What happens to a temple when its abbot passes away? Based on ethnographic materials from a royal temple in urban Bangkok, this presentation examines the social and spiritual structures revealed through an abbot’s funeral. 

From eventful ritual ceremonies to everyday practices of commemoration, the funeral unfolds across multiple scales, involving not only the temple’s monks and local lay communities, but also lineages of monastic knowledge transmission, royal patronage, and connections forged through merit-making alongside mourning. Taking the prolonged funeral as an analytical starting point, this study explores how relationships between contemporary Thai temples, the sangha, knowledge, and merit are both inherited and reworked.

Speaker

Wenlan Wang is a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS). She holds both a BA and an MA in Social Anthropology. Her research interests include religious anthropology, classical anthropological theory, and Theravāda Buddhist societies. Her current doctoral project, titled 'Tie the Thais: An Anthropological Study of Sai Sin and Related Rituals in Urban Thai Society', explores how contemporary ritual practices involving Sai Sin (sacred threads) shape and reflect social connection, religious authority, and interreligious dynamics in urban Thailand.

Moderator

Amaal Salie is a PhD researcher at KITLV. She studied City Planning at the University of Cape Town and later completed a Master’s in Programme Evaluation. At KITLV, Amaal explores the foodways of the Indonesian diaspora in South Africa as part of the Trajectories of Taste project. Her research will focus on how culinary practices reflect adaptation, memory, and identity within transgenerational diasporic communities in Cape Town.

Format, date, time & venue

This seminar is a hybrid event and will be held in the conference room of KITLV, Herta Mohr building, room 1.30, Witte Singel 27 A, Leiden and online via Zoom, on Thursday 29 January  from 15.30 – 17.00 PM (CET).

UUKS

This seminar is part of the monthly Unraveling Unconventional Knowledge Systems (UUKS) seminar series. The UUKS seminar series delves into the intricate and multifaceted relationship between human, non human and environtment, including spiritual worlds, within various ecological landscapes. The seminar series puts the role of unconventional knowledge systems central, such as traditional ecological knowledge, centuries old institutions which preserve and still use the knowledge and present day agencies furthering the process of knowledge evolution. 

Image

The offerings and arrangements before the abbot’s coffin. Photo: Wenlan Wang.

Flyer

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