A community of flood memories living with(in) the riverine landscape in ayutthaya 3

3. Methodology Solvitur ambulando - It is solved by walking. 3.1 Overview Police: Luuk [child], where are you going? Why are you walking? It is too hot! Are there no tuktuk? Why don’t you rent a bike? We can give you a lift to the shop. Serene: Thank you loong [uncle], but we’re not going anywhere. I like to walk – I can talk to people while I walk, and pay more attention to the things around me. Police: [Laughs] Aww… young people. Don’t walk in the sun! Sidewalk encounters, May, 2014: a conversation with a couple of policemen in Ayutthaya With the development of modern terrestrial modes of transport such as cars, buses and in Ayutthaya, mini-vans with open backs affectionately known as tuktuk, walking has become a surprising, and some may even say strange, thing to do. However, there is much more to walking than walking (Middleton, 2010; Ingold, & Vergunst, 2008). Beyond the rhythmic tread of feet from one place to another, the movement of walking has been conceived as a way of knowing. Walking in instead of walking to allows one to immerse oneself into the fray of activities, social relations and the various rhythms of the landscape. It is also a method to explore peoples’ relationships with, and knowledge of, the environment (Lorimer & Lund, 2008; Wunderlich, 2008). In this chapter, I document how I employed walking as a means to get to know Ayutthaya, and for people to know me. Subsequently, walking became my mode of inquiry to understand how a community of flood memories is coming into being in Ayutthaya, and how flood memories are productively and selectively utilized to make everyday interventions in the landscape. I combined walking with having conversations, photography and site/participant observation. This form of ‘ethnographic walking’ allows the landscape to feature as a part of the conversation. 31 It also disrupts the power relations and barriers between the researcher/participants. I further situate ethnographic walking as part of an unspoken collaborative process involving me – the researcher - and the various participants and more-than-human actors within the landscape. Thus, I have learnt not about, but from and with the people and the landscape. This collaborative process has influenced the research direction, dispelled unfounded assumptions and also raised questions which I continue to grapple with as I write. I will also reflect on how my position as a young Singaporean female researcher constantly (re)shaped this research and my place in the ‘community of flood memories’. 3.2 It started with a walk: the theoretical traditions of walking Ayutthaya is a relatively small city; it is possible to walk across the island in about three hours. I first walked around Ayutthaya two years ago as a tourist. Walking at this point was a means to get from one ancient temple ruin to another. Yet, while I was not ‘consciously a geographer’ that Saturday morning (Cosgrove, 1989: 118-119), I could not help but wonder about the ubiquitous mud line on the walls of buildings, structures and trees in the city: Why are they there? Do various individuals preserve them deliberately as a symbolic reminder of a flood? Or is it simply too troublesome to remove them? How people feel about these flood lines? As I pointed these out to my increasingly irate friend – one could hardly blame him, it was almost forty degrees Celsius – we came to a rest stop, hoping to get some ice cream. Incredibly, the mud line at the rest stop was highlighted with blue ink, and marked ‘FLOOD, OCT 2011’ (Figure 3.1). I engaged the shop owner – P’Bi – in a conversation of rudimentary Thai, English, Mandarin Chinese and gestures: P’ is a gender-neutral Thai suffix for ‘Senior’, an informally polite way of addressing someone older. Names of participants have been changed in accordance to the NUS Institutional Review Board standards. Informed consent was also sought from the participants – including P’Bi whom I visited again in 2014 – to publish their personal information and parts of our conversations in this thesis. 32 Serene: P’, why is this here [points to the mud line on the wall]? P’Bi: Flood was this [gestures to the mud line] high! People have to remember. Serene: Who to remember? Ayutthaya people? Foreigners [sic]? P’Bi: Aww! Ayutthaya people always remember [laughs], we remember every day. Remind foreigners [gestures towards me, and says ‘tourist’, lu ke, in Mandarin Chinese], Ayutthaya also floods. Not only Khrung Thep - you know, Bangkok! We write in English [points to the date]. P’Bi/ 39/ Shop owner/ Female/ January 2013 Figure 3.1: The mud line deposited by the 2011 flood at a rest stop in Long Law, Ayutthaya is labeled and adorned with pictures of the flood. Note that the peak water level (as represented by the line) was about 1.9m high. Cosgrove (1989) was right, geography is indeed everywhere. Unknowingly – until later that evening when I was writing