Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Craft, Currencies, and Ritual Orders in a Northern Thai village

Møller, Henrik Kloppenborg LU (2015)
Abstract
The blog post discusses interactions between two different ritual, and monetary orders in a woodcarving village in northern Thailand. The first order ties together woodcarvers, traders, and buyers through the medium of several monetary currencies. People donate money in a woodcarving company to wooden figurines of Jesus, the Fo, Guanyin, Guang Gong commonly worshipped in China, and, most prominently, the Hindu God Ganesh. The monetary donations manifest the belief in the ability of Ganesh in bringing luck in craftsmanship and in business, and includes a variety of bills, including US Dollar, alongside various European, and Asian currencies. The money bills are collected and used to finance the annual Ganesh ritual, which conjures the... (More)
The blog post discusses interactions between two different ritual, and monetary orders in a woodcarving village in northern Thailand. The first order ties together woodcarvers, traders, and buyers through the medium of several monetary currencies. People donate money in a woodcarving company to wooden figurines of Jesus, the Fo, Guanyin, Guang Gong commonly worshipped in China, and, most prominently, the Hindu God Ganesh. The monetary donations manifest the belief in the ability of Ganesh in bringing luck in craftsmanship and in business, and includes a variety of bills, including US Dollar, alongside various European, and Asian currencies. The money bills are collected and used to finance the annual Ganesh ritual, which conjures the local community, while contributing in increasing the prestige and business of the organizer. A second ritual held a few weeks later constitutes a cycle that is narrower in terms of its social and monetary diversity, but wider in temporal extension. The participants are employees and core suppliers of the woodcarving company. Here, money earned through market transactions of woodcarvings are injected into a wider temporal order by being donated to a Buddhist temple, and thus contributes in maintaining throughout time a wider religious order through the temple. In that sense, currencies from donations and market transactions are converted into ritual and market spheres in different ways and temporal stages. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Other contribution
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Thailand, woodcarving, Ritual objects, animism, agency, performativity, relaional epistemology, money, ritual, Craft, Currency
categories
Popular Science
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Henrik Kloppenborg Møller is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology, Lund University. Møller has done long-term fieldwork among Chinese vendors of counterfeit goods in Shanghai and among jade carvers and traders in southwest China and northern Myanmar.
id
03b66b1b-581c-488c-b54a-d26abb58fb53
alternative location
http://www.asiaportal.info/craft-currencies-and-ritual-orders-in-a-northern-thai-village-2/
date added to LUP
2017-11-21 17:27:14
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:36:11
@misc{03b66b1b-581c-488c-b54a-d26abb58fb53,
  abstract     = {{The blog post discusses interactions between two different ritual, and monetary orders in a woodcarving village in northern Thailand. The first order ties together woodcarvers, traders, and buyers through the medium of several  monetary currencies. People donate money in a woodcarving company to wooden figurines of Jesus, the Fo, Guanyin, Guang Gong commonly worshipped in China, and, most prominently, the Hindu God Ganesh. The monetary donations manifest the belief in the ability of Ganesh in bringing luck in craftsmanship and in business, and includes a variety of bills, including US Dollar, alongside various European, and Asian currencies. The money bills are collected and used to finance the annual Ganesh ritual, which conjures the local community, while contributing in increasing the prestige and business of the organizer. A second ritual held a few weeks later constitutes a cycle that is narrower in terms of its social and monetary diversity, but  wider in temporal extension. The participants are  employees and core suppliers of the woodcarving company. Here, money earned through market transactions of woodcarvings are injected into a wider temporal order by being donated to a Buddhist temple, and thus contributes in maintaining throughout time a wider religious order through the temple. In that sense, currencies from donations and market transactions are converted into ritual and market spheres in different ways and temporal stages.}},
  author       = {{Møller, Henrik Kloppenborg}},
  keywords     = {{Thailand; woodcarving; Ritual objects, animism, agency, performativity, relaional epistemology; money; ritual; Craft; Currency}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{09}},
  title        = {{Craft, Currencies, and Ritual Orders in a Northern Thai village}},
  url          = {{http://www.asiaportal.info/craft-currencies-and-ritual-orders-in-a-northern-thai-village-2/}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}