A community of flood memories living with(in) the riverine landscape in ayutthaya 3

Walking in instead of walking to allows one to immerse oneself into the fray of activities, social relations and the various rhythms of the landscape.. In this chapter, I document how I

3 Methodology

Solvitur ambulando - It is solved by walking

3.1 Overview

Police: Luuk [child], where are you going? Why are you walking? It is

too hot! Are there no tuktuk? Why don’t you rent a bike? We can give you a lift to the shop

Serene: Thank you loong [uncle], but we’re not going anywhere I like to walk – I can talk to people while I walk, and pay more attention to the things around me

Police: [Laughs] Aww… young people Don’t walk in the sun!

Sidewalk encounters, May, 2014:

a conversation with a couple of policemen in Ayutthaya

With the development of modern terrestrial modes of transport such as cars,

buses and in Ayutthaya, mini-vans with open backs affectionately known as tuktuk,

walking has become a surprising, and some may even say strange, thing to do However, there is much more to walking than walking (Middleton, 2010; Ingold, & Vergunst, 2008) Beyond the rhythmic tread of feet from one place to another, the

movement of walking has been conceived as a way of knowing Walking in instead of walking to allows one to immerse oneself into the fray of activities, social relations

and the various rhythms of the landscape It is also a method to explore peoples’ relationships with, and knowledge of, the environment (Lorimer & Lund, 2008; Wunderlich, 2008)

In this chapter, I document how I employed walking as a means to get to know Ayutthaya, and for people to know me Subsequently, walking became my mode of inquiry to understand how a community of flood memories is coming into being in Ayutthaya, and how flood memories are productively and selectively utilized

to make everyday interventions in the landscape I combined walking with having conversations, photography and site/participant observation This form of

‘ethnographic walking’ allows the landscape to feature as a part of the conversation

It also disrupts the power relations and barriers between the researcher/participants

I further situate ethnographic walking as part of an unspoken collaborative process involving me – the researcher - and the various participants and more-than-human

actors within the landscape Thus, I have learnt not about, but from and with the

people and the landscape This collaborative process has influenced the research direction, dispelled unfounded assumptions and also raised questions which I continue to grapple with as I write I will also reflect on how my position as a young Singaporean female researcher constantly (re)shaped this research and my place in the ‘community of flood memories’

3.2 It started with a walk: the theoretical traditions of walking

Ayutthaya is a relatively small city; it is possible to walk across the island in about three hours I first walked around Ayutthaya two years ago as a tourist Walking at this point was a means to get from one ancient temple ruin to another Yet, while I was not ‘consciously a geographer’ that Saturday morning (Cosgrove, 1989: 118-119), I could not help but wonder about the ubiquitous mud line on the walls of

buildings, structures and trees in the city: Why are they there? Do various individuals

preserve them deliberately as a symbolic reminder of a flood? Or is it simply too troublesome to remove them? How do people feel about these flood lines? As I

pointed these out to my increasingly irate friend – one could hardly blame him, it was almost forty degrees Celsius – we came to a rest stop, hoping to get some ice cream Incredibly, the mud line at the rest stop was highlighted with blue ink, and marked

‘FLOOD, 8 OCT 2011’ (Figure 3.1) I engaged the shop owner – P’Bi6 – in a conversation of rudimentary Thai, English, Mandarin Chinese and gestures:

6 P’ is a gender-neutral Thai suffix for ‘Senior’, an informally polite way of addressing someone older Names of participants have been changed in accordance to the NUS Institutional Review Board standards Informed consent was also sought from the participants – including P’Bi whom I visited again in 2014 – to publish their personal information and parts

of our conversations in this thesis

Serene: P’, why is this here [points to the mud line on the wall]?

P’Bi: Flood was this [gestures to the mud line] high! People have to

remember

Serene: Who to remember? Ayutthaya people? Foreigners [sic]?

P’Bi: Aww! Ayutthaya people always remember [laughs], we remember

every day Remind foreigners [ gestures towards me, and says ‘tourist’,

lu ke, in Mandarin Chinese], Ayutthaya also floods Not only Khrung

Thep - you know, Bangkok! We write in English [points to the date]

P’Bi/ 39/ Shop owner/ Female/ January 2013

Figure 3.1: The mud line deposited by the 2011 flood at a rest stop in Long Law, Ayutthaya is labeled and adorned with pictures of the flood Note that the peak water level (as represented by the line) was about 1.9m high