this encounter down in the hostel – I had moved from being a tourist to a geographer. I was not simply walking from one place to another; the walk was instead itself a ‘material journey and a temporal narrative’ (Tilley, 2012: 17). I was not merely following one of the pathways in the landscape. Through the multiple encounters with the mud-lines, and my candid conversation 33 with P’Bi, I had contributed to one of the many entangled pathways which constitute the lived landscape (Ingold, 2007: 103). I was walking within the lived landscape. I returned to Ayutthaya again, intermittently, from February 2014 to May 2014 (see Appendix 1). This time purposefully as a geographer hoping to learn how and why floods are being remembered. I disembarked from the philosophical starting point of ‘a world in motion, a world in formation’ - an ethos aligned with that of the more-than-representational geographers. Any attempts at a partial understanding of this world in motion require some form of mobility. Like Lee & Ingold (2006: 70), I believe that walking affords ‘real mobility’, useful as a methodological tool – the slowness of the walk allows interactions, participation, observation and contemplation. Increasingly, walking has become a credible methodology in geographical research. From planned walks to ‘bimbling’ (i.e. wandering around aimlessly), geographers have engaged walking as a way to question and understand (re)interpretations and interventions in the landscape (see Pink, 2008; Wunderlich, 2008). Also, walking allows the unfolding of subjectivities formed via encounters with an affective landscape (see Wylie, 2005; Sidaway, 2010; Tilley, 2012). Walks are also conceived as an embodied practice and part of everyday life (see Winkler, 2002; Middleton, 2010). Recent works in cultural geography have tended towards what Wylie (2005) terms the ‘post-phenomenological’ approach to walking. Through personal and self-conscious forms of chronicling one’s mobile experiences with worldly phenomena, these walks have shown that self and landscape are ‘always emergent, constantly shifting through repertoire of unbidden, of affective and kinaesthetic contact’ (Lorimer, 2011: 25; Wylie, 2005). I have adopted some of these approaches in my walks, paying particular attention to how self(s) and landscape are constantly in process of becoming. However, given the nature of this research, unlike walks by Wylie (2005) and Sidaway (2010), the walks I took were less centered upon myself, though they were no less personal. Like Hill (2013: 382), I am cautious 34 against writings which tend to over-focus on the author’s personal thoughts, feelings and memories, as they risk ‘writing others out of his [sic] accounts’. Correspondingly, my writing in Chapter Four and Five reflect this de-centralization of the researcher – I will reproduce parts of the conversations with the participants instead of merely what I make of them. The walks I took are situated within the broader context of ethnographic research. According to Herbert (2000), ethnography is an under-utilized methodology in geographical research. With its focus on the linkages between the ‘macrological and micrological, between the enduring and structured aspects of social life and the particulars of the everyday’ (Herbert, 2000: 554; Watson & Till, 2010), ethnography is particularly useful for the understanding the various intersections of private and collective memories. Generally, this is achieved through participant/site observations and context-based semi-structured interviews - the researcher spends considerable time interacting with and observing people (Crang & Cook, 2007). These ethnographic observations and interactions emphasize what people do, in addition to what they say (Watson & Till, 2010). Very rarely does one things in situ, and social relations too, are often ‘paced out along the ground’ (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008: 1; also see Hein et al, 2008). Thus, walking – around the house, workplace, place of worship and neighbourhood – allows a fuller understanding of the practices and relationships within the landscape. In this case, ethnographic walking is especially helpful in understanding the materialization and enactment of memories as practice, beyond the discursive. While ethnography is oriented towards understanding a social group, I, the researcher, am not simply a distant observer. Ethnography is also an overtly interpretive practice on the researcher’s part (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Pillow, 2003). The copious amount of notes and reflections scribbled down at the end of each day is a material representation of this interpretive process. I understand, therefore, that I 35 run the risk of (re)presenting a version of the world that is ‘far tidier than what actually exists’ (Herbert, 2000: 562; Pillow, 2003). I not claim to (re)present wholly the everyday lives of people whom I have interacted with, and I hope that