineering · History · Philippine History and Culture · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
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Revitalization of Tradition through Social Media
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Roadside Memorials in Northeastern Thailand
The politics of heritage and place-making in Tanmen, China
Spirit mediumship and the state in mainland Southeast Asia
Rethinking Anthropological Models of Spirit Possession and Theravada Buddhism
The Work of Tourism and the Fight for a New Economy
Body Piercing in “Modern Primitivism” and in Thailand's Vegetarian Festival
Let’s be festive
Culture by the Pound
Festivals, Tourism and Social Change
Spirit Possession and Tourism at Thai Festivals A Comparative Study
Pilgrimage and Prostitution
The heterogeneization of a tourist art
Ghosts
Saying the Unsayable
Buddhism, democracy and identity in Thailand
Civil religion in America
Dhamma in Dispute
Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand
Local Culture in the National Arena
New Lines, Shifting Identities
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,64 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2023 (12) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |