From Sharp to Keyes: The Trajectory of a Methodological Paradigm in Thai Studies

Abstract

In this article, we focus our attention on the trajectory of a methodological paradigm in Thai studies, which is exemplified through illustrious career achievement of Prof. Charles Keyes. Following Thomas Kuhn (1962), we show how a scholar has woven his professional progress and self-identities under a conscious paradigm or scholarly tradition. We trace Keyes’ methodological paradigm through a careful reading of his major publications since early 1960s as a young American anthropologist, who began his life-time mission to “interpret” mainland Southeast Asian peoples and their diverse cultures. We argue that Keyes has subscribed himself to the methods set forth by his mentor, Prof. Lauriston Sharp, and the Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. Over the past four decades, a scholarly trajectory ‘from Sharp to Keyes’ has become one of most noted methodological paradigms, which emphasizes humanistic values, the fault lines of history, cultural interpretations of global processes of modernization and their resultant fragmentation among indigenous peoples.

We further argue that Keyes’ methodological paradigm is primarily designed to capture, understand, and interpret cultural change and persistence, especially from points of view of the actors/insiders. Its strength is to provide powerful accounts to comprehend cultural diversities and multiple impacts of modernization forces through fragmentation and crises of human experience. It works effectively to offset some of the theoretical imitations of evolutionist, functionalist or structuralist paradigms. Keyes has successfully built a paradigmatic mode of cultural interpretation in Thai studies. His methodological paradigm is empirically grounded, contextually historicized, theoretically engaged, but functions effectively as a conceptual tool to bridge the scholarly gaps of anthropological interpretations of mainland Southeast Asia as practiced inside and outside the region. However, asit has grown out of the fertile soils of post-W.W. II American anthropological tradition, the “Sharp-to-Keyes” methodological connection contains some limitations. Apparently, it is less effective as a mode of cultural critique and as a practical model to intervene or determine cultural change or persistence. Therefore, this article is not only a review of past scholarship, but contains suggestions for future methodological directions that can be developed out of the Keyes’ paradigm.