this thesis would be read as a partial understanding of flood memories and life in Ayutthaya. Furthermore, my relationships with the research participants played a large role in shaping what I would and could eventually write about them. I strongly believe that the beauty of ethnography lies in the formation of relationships and empathetic emotional engagements with research participants (Watson & Till, 2010). Walking had allowed me to form relationships – walking with people, and subsequently, sharing and creating a walking rhythm can lead to a very particular closeness and bond (J. Anderson, 2004; Lee & Ingold, 2006). Indeed, some of these people who have walked with me are now my friends. Some have argued that this blurred boundary between ‘researcher’ and ‘the researched’ is problematic, and ethnography is generally a flawed methodology because it ‘lacks objectivity’ (see Rengert, 1997:4 96). However, the call for ‘objectivity’ is largely overstated. This very subjective immersion and positioning of the researcher encourages the development of trust, and hence, allows rich, multifaceted perspectives from different actors to emerge. Despite such subjective immersions and the formation of relationships, the dualism between ‘researcher’ and ‘research subjects’ remains. Pignatelli (1998) summarized succinctly the ethical conundrum of ethnographic representation and authorship: vested with interpretative authority, authorship assumes that the ethnographer is the sole producer of knowledge. The ethnographer learns about people and landscape, and writes about what s/he has learnt. However, such a stance assumes the passivity of the ‘research subjects’. It also discounts the host of actors involved, often in ‘invisible’ and un-meditated ways, in our ‘individual’ production of knowledge. Serendipity – a combination of opportunities created by (re)actions of various participants and the researcher’s intuitive reasoning – is a key 36 characteristic of ethnography; and it often shapes the direction of the research (Pieke, 2000; Rivoal & Salazar, 2013). It is time we recognize that ethnographers never really work alone (Matsutake Worlds Research Group, 2009: 397; Till, 2009; Watson & Till, 2010). Hence, like these ethnographers who are looking for a more egalitarian way of doing and writing ethnography, I believe strongly, that we not learn about people and the landscape, but from and with them. As I will show, ethnography, in this case, is a process of (unspoken) collaboration rather than appropriation (Lassiter, 2005; Till, 2009). 3.3 From spectre to spectacle, ‘young girls’ to ‘Singaporean researchers’ I understand that I cannot simply walk into other people’s worlds and expect to immediately participate with them (Lee & Ingold, 2006). Hence, the first five days of walking were designed to be solitary (see Appendix for timeline). Along with my friend and interpreter, P’Chon7, I wandered around Ayutthaya, hoping to get to know people (vice versa), the flood stories and rhythms of the landscape a little better. Prior to walking, I was anxious about what Wylie (2005: 246) terms the ‘spectral nature of walking’. Wylie claims that the walker – especially the solitary walker – is always caught in the liminal processes of arriving and departing. Although not alienated from the landscape, the walker is, at best, a ghostly spectre who supplements and disturbs the landscape. While Wylie does not see this as a negative attribute – ‘haunting’ the landscape is indeed a way of being with it - this spectral nature of walking did not bode well for a walker who was also an ethnographer. How were we to engage and get to know people if we were thought to be merely ‘passing through, passing into or emerging from’ (Wylie, 2005: 246)? Our P’Chon is a seasoned ethnographer who has worked with NGOs in northern Thailand on developmental and river-management issues. She understood the research as well as I did – most of her translations were literal translations, and they included similes, idioms and analogies. She also played a huge role in the research process as we discussed ideas, approaches and possibilities in the field. Thus, the field research was really ‘our’ – rather than ‘my’ – effort, and I hope that the writing reflects this. 37 identities - two young Asian women, initially perceived to be Thai though ‘not native to Ayutthaya’ – dispelled this sense of spectrality. Within the first hour of our first walk in a residential area, Soi Si, we were approached by several residents – they thought we were tourists who had lost our way. As they learnt about the research, our solitary walk was reconfigured into a small but spirited parade around the neighbourhood (Figure 3.2). Several people showed us mud lines, and others shared stories about the 2011 floods. Rather than spectral, our presence was instead, almost a spectacle. According to one of the residents, we were a ‘different sort of tourist’. Almost all agreed to accompany us on walks over the next week around the neighbourhood and welcomed us to their homes. We repeated our solitary walks in two other residential areas, Long Law and Hua Ro. We were again, graciously received and welcomed (Figure 3.3). 