The construction of collective memory, rituals, beliefs, and ethnicity in marginalized communities.

Abstract

This academic article examines the role of ritual and belief in constructing collective memory among ethnic and marginal communities, while also analyzing the relationship between collective memory, ethnic identity, and the formation of social space among marginalized groups. The study employs qualitative documentary research based on Thai-language academic articles published in TCI/ThaiJO journals related to memory, ritual, belief, and ethnicity. The findings reveal that rituals do more than preserve tradition or transmit inherited beliefs. They function as important mechanisms through which collective memory is kept alive by repeated performance in everyday life and communal occasions. Such collective memory serves at least four major functions: affirming roots and continuity, sustaining and reshaping ethnic identity, producing social space for marginalized communities, and serving as a symbolic resource for negotiating with the state and dominant society. The study also finds that rituals in marginal communities are not static; rather, they are selectively adapted, reinterpreted, and transformed under pressures from state policy, development, schooling, tourism, and mainstream culture. This article proposes a new analytical insight that collective memory in marginal communities should be understood as a “memory structure” embedded in ritual, belief, and cultural space, rather than merely as a static cultural heritage. It argues that understanding ethnic communities requires attention to ritual as a site where memory, identity, and power intersect, thereby revealing the dynamic ways in which marginalized groups sustain themselves and negotiate their place in contemporary Thai society.