Cosgrove (1989) was right, geography is indeed everywhere Unknowingly – until later that evening when I was writing this encounter down in the hostel – I had moved from being a tourist to a geographer I was not simply walking from one place

to another; the walk was instead itself a ‘material journey and a temporal narrative’ (Tilley, 2012: 17) I was not merely following one of the pathways in the landscape Through the multiple encounters with the mud-lines, and my candid conversation

with P’Bi, I had contributed to one of the many entangled pathways which constitute

the lived landscape (Ingold, 2007: 103) I was walking within the lived landscape

I returned to Ayutthaya again, intermittently, from February 2014 to May 2014 (see Appendix 1) This time purposefully as a geographer hoping to learn how and why floods are being remembered I disembarked from the philosophical starting point of ‘a world in motion, a world in formation’ - an ethos aligned with that of the more-than-representational geographers Any attempts at a partial understanding of this world in motion require some form of mobility Like Lee & Ingold (2006: 70), I believe that walking affords ‘real mobility’, useful as a methodological tool – the slowness of the walk allows interactions, participation, observation and contemplation Increasingly, walking has become a credible methodology in geographical research From planned walks to ‘bimbling’ (i.e wandering around aimlessly), geographers have engaged walking as a way to question and understand (re)interpretations and interventions in the landscape (see Pink, 2008; Wunderlich, 2008) Also, walking allows the unfolding of subjectivities formed via encounters with

an affective landscape (see Wylie, 2005; Sidaway, 2010; Tilley, 2012) Walks are also conceived as an embodied practice and part of everyday life (see Winkler, 2002; Middleton, 2010) Recent works in cultural geography have tended towards what Wylie (2005) terms the ‘post-phenomenological’ approach to walking Through personal and self-conscious forms of chronicling one’s mobile experiences with worldly phenomena, these walks have shown that self and landscape are ‘always emergent, constantly shifting through repertoire of unbidden, of affective and kinaesthetic contact’ (Lorimer, 2011: 25; Wylie, 2005) I have adopted some of these approaches in my walks, paying particular attention to how self(s) and landscape are constantly in process of becoming However, given the nature of this research, unlike walks by Wylie (2005) and Sidaway (2010), the walks I took were less centered upon myself, though they were no less personal Like Hill (2013: 382), I am cautious

against writings which tend to over-focus on the author’s personal thoughts, feelings and memories, as they risk ‘writing others out of his [sic] accounts’ Correspondingly,

my writing in Chapter Four and Five reflect this de-centralization of the researcher – I will reproduce parts of the conversations with the participants instead of merely what

ethnographic observations and interactions emphasize what people do, in addition to what they say (Watson & Till, 2010) Very rarely does one do things in situ, and

social relations too, are often ‘paced out along the ground’ (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008: 1; also see Hein et al, 2008) Thus, walking – around the house, workplace, place of worship and neighbourhood – allows a fuller understanding of the practices and relationships within the landscape In this case, ethnographic walking is especially helpful in understanding the materialization and enactment of memories as practice, beyond the discursive

While ethnography is oriented towards understanding a social group, I, the researcher, am not simply a distant observer Ethnography is also an overtly interpretive practice on the researcher’s part (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Pillow, 2003) The copious amount of notes and reflections scribbled down at the end of each day

is a material representation of this interpretive process I understand, therefore, that I

run the risk of (re)presenting a version of the world that is ‘far tidier than what actually exists’ (Herbert, 2000: 562; Pillow, 2003) I do not claim to (re)present wholly the everyday lives of people whom I have interacted with, and I hope that this thesis would be read as a partial understanding of flood memories and life in Ayutthaya Furthermore, my relationships with the research participants played a large role in shaping what I would and could eventually write about them I strongly believe that the beauty of ethnography lies in the formation of relationships and empathetic emotional engagements with research participants (Watson & Till, 2010) Walking had allowed me to form relationships – walking with people, and subsequently, sharing and creating a walking rhythm can lead to a very particular closeness and bond (J Anderson, 2004; Lee & Ingold, 2006) Indeed, some of these people who have walked with me are now my friends Some have argued that this blurred boundary between ‘researcher’ and ‘the researched’ is problematic, and ethnography

is generally a flawed methodology because it ‘lacks objectivity’ (see Rengert, 1997:4 96) However, the call for ‘objectivity’ is largely overstated This very subjective immersion and positioning of the researcher encourages the development of trust, and hence, allows rich, multifaceted perspectives from different actors to emerge

Despite such subjective immersions and the formation of relationships, the dualism between ‘researcher’ and ‘research subjects’ remains Pignatelli (1998) summarized succinctly the ethical conundrum of ethnographic representation and authorship: vested with interpretative authority, authorship assumes that the

ethnographer is the sole producer of knowledge The ethnographer learns about people and landscape, and writes about what s/he has learnt However, such a

stance assumes the passivity of the ‘research subjects’ It also discounts the host of actors involved, often in ‘invisible’ and un-meditated ways, in our ‘individual’ production of knowledge Serendipity – a combination of opportunities created by

(re)actions of various participants and the researcher’s intuitive reasoning – is a key

characteristic of ethnography; and it often shapes the direction of the research (Pieke, 2000; Rivoal & Salazar, 2013) It is time we recognize that ethnographers never really work alone (Matsutake Worlds Research Group, 2009: 397; Till, 2009; Watson

& Till, 2010) Hence, like these ethnographers who are looking for a more egalitarian way of doing and writing ethnography, I believe strongly, that we do not learn about

people and the landscape, but from and with them As I will show, ethnography, in

this case, is a process of (unspoken) collaboration rather than appropriation (Lassiter, 2005; Till, 2009)