38 Figure 3.2: First day of our solitary walks around Ayutthaya – a small group of enthusiastic residents in Soi Si accompanying us around the neighborhood, showing us mud lines and sharing stories. Figure 3.3: A map of Ayutthaya island. Walks were carried out around three residential areas Long Law, Soi Si and Hua Ro (highlighted in orange). Additional walks and semi-structured interviews were also carried out in the three temples – Wat Mongkhon Bophit, Wat Suwandaram and Wat Senasaranam – the Ayutthaya Hospital, Ayutthaya historical park (areas in green) and Ayutthaya Riverside hotel. 39 Later, we were repeatedly told that the situation would have been markedly different if we were ‘boys or men’, and if we were ‘from Burma’. As Cupples (2002: 383) puts it – ‘an important part of positionality is not just how we feel, but how others see us’. The general sense that we were ‘trustworthy’ stemmed from my identity as a Singaporean [khon sinkapor], and P’Chon’s identity as a western-educated Bangkokian [khon khrung thep8]. Drawing on geopolitical imaginations of Singapore as a ‘developed’ and ‘wealthy’ ASEAN nation, contrasted with the negative stereotypes towards the Burmese (see Chulanee & Thompson, 2007; Faucher, 2010), we were told time and again that ‘Singaporeans will not take anything away [from us], unlike the Burmese9’. We were further labelled as ‘girls’ – based on our gender and the assumption of our youth – and were characterized as ‘harmless’. Thus, many were rather forthcoming with opinions (usually about politics) and sharing parts of their lives with us. In this case, it is obvious again, that the ethnographer is intimately connected with the field and the ethnographic work itself (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Cupples, 2002). Personal identities of gender, age and nationality are always subjectively implicated in the ethnographic process, at times resulting in the establishment of very productive connections. The ethnographer’s attributes, too, can be problematic. Being perceived as ‘young’ and as ‘students’ (we were initially perceived as high school students!) also denied us access to people deemed ‘important’ in the village and official bureaucratic structures. Despite many attempts to speak with the village heads of Soi Si, Long Law and Hua Ro, we were only eventually granted a ten-minute interview with the village head of Long Law. During the interview, we were constantly told that he was ‘too busy for young girls’. Similarly, it was also difficult to approach the Department of Khon is the Thai word for ‘person’ – khon sinkapor, in this case, is a person [from] Singapore, i.e. A Singaporean. Khon Khrung Thep – a person [from] Khrung Thep, Khrung Thep being the Thai name for Bangkok, i.e. a Bangkokian. When pressed further, many referred to a vague sense of distrust towards the Burmese, despite having never met any Burmese person. Others heatedly reminded us about how the Burmese ‘burnt Ayutthaya in 1767’. The Burmese have always been conceived as the ‘enemy’ in Thai historical and popular discourses (see Chutintaranond, 1993). 40 Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) of the municipal government. Letters from my supervisor were rejected, phone calls went unanswered or when answered, we were told – rather curtly - to ‘return with a government official and a proper researcher’. Hence, I could only rely on press releases to understand the importance of flood memories to the organization. This denial of access added another agenda to our solitary walks – the need to move beyond the official structures of flood governance, since those were closed to us. On hindsight, this was a positive development in the research. Subverting the usual bureaucratic hierarchy in the production of memory and knowledge on floods, we turned to institutions and actors not commonly associated with flood management, but could potentially have an active role in curating the living archive of flood memories in the city. Serendipitously, we were shown a book about the floods of 2011 by P’Pat, who introduced us to the author, P’Samlit (Figure 3.4). The latter is a journalist who also runs a small but popular local cable television network. He was very active during the 2011 flood, documenting the inundation and distributing supplies around the island. Not only did P’Samlit agree to walk around the city with us, he also wanted to introduce us to khun Gonggun – a local politician who runs one of the biggest hotels in Ayutthaya10. Khun Gonggun had converted his hotel into a temporary flood shelter and supply distribution center to help the municipality cope with the 2011 flood. Due to P’Pat enthusiasm and the circulation of the book, we were able to speak with two people who played huge, albeit informal, roles in Ayutthaya’s flood response and memory production. 