Understanding Thai culture...

[dtaai-maai]

When people make a "this is how people think in Thailand" post, I have been known, in the distant past, to occasionally overdo the sarcastic response. I am, of course, a reformed poster these days. Usually.

I was reading something last night that instantly made me think of Thailand:

"Taglian culture was a religious confusion I hadn't begun to fathom, tangled in caste systems which made no sense. I asked questions but no one understood. Things were as they were. It was the way they'd always been. I was tempted to declare the mess obsolete."

[Pleng]

I personally think that one of the main things making it difficult for us foreigners to understand Thai culture is that when a Thai person tells us that "Thai people" always/never/like/don't like/eat/go/whatever we take it as red that they are genuinely representing the Thai people, or at least some representative sub group of Thais.

From my experience, when somebody Thai generalises about something they appear to follow the logic of "This applies to me. I am Thai. Therefore this applies to Thai people".

I think while this applies in some degree to every nationality, it appears more noticeable when a westerner tries to understand how a Thai thinks, and I believe there are two reasons for this. Firstly there is such a big gap in cultures between Thai and our own that there's always more questions to be asked (and therefore more opportunities for confusion) than, for example a Brit visiting another nearby European country. And secondly, whatever their political, religious or lifestyle choices, Thai's are generally very Patriotic, and in being so, find it easier to believe that something that applies to them is automatically typical of their compatriots.

[zeitgeist]

I agree with Pleng regarding Thai people's logic "This applies to me. I am Thai. Therefore this applies to Thai people" but I also think often this is an excuse as why someone hasn't done something properly, or different to what was expected, an easy way out when dealing with foreigners.

[Bamboo Grove]

This is a very good topic. Thank you for starting it, dtaai-maai. And as Pleng says, it applies to any culture. I am currently studying sinology and the idea of "culture" has come up very often. If we really think about the word profoundly, what does it mean? In case of Thailand, is it the culture of central plains, or Isan or Northern Lanna or mayhaps that of the South or even the muslims in the deep south? Who will be considered to represent the real Thai culture?

We all love to say: "In my country, we do like this...." But then again, does every part of the country do the same? Of course not. The word "culture" is very much tied to nationalism nowadays. In Asia (and I suppose in Africa as well) there were no national boundaries before the Western colonialism arrived so this kind of definition was probably non-existant. And who benefits from nationalism? Those who have or who want to have the power.

[J.J.B.]

I've recently been studying 'business culture', which I define as a collective state of mind informed by a series of unwritten rules. My biggest observation is that corporate culture appears to be created or tolerated by leaders as a way to resist change. Perhaps it is similar with societal culture and the fact that change is resisted or very gradual leads to the shrugging of shoulders and general apathy about anything ever being much different.