From Her Manners to My Identity: A Study of the History of Manners and Bodily Practices in Modern Thailand

• In Event: Exploring the History of Manners in Thailand

Abstract

In Thailand, the period from the 1940s through to the 1960s is often characterized by national development under the influence of the United States. During this time various, often competing, attempts were made and models proposed to form an appropriate mould for emerging social subjects fit for a rapidly modernizing society. This paper focuses critical attention on one particular group: urban women. It examines Kritsana son nong: Naenam marayat thi ngam haeng araya samai, a popular social etiquette manual published in Bangkok in 1961. A comparison between this book and its American source reveals literary mechanisms devised by the author, Santa T. Komolbutra, to negotiate conflicts arising from the domestication of Western-based manners in Thai society. As a result, a text originally produced to promote good manners to young American boys and girls in the 1940s became a sisterly monologue imploring young urban Thai women to become kunlasattri: women with honorable birth and of gentility. By juxtaposing content drawn from Kritsana son nong with oral history accounts given by women growing up in the period, the paper will throw light on the complex negotiations between local and foreign bodily practices. This fact is often overlooked in the history of manners in modern Thai society.

Author

• Juthamas Tangsantikul, Chulalongkorn University