10 Khun is the polite Thai word for ‘Mister’. Khun Gonggun is a real estate developer, who was also a Member of Parliament affiliated with the Pheu Thai Party in 2011. He and his family run the Ayutthaya Riverside Hotel. 41 Figure 3.4: P’Samlit is a journalist – he wrote and collated the picture book on the 2011 flood. The profit from the sales of the book is donated to the Red Cross. He is very well-connected and had used that connection to help others during the 2011 flood. We subsequently stumbled upon the Ayutthaya Hospital with a large, doublelayer floodwall under construction. We also came across temples and several shops selling postcards and providing information about floods (Figure 3.5). Having learnt from some residents at Soi Si that the Historical Parks Office (HPO) is in charge of building laws and regulations, we also approached the HPO (see Appendix 2). As Skelton (2009) asserts, identities are fluid and malleable: mindful of our previous experiences, we deliberately downplayed our apparent youth as we approached these institutions. Instead, we stressed our ‘seriousness’ as researchers from Singapore and Bangkok. Thankfully, we were granted interviews and walks around the hospital, a ‘cultural expert’ from the HPO also agreed to accompany us on walks 42 around the city. I vividly remember P’Chon’s laughter when she saw how we were labelled on the hospital’s notice board - ‘the Singaporean university research team’. Figure 3.5: Shops selling postcards and framed images of the 2011 flood alongside images of revered Thai monks and monarchs. 3.4 Conversations on the feet The walk shapes the rhythm of the talk, and the talk shapes the rhythm of the walk. Lorimer (2011), Walking, pp. 29 Talking comes easier when walking. Hall et al (2006), Stories as Sorties, pp. Following the ‘solitary’ walks, the subsequent series of walks were designed to be accompanied walks. We encouraged thirty participants to walk with us around their neighborhood and/or their homes and workplaces, to sites in the city significant to their memories of floods (see Appendix 2). These participants range from the wealthy – owners of construction companies – to the poor – odd job and part-time workers. All of the participants live on the island, most of them in the three 43 aforementioned residential areas; others work or live near those areas. The walks lasted from about forty-five minutes to three hours, and were anchored upon the assumption that each journey is a story that participants wanted to share (Hall et al, 2006, Hein et al, 2008; Evans & P. Jones, 2011). Hence, the walks were designed to be open and largely unregulated by the researcher. Some participants requested that I photograph aspects of the walk deemed ‘important’, and all determined their own routes. Often, on-the-spot choices by the participants – where to turn, where to stop – dictated the rhythms of the walk. During these walks, our identities – this time reconstructed by some participants as sexualized subjects, as (arguably) ‘desirable foreign young women’ – again determined the people we could walk with (Morton, 1995; Caplan, 1993; Cupples, 2002). Ten of the participants were men; eight of them were married men. We invited their wives to walk with us, but were rejected on all occasions. However, some chose to shadow us as we walked with their husbands (Figure 3.6). One of our male participants, P’Decha, joked that his wife was ‘worried about [him] going around with two young girls’. At times, the wives also took over the direction of the walks and monopolized the conversations. While some ethnographers have critiqued that the male voice is implicitly dominant in ethnographies of ‘communities’ (Guijt & KaulShah, 1998; Cornwall, 2003), we found it ironically difficult to listen to the men. Hence, this ethnographic account features mostly women’s stories and voices. 44 Figure 3.6: P’Decha sitting resting at his front yard after walking around Hua Ro. While she declined to be part of this research, his wife, P’Daw (background), followed us around. With help from P’Chon, loosely structured and informal conversations took place during these walks. General questions were asked about stories related to past floods, physical remnants of floods and how the participants’ lives and lived environments have been altered based on past floods. These conversations were not simply interviews from which I ‘extracted information’ from the participants. They were rather, conversations which transpired among the participants, P’Chon and I. Like Hall et al (2006), I found that these conversations on the feet were less troubled by estranged pauses and the awkwardness of question and answer. Furthermore, the participants determined the routes undertaken, the materials brought along and the stories told. Hence, they were not merely ‘informants’ but active collaborators in the research process (J. Anderson, 