Introduction: Modernity and the Making and Remaking of Enchantment

The diverse and diverging trends of religious change across the globe in recent decades have taken many by surprise. In Southeast Asia many scholars of religion have been kept busy keeping up with the pace of change by detailing the empirical contours of the many new ritual-based magical and doctrinalist reform movements that have appeared with such rapidity. As Boike Rehbein and Guido Sprenger observe,

Change in post–Cold War social reality has often outpaced our capacity to develop analyses that account for what is happening in the world’s religious cultures. In Chapter One I noted that in some of his writings Weber described modernity as a complex of contradictory rationalizing and potentially enchanting processes. However, as a sociologist Weber only presented a theory of modernity as a force for disenchantment, and this theoretical exposition still dominates much contemporary social analysis. By and large it has been anthropologists who study non-Western societies who have presented theories of how modernity may be productive of new forms of enchantment. A range of anthropological studies have provided theoretical perspectives on the respective impacts of state power, capitalism, new media and the performative force of ritual on religious thought and practice. We now have enough reflective analyses based on detailed empirical work to begin to address broader comparative questions of what is taking place across the full spread of religious expression in Southeast Asia. As Jean Comaroff states in critically assessing the research now at hand, a key guiding principle is the need “to be cognizant of the complexity of the world, to be accountable to its paradoxes” (Comaroff and Kim 2011, p. 176).

Introduction: From the Margins to the Centre of the Thai Religious Field

Since the mid-1990s, images and representations of the diverse range of Thai prosperity cults detailed in the previous chapters have increasingly occurred together in the same locations. They have appeared jointly among the images installed on spirit medium shrines, in collections of amulets and other ritual objects, in the symbolism of commercial products such as on New Year greeting cards, and on official postage stamps. While the figures associated with these movements are the objects of distinct devotional cults, an increasing symbolic collocation and interpenetration of the different strands of the Thai cults of wealth has become increasingly evident.

For example, On 5 December 1998, the birthday of the late King Bhumibol and at the height of the Asian economic crisis, Khao Sot daily newspaper carried an advertisement for a set of five gold images that included Kuan Im in her form with a thousand arms (Kuan Im phan meu); Kuan Im in a meditation pose (Kuan Im pang samathi); Ganesh; the Lord Buddha being protected by a serpent naga king (Phra nak prok); and the magic monk Luang Pu Thuat. All these images had been sacralized in a pluk sek magical empowerment ritual on 27 November 1998 under the sponsorship of the then Sangharaja or Supreme Patriarch of the Thai sangha at Wat Bowornniwet, the most important royal monastery in Thailand. The advertisement stated that funds raised from the sale of these diverse images were to be used to renovate Wat Wachirathammawat monastery in Phitsanulok Province in the country’s mid-north. In addition to showing their growing intersection, this example also indicates the extent to which deities and spiritual figures associated with the Chinese, Hindu and Theravada cults of wealth had become mainstream religious forms that had been brought within the scope of state-sponsored official Buddhism by the final years of the 1990s.

In this chapter I show how the coming together of representations of the different cults of wealth in diverse fields reflects the structuring principles of vernacular Thai religiosity outlined in Chapter Three. The symbolic complex is an amalgam of representations of discrete, non-syncretized cults that—while all being found in the same ritual sites, commercial locations and mediatized spaces—remain ontologically distinct.

Introduction: Autonomization and Contextualization of Modalities of Modern Enchantment

Followers of the cults of wealth engage with the deities at the centre of these ritual forms in a number of ways. Each deity and spirit in the cults has a dedicated khatha, a mantra or incantation usually composed in a mix of Pali and Sanskrit that is chanted by the devotee when worshipping or requesting a boon or blessing. These khatha are often written on boards attached to the base of public shrines that house images of the deities in order to facilitate ritual worship by the faithful. If a requested boon is granted, then it is incumbent upon the devotee to recompense and thank the deity in a ritual called kae bon. Each deity is believed to have a set of personal preferences, and the type of kae bon ritual performed will depend on the particular likes and interests attributed to the boon-granting spirit. Some deities, such as Brahma at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, are believed to enjoy being entertained by Thai classical dance and music, and a troupe of professional dancers and musicians is always present at this shrine ready to be hired to perform for the deity by devotees whose boons have been granted. Other deities are believed to enjoy particular forms of food or drink, and offerings of these items may be placed at the deity’s shrine in a ritual expression of thanks.

Thailand’s cults of wealth also lie at the intersection of two other major phenomena that are distinctive emergent features of the Thai religious field and which reflect novel modalities of ritual enchantment; namely, the cult of amulets sacralized by magic monks and professional spirit mediumship. One of the most widespread and popular ways of demonstrating attachment to a deity, or to request a spirit’s helping presence, is to own or wear an amulet bearing an image of the god. Sacralized amulets are an especially notable category of ritual objects that represent the deities and spirits of the cults of wealth. As Justin McDaniel notes, the cult of amulets in Thailand has expanded well beyond representing figures that relate directly to Theravada Buddhism:

In the early twenty-first century, the Thai cults of wealth have continued to proliferate and diversify, spreading into new forms and finding new followers in Thailand as well as in neighbouring East and Southeast Asian countries. One new figure in the Thai pantheon of wish-granting deities is Thep Than-jai, the “Deity [who grants wishes] immediately”. Thep Than-jai is the Thai name given to the Burmese spirit being called a bobogyi, a generic spiritual figure that in Burma is believed to guard treasures buried beneath pagodas and whose name means “great-grandfather” (Brac de la Perrière and Munier-Gaillard 2019). In Thailand, Thep Than-jai is represented as a grandfatherly figure dressed in regal Burmese attire standing and pointing his index figure towards the faithful. In Burma, this figure is linked to the foundation of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, where he is believed to be pointing to the location where relics of past Buddhas are supposed to have been enshrined.

