เอกสารการประชุมวิชาการและเสนอผลงานวิจัย มหาวิทยาลัยทักษิณ ครั้งที่ 19 2552 - page 24

การประชุมวิ ชาการและเสนอผลงานวิจัย มหาวิ ทยาลัยทักษิ ณ ครั้งที่ 19 ประจำป 2552
Ethnic boundaries do not follow political borders and anthropological research
approaches currently seems to acknowledge both – ethnicity and borders – as influences
on the continuing cultural evolution of communities. Thus it behoves researchers to accept
that Malay Thais prefer Malaysian television just as Thai-Malaysians prefer Thai television – just
as occurs in border regions everywhere in the world. Johnson concludes that,
The practices of border crisscrossing which these Kelantanese and Narathiwat villagers
constantly engage in and through which they articulate a sense of ethno-cultural identity
cannot be analysed without considering the pervasive influence of other nation-states.
Borderlands, despite their ambiguous and blurred geopolitical space which allow for easy
transcendence are powerful markers of nationhood. These images and imaginations
of the nation-state are embodied in the social actors who move back and forth between
both nations. It is the exposure to the other that shapes local meanings and its articulation.
The local perspective of the villager and community as the baseline is one from which
university-educated researchers may have been excluded. Specific training may be required
using such as the ISTS in graduate research training.
4. Following on from appreciation of the views of locals is other aspects of borders that
require acknowledgement of the special nature of border regions and the seeking of knowledge from
other similar dynamic situations around the globe. Horstmann27 highlights the paucity of research
on international borders in Southeast Asia and promotes them as ‘laboratories of social and
cultural change’, which in modern times are influenced by global as well as national forces.
Citizenship itself, rather than clarifying such matters, effectively creates classes within an
otherwise uniform group – citizens with rights and non-citizens who are more exploitable.
It seems that uninformed researchers can easily misunderstand the fluidity of such terms as,
for example, Thai and Malay, and even Buddhist and Muslim, among other border nuances.
5. In terms of the other examples of local perspectives of relevance to researchers, the
common economic future of the region as borders become increasingly porous under ASEAN
policies and as has occurred elsewhere in the world with stability forms another context that
removes past stereotypes and encourages objectivity. ASEAN has set an objective of free flow
27Alexander Horstmann. Incorporation and Resistance: Border-Crossings and Social Transformation
in Southeast Asia (Review Article). <http://www.uni-muenster.de/Ethnologie/South_Thai/resource /
Incorporation_and_Resistance.pdf>