2004). I tried, as much as I could, to avoid reinforcing the conventional interviewer/informant, researcher/subject hierarchies in which the interviewer/researcher directs all the questions and anticipates the answers (Winkler, 2002; J. Anderson, 2004). This form of walking while talking was particularly productive as I was introduced to a dimension and way of walking that I did not anticipate. Many brought along photographs of the 2011 flood during the walks, and I was asked to compare and imagine what certain places were like when 45 they flood (Figure 3.7). In this case, the photographic image was not only a representation of the flooded landscape, but also a re-presentation of the flood (See Latham & McCormack, 2009; more in Chapter Four). At the end of the walks, most participants gave those photographs to me – ‘for your memory’, one of them said. I started using these photographs as conversation starters (Watson & Till, 2010). Thus, the more-than-human agency of photographic images was also an important part of the conversation. Figure 3.7: Various participants brought along pictures and many asked us to compare the present landscape with the flooded landscape depicted in the pictures. As I have alluded to above, the landscape and its physical specificities were also collaborators in the conversation and broader research as we walked within it. During a conventional interview, the ‘noise’ and ‘distractions’ of the surrounding landscape are removed as the interviewer and informant remain stationary, often seated (Hall et al, 2006). It has been charged that movements put interviews at risk – mobile conversations apparently shift control away from the researcher as interviews are exposed to interruptions from the surrounding landscape (Denscombe, 1998). This is, however, a rather limited perspective to the ways the landscape matter in 46 interviews. Largely overlooked in the role that it may play in influencing the direction of, and knowledge produced during, the interview (Elwood & Martin, 2000; J. Anderson, 2004). Interested in further disrupting the interviewer’s primary position in research process, I argue that for a more heterarchical conversation to take place, we cannot discount the material agency of the landscape. If the various subjectivities of the self and memories are constantly emerging through encounters with the landscape, conversations on the feet are productive as it allows and encourages such encounters (Hall et al, 2006; Hein et al, 2008). For example, an unremarkable pile of mud-stained dishes prompted paa Paket11 to express her sense of resignation towards the memory of a failed business following the 2011 flood (Figure 3.8). This story did not surface as we walked around Long Law with paa Paket; it only came up as we walked around her backyard where the plates were. In this case, the lived landscape prompts and interjects, resulting in a dynamic three-way conversation among the researchers, participants and the landscape. Figure 3.8: The mud-stained dishes in paa Paket’s backyard, which prompted her to share the story about the failed business after the 2011 flood. 11 Paa is the Thai word for ‘Auntie’. 47 Beyond walking, P’Chon and I were offered an alternative way to move within the landscape. We met a tour boat operator, paa Toola12, during one of our initial solitary walks around Long Law. She offered to take us around the island on her boat, according to paa Toola, this is the ‘only way to understand how floods move’ (Figure 3.9). She brought us to the intersection of the Pasak River and Khlong Muang, northeast of the island. Hua Ro is directly adjacent to the confluence of these two waterways. Animatedly waving her hands inwards, paa Toola informed us that this was the spot where the initial floodwaters would converge, thus, parts of Hua Ro would be flooded seasonally. This input from paa Toola resulted in a turning point in the ethnographic process – the residential area at Hua Ro subsequently became a key site of our ethnographic walks. In addition, Paa Toola and the river also reminded me of an important concept of memory – borrowing from Proust, Edensor (2005) terms these ‘involuntary memories’. These memories are unpredictable and contingent, often evoked through unexpected confrontations with sounds, smells or ‘atmosphere’ – largely more-than-visual experiences (Edensor, 2005). With my (over)emphasis on the visuality of mud lines, images and paint markings, I had overlooked the multi-sensual nature of memories. As we boated along a small canal, we picked up an unpleasant stench of sewage and rotting garbage. This prompted paa Toola to talk about how ‘the entire city smelled [like this] after [the flood of] 2011’ and the memory of hardship associated with the smell. From this encounter, I was reminded that what is essential is often invisible to the eye. Hence, during the subsequent accompanied walks, we paid particular attention to such more-thanvisual mnemonic cues and absences embedded within the landscape, and how spontaneity matters in the community of flood memories. 