The cult of the Hindu deity Ganesh has also expanded rapidly since the turn of the new century and increasing numbers of white-robed lay ascetics called reusi, from the Sanskrit rishi, now offer spiritual advice for wealth and wellbeing (see McDaniel 2013). New digital media and social networks have quickly become central features of the expanding field of Thai popular ritual and belief across the region. In 2017, The Nation reported how a fortune teller reusi in Northeast Thailand named Toon used the internet to provide divinatory commercial advice to clients in several countries:

Introduction: Strategies for Negotiating Cultural and Religious Multiplicity

The fractured structure of modernity that arrived in Thailand in association with Western imperial power engendered fissures within the total field of religious practice; structurally, administratively as well as in terms of academic analysis. While monastic Buddhism and the canonical Theravada Buddhist scriptures, the Tipitaka, came under state administrative control, support and sponsorship, multiform varieties of ritual conducted predominantly by lay specialists outside of monasteries largely fell outside the scope of state interest and bureaucratic oversight. And while scholars affiliated with departments of religious studies, history and politics studied Buddhist monastic structures and doctrine, research on non-monastic cults has predominantly been undertaken by anthropologists. These formal and academic divisions within the Thai religious field belie the fact that the religious lives of large numbers, perhaps the majority, of Thai practitioners from all walks of life cross over and between Buddhist and non-Buddhist ritual observance. To some extent this fact has been obscured by a regime of representation, instituted in response to Western power, that has foregrounded Buddhism while placing ritual practice in a subsidiary position in the background of religious life.

The fracturing of academic research on Thai religiosity between different disciplines, which have focused on Buddhism and non-Buddhist ritual separately, means that to a significant extent we have lacked conceptual categories and theoretical models of the total field that constitutes the religious lives of so many people in the country. This gap also means that we lack generally agreed frames by which to understand new forms of magical practice both in relation to establishment Buddhism as well as the deep history of divination, astrology, spirit possession and other ritual practices. Religious studies has struggled to provide concepts for the structuring patterns of the Thai religious field because its origins in analyses of monotheistic doctrine-based religions has left it largely bereft of ways of imagining a cultural order that is founded upon irreducible, and expanding, difference rather than notions of a uniting set of teachings.

INTRODUCTION

A lot have been published on the subject of democracy in Malaysia, yet there are few comprehensive survey-based academic studies on how Malaysians view the state of democracy, and, even rarer, in relation to election management and the country’s Election Commission (EC). Welsh (1996) on political attitudes among Malaysians in 1994 was one such study and based on a survey of 400 respondents, while the study by Muhammad Fathi Yusof et al. (2015) on public perception towards the EC is based on a small survey of seven questions among 1,104 respondents in 2014/15. Periodic and systematic international surveys on democracy have been conducted by the Asian Barometer of Democracy surveys, and Malaysia has been included since 2007 during its Second Wave Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). Thus far, three working papers or report with a focus on Malaysia have been produced from the ABS (Welsh, Suffian and Aeria 2007; Welsh Suffian and Aeria 2008;Welsh 2014). Otherwise, outputs from ABS have been in the form of cross-country regional studies among several Asian countries which include Malaysia (Chang, Chu and Welsh 2013, Chu, Welsh and Chang 2013, Huang, Chu and Chang 2013; Ikeda 2013; Lu 2013; Mujani and Liddle 2013; Park 2013; Wang and Tan 2013; Chu and Welsh 2015; Kang and Lee 2018). While cross-country comparative studies are useful in contextualizing political perception in Malaysia within an international context, they do not provide a detailed understanding of Malaysians’ perceptions on the EC and other state institutions, the management of elections, and the state of democracy.

This report is an analysis of the findings from a nationwide survey conducted with 2,627 respondents between March and April 2021. The objectives are to find out how Malaysian citizens evaluate the performance of the EC in managing elections, perceive the neutrality of the EC, and also how they perceive the state of democracy and of political authorities in the country. As the EC is one of the fundamental institutions in the operationalization of democracy, i.e., in conducting popular elections, public perception of its performance and function is best understood in the general context of the latter’s evaluation of the state of democracy and perception of the legitimacy of state institutions as a whole.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policymakers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE EDITORS

Series Chairman:

Choi Shing Kwok

Series Editor:

Ooi Kee Beng

Editorial Committee:

Daljit Singh

Francis E. Hutchinson

Norshahril Saat

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• • This report presents findings from a nationwide face-to-face survey of 2,627 Malaysians between March and April 2021 regarding public perceptions on the Election Commission (EC) and on election management.

• • Malaysians by and large hold a cautious, moderate affirmation of the state of democracy in Malaysia, and of it having made notable progress over the past decade.

• • A quarter of respondents regard the 2018 general election to be very free or/and fair, while 43 per cent think that it was free/fair though not without problems. This perception appears to have been influenced by the fact that there was a change of federal government.

• • Public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the election management process and the EC is weakly affirmative, as revealed by a majority expressing a lack of confidence in an eventual online voting system being handled transparently.

• • Urban residents generally have greater distrust in state institutions.

• • Some notable contrasts in regional trends:

  • – Sarawakians have a high level of trust in state institutions.

  • – Sabahans have the lowest appreciation for the progress made in the state of democracy in the country, the lowest satisfaction with civil liberty, or the lowest trust in state institutions except for the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the EC.

  • – West Malaysians have the lowest level of trust in the MACC and EC but express the highest level of appreciation for the progress that have made in the state of democracy.