LANNA WEDDING CEREMONY: THE REFLECTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

This research was to study Lanna people’s identity and its changes reflected through Lanna wedding ceremonies as well as the construction of Lanna people’s identity through the use of the Lanna wedding event organizing service. The study employed qualitative research based on the concepts of cultural ecology, consumption of sign, nostalgia, and hermeneutics of the signs. The information was collected through documentary analysis, field work using participant observation, and interviews with the involved people, such as academics on Lanna culture, the wedding package service providers, and the customers of such services in the Chiang Mai area.

The findings revealed that the Lanna wedding is a form of custom and tradition which has the form and meaning reflecting Lanna people’s identity of their way of life, values, beliefs, and world views. These factors were under three contexts of traditional society – the life maintenance in the agricultural society, animism, and kinship. After Lanna had been incorporated into Siam, the political context, the government policies, and societal conditions brought about socio-cultural change of Lanna culture, including the wedding ceremony which clearly reflected the Siamese culture which was widely accepted as the more civilized one. In the initial period, the change was through the acculturation process in which the Siamese practice was partly used in the local tradition. Later on, it became increasingly influential and gradually replaced the local one in the new context of Lanna people who had adopted the ever-changing way of life, values, beliefs, and world views up till now. Under the trend of tourist promotion launched by the state agencies and municipalities using local culture, the Lanna wedding ceremony has been revitalized and reconstructed as a cultural product or identity commodity. Besides being interesting to those who want to get in touch with this beautiful and exotic culture, this cultural product has enjoyed popularity among another group of people who want to build up their Lanna cultural identity for themselves, reflecting the way of life of people in modern society who can acquire their identity through the consumption of symbolic commodities.