12 Interestingly, we met one of the few female tour boat operators in a largely male-dominated profession! 48 Figure 3.9: Paa Toola (and P’Chon pictured in the foreground) bringing us around Ayutthaya on her motorized boat. 3.5 Q & As: questions and assumptions On several occasions, these conversations generated questions which affected me – as a researcher – profoundly. When we met P’Samlit in April, he was accompanied by a cameraman. What was supposed to be a relaxed walk around the island was quickly reconfigured into a semi-formal sit-down interview. With the gaze literally turned on me, I was asked several difficult questions. These questions echoed those raised by Skelton’s (2009:402; also see Pillow, 2003) writings on cross-cultural research: Who is this research for? What can this research for the people of Ayutthaya13? These are questions I still ask myself today as I write. To be perfectly honest, I not think that at this stage, this research can offer any direct benefits to anyone – it is unlikely to evoke or inform any policy changes. I stand to gain the most from it – I get to learn, and (hopefully) advance with a postgraduate degree. However, several participants highlighted that they were ‘happy that [we are] 13 I was momentarily stymied – at this point I truly understood how uncomfortable it could be for a respondent during an interview (see Katz, 1994)! The interview was broadcasted later during the week; we were recognized during our walks around the island – again, our presence became almost a spectacle. 49 interested in Ayutthaya’. The conversations were cathartic outlets to air their grievances from the past and express their anxieties and hopes towards the future. It also assured many that others were experiencing the similar discontent and anxieties, and that they were not alone. I would also like to think we alleviated some of these anxieties a little. While many participants have heard of and received help from khun Gonggun during the 2011 flood, we highlighted the possibility of getting help from khun Gonggun’s hotel to many others. Therefore, in a small way, I hope the research has benefited some of the participants directly. Many ethnographers have argued that the field is productive – research questions are supposed to change with ‘good ethnography’ (Lassiter, 2005; Rivoal & Salazar, 2013), indeed, from the above, this is true. However, less has been written about how ethnography can change and impact the researcher’s worldviews. Ethnographers enter the field with our own sets of assumptions, based on various representations of certain ‘cultures’ socialized and normalized in our everyday lives. In this case, I was often exposed to popular and academic portrayals of Thais as practitioners of spirit and animistic worship (see Wilanwan, 1989; Van Beek, 1995; A. Johnson, 2011; A. Johnson, 2014). According to this perspective, the Thais supposedly pray to the water and river spirits yearly in November and especially during the 2011 floods 14 . Steeped in this normative belief that Thais are ‘superstitious’, I failed to realize that this could be one of the many orientalistic myths about the Thais (see White, 2003). Assumptions like these are of particular salience as they influence the questions we ask, our perceptions of the research participants, the ways we write and the representations we ultimately construct (Till, 2009). Good ethnography, I believe, changes not just research questions but exposes these 14 The international media cited such examples – from Agence France-Presse (AFP): http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/92267/flood-ravaged-thailand-prays-to-water-goddess and from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/world/asia/31ihtthailand31.html?_r=1&. Also see http://notthenation.com/2011/10/water-goddess-ka-kangreplies-to-ceremony-‘fuck-you’/ for a satirical response to such articles. 50 underlying assumptions. Despite P’Chon’s scepticism, I asked several participants – including a Buddhist monk, tahn Jit15 – about religious rituals, prayers and spirits associated with rivers and floods. Several people laughed and others shook their heads at these questions. In the words of loong Akhom, a retired fisherman, ‘most of the floods today are man-made. No point praying to anyone.’ Tahn Jit further informed us that such collective animistic rituals had not been practiced in Ayutthaya over the last fifty years. I am embarrassed to say that I was surprised by this, and upon further reflection, I realized I was imposing my personal, orientalist assumptions of Thailand and Thai people on the participants. This is but one of the many instances in which I was required to re-examine my closely-held beliefs. As Herbert (2000: 563) reflects, ethnographies are as much about the culture of the ethnographer as they are of the research participants. Through these interactions with the participants, from them, I have learnt not about their lives and relationships with the environment, but also about my own ‘hidden’ worldviews. I hope the writing in the subsequent chapters reflect this newfound awareness. 