Taboos in Modern Thailand (Part 1)
by sabriye tenberken
Life and work in an intercultural context, as we experience it here at the kanthari Institute, is very inspiring. But if one is not prepared for this diverse atmosphere, it can also backfire and thus end in utter chaos.
For this reason, in the first weeks of the campus-internal programme, we mainly focus on intercultural dialogue. Every year, in a new unique way, we create a new culture with its own set of rules, a jointly developed code of conduct, processes for conflict resolution, and agreed patterns of behaviour in critical situations.
Every year there are new participants, often with, for us, a completely new cultural background. Each culture has its own surprises and so we learn more and more about regional customs, behavioral patterns and we learn about taboos. During one of these workshops, Ruangtup Kaeokamechun, kanthari graduate of 2018, compared taboos from different cultures. And it was only then that I realized how much societies are controlled by taboos and superstitious beliefs.
Ruang is from Thailand, a country often referred to by Thais living overseas as a “dictatorship with a smile”
Critical thinking, challenging the status quo, and freedom of expression are seen as undesirable foreign influences in modern Thailand. In the kanthari program, however, critical questioning is part of many of our activities.
Most of our Thai participants initially have a problem with critical thinking and direct feedback. For them, all criticism appears to be first of all negative, rarely constructive. Ruang is very different. Perhaps it was her parents who, being teachers and interested in modern child-education, were anxious for Ruang and her brother to ask questions and form an opinion of their own. Reading was an important part of opinion-forming. They regularly took the two children to a bookstore to pick an interesting children’s book.
Yoshimi, a Japanese kanthari graduate of the first generation of 2009, told us that while literacy is extremely high in Thailand, children and adults alike do not read out of interest and fun, but only for study and schooling. Therefore, Yoshimi – a passionate bookworm – went to Thailand after the kanthari Program and set up libraries to encourage people to read in a cozy atmosphere.
(http://alwaysreadingcaravan.org/)
Ruang welcomes Yoshimi’s initiative, but worries that there aren’t many relevant children’s books in Thai for children. As a child, she ran out of reading material all too quickly, so she read almost everything that she could get hold of. This was perhaps the reason why Ruang became a critical thinker.
A recent article in “The Cloud” describes how she began to question the school and all the learned norms. She asked questions about society, individuality and the many taboos that control the everyday life of both children and adults in Thailand.
When Ruang introduced the subject of taboos to the kanthari curriculum, the term was initially confused with superstition. And indeed, taboos and superstitions often go hand in hand. But there is a crucial difference. While superstition (supernatural influences) may well be a topic of conversations, a taboo is removed from any discussion as if it doesn’t exist.
The number of taboos varies from country to country.
Ruang once asked me to list some German taboos. Off the top of my head I could only point out the following few: It is rude to ask about a person’s salary and to mention if someone suffers from incontinence.
Ruang, however, listed a number of taboos that restrict everyday life in Thailand:
One would not talk about parents getting divorced and or the issue of disability.
Since homosexuality is generally tolerated by society, I was surprised that the issue of LGBTQ rights and same-sex marriage was one of the taboo topics Ruang mentioned.
A big taboo topic is sex and thus also sex education in school. This also astonished me, because the rather disturbing topic of sex tourism is primarily associated with Thailand. I therefore believed that Thai culture would be a society that was quite sexually liberal.
Thailand is known for its crackdown on any criticism of the royal family. This even goes so far as to prohibit the dirtying of a bank note printed with the portrait of the king.
And then there is the unwritten law of not talking about the deaths of family members, friends or even pets.
When Ruang was 12 years old, her father died. But she and her brother were not allowed to join the funeral. No one spoke to them about the death of their father.
And when Ruang wanted to take comfort from children’s books, she realized that here, too, the subject of death was excluded. It was at that moment she decided something had to change.
Today, she’s living a life dedicated to children. Together with artists, she works on modern children’s books, online games, songs and a website – in short, she works with media through which children can learn about everyday norms and topics that are taboo. Ruang and her colleagues hope that this will open doors to a new, more open-minded world.
The “Hinghoy Noy” (little firefly) website, sheds light on the things that frighten children, not because they are dangerous, but because they remain unspoken, in the dark.
Ruang is now known nationwide for her courageous commitment. From the online Thai article in The Cloud, I learned about “the little Firefly club,” a digital platform that children can escape to. In an anonymous chat room, they can talk openly about everything.
Ruang would call herself an “artivist”, a purple kanthari.
At kanthari,we classify the different motives of our participants from green (initiators), to yellow (inventors), orange (entrepreneurs), red (activists), to purple kantharis, those who make a difference through creativity and art.
She organizes exhibitions together with artists. In one exhibition, visitors enter a classroom with tables, benches and a blackboard. Children are allowed to design the space by ripping pages out of schoolbooks to write their own ideas, worries and frustrations. These pages are then folded into paper planes and hung on threads throughout the exhibition space.
Ruang is quoted in “The Cloud” saying: “Most people believe that children are not able to understand complex matters. I don’t think so. We must finally trust in their abilities.”