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Capitalism Magic Thailand: Global Modernity and the Making of Enchantment

by Peter A. Jackson
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Where Markets Meet Modern Enchantment

Peter A. Jackson examines Thailand’s cults of wealth, empowered amulets, and spirit mediumship. He traces how deities and religious figures converge across commercial spaces and media. Challenging magic as merely premodern, the book connects ritual transformation with capitalism, mass media, and modernity.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
Just Arrived

Capitalism Magic Thailand: Global Modernity and the Making of Enchantment

by Peter A. Jackson
Regular price RM45.00 MYR
Unit price
per
Condition guide
ISBN: 9789814951098
Author: Peter A. Jackson
Publisher: ISEAS
Date of Publication: 2022-02-28
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: History, Religion, Sociology
Goodreads rating: 4.14
(rated by 14 readers)

Description

By studying intersections among new cults of wealth, ritually empowered amulets and professional spirit mediumship-which have emerged together in Thailand's dynamic religious field in recent decades-Capitalism Magic Thailand explores the conditions under which global modernity produces new varieties of enchantment. Bruno Latour's account of modernity as a condition fractured between rationalizing ideology and hybridizing practice is expanded to explain the apparent paradox of new forms of magical ritual emerging alongside religious fundamentalism across a wide range of Asian societies. In Thailand, novel and increasingly popular varieties of ritual now form a symbolic complex in which originally distinct cults centred on Indian deities, Chinese gods and Thai religious and royal figures have merged in commercial spaces and media sites to sacralize the market and wealth production. Emerging within popular culture, this complex of cults of wealth, amulets and spirit mediumship is supported by all levels of Thai society, including those at the acme of economic and political power. New theoretical frameworks are presented in analyses that challenge the view that magic is a residue of premodernity, placing the dramatic transformations of cultic ritual centre stage in modern Thai history. It is concluded that modern enchantment arises at the confluence of three processes: neoliberal capitalism's production of occult economies, the auraticizing effects of technologies of mass mediatization, and the performative force of ritual in religious fields where practice takes precedence over doctrine.
 

Where Markets Meet Modern Enchantment

Peter A. Jackson examines Thailand’s cults of wealth, empowered amulets, and spirit mediumship. He traces how deities and religious figures converge across commercial spaces and media. Challenging magic as merely premodern, the book connects ritual transformation with capitalism, mass media, and modernity.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

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