15 Tahn is the Thai honorific for a monk (or someone with high authority). 51 [...]... to a dimension and way of walking that I did not anticipate Many brought along photographs of the 2011 flood during the walks, and I was asked to compare and imagine what certain places were like when 45 they flood (Figure 3. 7) In this case, the photographic image was not only a representation of the flooded landscape, but also a re-presentation of the flood (See Latham & McCormack, 2009; more in Chapter... landscape with the flooded landscape depicted in the pictures As I have alluded to above, the landscape and its physical specificities were also collaborators in the conversation and broader research as we walked within it During a conventional interview, the ‘noise’ and ‘distractions’ of the surrounding landscape are removed as the interviewer and informant remain stationary, often seated (Hall et al, 2006)... her backyard where the plates were In this case, the lived landscape prompts and interjects, resulting in a dynamic three-way conversation among the researchers, participants and the landscape Figure 3. 8: The mud-stained dishes in paa Paket’s backyard, which prompted her to share the story about the failed business after the 2011 flood 11 Paa is the Thai word for ‘Auntie’ 47 Beyond walking, P’Chon and... adjacent to the confluence of these two waterways Animatedly waving her hands inwards, paa Toola informed us that this was the spot where the initial floodwaters would converge, thus, parts of Hua Ro would be flooded seasonally This input from paa Toola resulted in a turning point in the ethnographic process – the residential area at Hua Ro subsequently became a key site of our ethnographic walks In. .. were offered an alternative way to move within the landscape We met a tour boat operator, paa Toola12, during one of our initial solitary walks around Long Law She offered to take us around the island on her boat, according to paa Toola, this is the ‘only way to understand how floods move’ (Figure 3. 9) She brought us to the intersection of the Pasak River and Khlong Muang, northeast of the island Hua... images and paint markings, I had overlooked the multi-sensual nature of memories As we boated along a small canal, we picked up an unpleasant stench of sewage and rotting garbage This prompted paa Toola to talk about how the entire city smelled [like this] after [the flood of] 2011’ and the memory of hardship associated with the smell From this encounter, I was reminded that what is essential is often... often invisible to the eye Hence, during the subsequent accompanied walks, we paid particular attention to such more-thanvisual mnemonic cues and absences embedded within the landscape, and how spontaneity matters in the community of flood memories 12 Interestingly, we met one of the few female tour boat operators in a largely male-dominated profession! 48 Figure 3. 9: Paa Toola (and P’Chon pictured in the. .. (see Katz, 1994)! The interview was broadcasted later during the week; we were recognized during our walks around the island – again, our presence became almost a spectacle 49 interested in Ayutthaya The conversations were cathartic outlets to air their grievances from the past and express their anxieties and hopes towards the future It also assured many that others were experiencing the similar discontent... point praying to anyone.’ Tahn Jit further informed us that such collective animistic rituals had not been practiced in Ayutthaya over the last fifty years I am embarrassed to say that I was surprised by this, and upon further reflection, I realized I was imposing my personal, orientalist assumptions of Thailand and Thai people on the participants This is but one of the many instances in which I was... Four) At the end of the walks, most participants gave those photographs to me – ‘for your memory’, one of them said I started using these photographs as conversation starters (Watson & Till, 2010) Thus, the more-than-human agency of photographic images was also an important part of the conversation Figure 3. 7: Various participants brought along pictures and many asked us to compare the present landscape . in the three temples – Wat Mongkhon Bophit, Wat Suwandaram and Wat Senasaranam – the Ayutthaya Hospital, Ayutthaya historical park (areas in green) and Ayutthaya Riverside hotel. 40 Later,. movement of walking has been conceived as a way of knowing. Walking in instead of walking to allows one to immerse oneself into the fray of activities, social relations and the various rhythms of the. landscape prompts and interjects, resulting in a dynamic three-way conversation among the researchers, participants and the landscape. Figure 3. 8: The mud-stained dishes in paa Paket’s backyard,