3.3 From spectre to spectacle, ‘young girls’ to ‘Singaporean researchers’

I understand that I cannot simply walk into other people’s worlds and expect

to immediately participate with them (Lee & Ingold, 2006) Hence, the first five days

of walking were designed to be solitary (see Appendix 1 for timeline) Along with my friend and interpreter, P’Chon7, I wandered around Ayutthaya, hoping to get to know people (vice versa), the flood stories and rhythms of the landscape a little better Prior to walking, I was anxious about what Wylie (2005: 246) terms the ‘spectral nature of walking’ Wylie claims that the walker – especially the solitary walker – is always caught in the liminal processes of arriving and departing Although not alienated from the landscape, the walker is, at best, a ghostly spectre who supplements and disturbs the landscape While Wylie does not see this as a negative attribute – ‘haunting’ the landscape is indeed a way of being with it - this spectral nature of walking did not bode well for a walker who was also an ethnographer How were we to engage and get to know people if we were thought to

be merely ‘passing through, passing into or emerging from’ (Wylie, 2005: 246)? Our

7 P’Chon is a seasoned ethnographer who has worked with NGOs in northern Thailand on developmental and river-management issues She understood the research as well as I did – most of her translations were literal translations, and they included similes, idioms and analogies She also played a huge role in the research process as we discussed ideas, approaches and possibilities in the field Thus, the field research was really ‘our’ – rather than

‘my’ – effort, and I hope that the writing reflects this

identities - two young Asian women, initially perceived to be Thai though ‘not native

to Ayutthaya’ – dispelled this sense of spectrality Within the first hour of our first walk

in a residential area, Soi Si, we were approached by several residents – they thought

we were tourists who had lost our way As they learnt about the research, our solitary walk was reconfigured into a small but spirited parade around the neighbourhood (Figure 3.2) Several people showed us mud lines, and others shared stories about the 2011 floods Rather than spectral, our presence was instead, almost a spectacle According to one of the residents, we were a ‘different sort of tourist’ Almost all agreed to accompany us on walks over the next week around the neighbourhood and welcomed us to their homes We repeated our solitary walks in two other residential areas, Long Law and Hua Ro We were again, graciously received and welcomed (Figure 3.3)

Figure 3.2: First day of our solitary walks around Ayutthaya – a small group of enthusiastic residents in Soi Si accompanying us around the neighborhood, showing us mud lines and sharing stories

Figure 3.3: A map of Ayutthaya island Walks were carried out around three residential areas Long Law, Soi Si and Hua Ro (highlighted in orange) Additional walks and semi-structured interviews were also carried out in the three temples – Wat Mongkhon Bophit, Wat Suwandaram and Wat Senasaranam – the Ayutthaya Hospital, Ayutthaya historical park (areas in green) and Ayutthaya Riverside hotel

Later, we were repeatedly told that the situation would have been markedly different if we were ‘boys or men’, and if we were ‘from Burma’ As Cupples (2002: 383) puts it – ‘an important part of positionality is not just how we feel, but how others see us’ The general sense that we were ‘trustworthy’ stemmed from my identity as a

Singaporean [khon sinkapor], and P’Chon’s identity as a western-educated Bangkokian [khon khrung thep 8] Drawing on geopolitical imaginations of Singapore

as a ‘developed’ and ‘wealthy’ ASEAN nation, contrasted with the negative stereotypes towards the Burmese (see Chulanee & Thompson, 2007; Faucher, 2010), we were told time and again that ‘Singaporeans will not take anything away [from us], unlike the Burmese9’ We were further labelled as ‘girls’ – based on our gender and the assumption of our youth – and were characterized as ‘harmless’ Thus, many were rather forthcoming with opinions (usually about politics) and sharing parts of their lives with us In this case, it is obvious again, that the ethnographer is intimately connected with the field and the ethnographic work itself (Chiseri-Strater, 1996; Cupples, 2002) Personal identities of gender, age and nationality are always subjectively implicated in the ethnographic process, at times resulting in the establishment of very productive connections

The ethnographer’s attributes, too, can be problematic Being perceived as

‘young’ and as ‘students’ (we were initially perceived as high school students!) also denied us access to people deemed ‘important’ in the village and official bureaucratic structures Despite many attempts to speak with the village heads of Soi Si, Long

Law and Hua Ro, we were only eventually granted a ten-minute interview with the

village head of Long Law During the interview, we were constantly told that he was

‘too busy for young girls’ Similarly, it was also difficult to approach the Department of

8

Khon is the Thai word for ‘person’ – khon sinkapor, in this case, is a person [from] Singapore, i.e A Singaporean Khon Khrung Thep – a person [from] Khrung Thep, Khrung Thep being the Thai name for Bangkok, i.e a Bangkokian

9

When pressed further, many referred to a vague sense of distrust towards the Burmese, despite having never met any Burmese person Others heatedly reminded us about how the Burmese ‘burnt Ayutthaya in 1767’ The Burmese have always been conceived as the ‘enemy’

in Thai historical and popular discourses (see Chutintaranond, 1993).