Buddhist Revitalization, Modernization, and Social Change in Contemporary Thailand

Abstract

This paper provides both an overview and an analysis of contemporary Thai Buddhism and the changing nature of its traditional relationship with the state. It argues that in recent times as modern urban Thai society has become increasingly differentiated, it has started to question the totalizing and instrumental politicoreligious and moral dimensions of national civic religion. Attention is focused in particular on the expanding and autonomous urban middle-class which led to the emergence of a new cultural gestalt, a reformulation of traditional values and conceptions of social order. Importantly, this social class engendered new fundamentalistic Buddhist movements since the 1960s as a challenge to state hegemony. As a consequence of some thirty years of uneven national development, a number of active rural and urban monks are now confronting such immediate concerns as the stresses and anxieties of urbanization, rural marginalization, and environmental degradation. This, the author suggests, is helping to reshape and redefine conventional religious soteriologies. In this paper the author discusses modern events in Thai civic religion1