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Published on July 29, 2007

When Prof Srisakara Vallibhotama says he prefers "history from below", you might think he means the archaeological excavations he frequents. Actually he means "local" histories - those shared by the people of the community under study - as opposed to "history from above", handed down from the ivory towers of academia and filtered by the established powers-that-be.

Srisakara, a travelling archaeologist and anthropologist, values memory, folklore, traditions and beliefs as the genuine keys to understanding communities.

Local history is living history, he says, because it portrays communities within a generation or two, and through it, we can better understand many other cultures over centuries.

Academics may not like Srisakara because he shuns theories and conventions - his more recent writing has been free of "intellectual scaffolding", as he calls footnotes. But he is, in fact, trying to communicate with people in remote communities, those who are rarely part of Thailand's official history.

Last week that noble outreach earned him Japan's Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize.

"I think in developed countries like Japan, they realise the importance of anthropological work," he says in his office at the Muang Boran publishing house, where he's an adviser as well as the editor of the archaeology and history quarterly Muang Boran Journal.

Coming from a country where anthropology and archaeology are officially blunted, Srisakara was stunned by the award. But he's been in the business of digging up secrets for a long time.

His father, Ajarn Manit Vallibhotama, an expert in Thai archaeology with the government's Fine Arts Department, took him on fieldtrips around the country.

The boy went on to get a bachelor's degree in English and French at Chulalongkorn University and a master's in anthropology at the University of Western Australia, then became a lecturer in archaeology at Silpakorn University, where he remained until his retirement.

Now, at the Muang Boran Journal, he publicises research findings to a wider readership.

The Fukuoka Prize committee cited Srisakara as one of Southeast Asia's leaders in his avocation. "Through his local approach to historiography, he has presented Thai history in an entirely new light," it said.

Srisakara's unconventional style evidently impressed the committee. He is outspoken in deriding academia's uncritical acceptance of Western scholarship, and of the conventional interpretation of Thai history based on royal chronicles.

Of surpassing interest to the committee, though, was his survey of the Northeast's prehistoric past, in which he tracked religious worship much further back than previously believed.

Isaan, rather than always being farmland and little else, emerged as the cradle of a rich civilisation.

Some of Srisakara's findings have been posted on the Internet to international acclaim. He's been lauded for pioneering the use of aerial photography to map ancient settlements including the first city-state, Dvaravati, and the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya dynasties.

The professor is, as well, a keen student of contemporary provincial communities. He has long advocated the establishment of community museums to secure, display and share local knowledge and identity.

Together with the Muang Boran publishing house and the Lek-Prapai Wiriyapan Foundation, he has organised seminars on the socio-cultural impact of fast disappearing communities.

"The discipline of 'local' history has helped create knowledge about the changes that occur inside communities," he says.

"I emphasise experience as the key to compiling the histories of communities, which might contradict the theoretical approach in practice in academic circles.

"Anthropology can help support the study of local histories, and that's what we give to various villages wishing to establish their own museums as a way to recognise their own identity."

Lamenting the government's inadequate support, Srisakara points out that such knowledge would benefit the country in a number of ways. The unrest in the South, he believes, derives from the failure of other Thais to understanding the culture there.

"Our society seems to be heading in the direction where material progress and wealth are on everyone's minds," he says. "Worse, our education system has never taught our children about the country's ethnic diversity."

Meanwhile, Srisakara adds, there are looming environmental dangers and the decline of the family and religious institutions.

"[Thai] Buddhism has become much more supernatural, with all the craziness about the Jatukham amulet."

If that represents the new meaning of religion, he says, it is no longer a respectable institution.

"Social divisiveness is another noticeable trend.

"Everyone seems to be more selfish, scrambling for food and things. There's no social grouping anymore. That's really not the way of humans.

"That's why we need anthropologists - to promote cultural understanding among social groups. That way, we can know people in the present, not just in the past. It's the history of the people, not of the important people."

Manote Tripathi

The Nation