The curse of plastic nationhood

Literature review provides picture of the current state of particular field/topic of studies a researcher is working on. This process may give different loads of work in different subject but however indispensible for preventing another redundant or naive discovery. It somehow looks to be a never ending task, which could be used as justification to prolong this preliminary step. Procrastination! Myself.

It is often interesting to start a book with the Acknowledgment pages where authors elaborate their motives, inspiration and dedication of the work. Some pieces are as simple as to dedicate to their parents, family of their own, friends and beloved ones, or just a list of people of assistances, while somes boast its academic or ideological significances. Notwithstanding its argument or contribution, a book always has a purpose ! Agenda?

Pavin's book (A Plastic Nation: The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations) employed both historical studies and analysis of recent accounts on Thailand's contemporary foreign policy toward Burma.It highlights critical roles of Thailand's nationalism and cultural otherness toward its western neighbors policy. Invention of Burmese Image and and Artfacts of Thainess is argued to be political apparatus for Thai elites in achieving their interest. The celebration of selecting Thai norms and the contestation to international norms by Thai leaders of different periods are scrutinised through three controvercy issues in contemporary relations between Thailand and Burma; Ethnic Insugencies, Drug Trade, and Burma's Admission into ASEAN. Realities the media continues to cover every day.

They say you are what you read. It is hard to deny, perhaps. Pavin's acknowledgement to Thongchai for his influencing deconstruction of Thai nationhood reminds me one personal purpose of taking cause of study, to liberate oneself. Liberty ! Upon finishing A Plastic Nation, I started to assume meaning of the traffic board on his book's cover photo. It suggests readers for a direction, Stop !

"I am grateful to have learned from him [Thongchai Winichakul] that the sense of Thainess imbued in me is in fact mouldable and, in my own terms, rather plastic. And that, a long-established negative attitude toward the Burmese as historical adversary should be elimintaed, and Thai leaders must from now on discontinue to draw the face of a foreign enemy, such as Burma had served for centuries, in order to guarantee their legitimacy. If there were enemies of the Thai state, they were our own Thai leaders with their insatiable greed for private interest."