Re-centreing the city: Spirits, local wisdom, and urban design at the Three Kings Monument of Chiang Mai

In: Journal of Southeast Asian studies, Band 42, Heft 3, S. 511-531

Abstract

Recent political events, such as the coup of 2006 or the 'Red Shirt' uprisings of 2010 underlined the divisions in Thai society between the provinces and the capital. As one of the world's most primate cities, Bangkok exerts a tremendous political, economic and cultural force upon the rest of Thailand. But how is such pressure interpreted, internalised and/or subverted? In this article, I look at Thailand's second-largest city, Chiang Mai, in Thailand's North, and the struggle to cure an increasing sense of urban crisis and thereby assert the former independent capital's symbolic authority vis-à-vis Bangkok. I examine this by looking at two specific discourses: that of architecture and spirit mediumship. Northern Thai architects attempt to cure Chiang Mai's ills through recourse to the 'cultural heritage' of the city's urban space, while spirit mediums call upon the sacred power of that space in order to restore Chiang Mai's 'lost' prosperity. The focal point for each effort lies at the city's centre: the Three Kings Monument and its surrounding plaza (khuang). Here, each group casts themselves as those most able to put Chiang Mai's past in physical form and thereby ensure Chiang Mai's future. In this article, I examine how ideas of cultural heritage become entwined with magico-religious concepts of power (sak). In each, there is a search for efficacious power in the face of political and cultural domination from Bangkok.