Ban bath as commodity

In terms of cultural tourism, it aims to commodify traditional culture as a product for outsiders. The process of commodifying Ban bath’s way of life, tradition, and handicraft is transformed to be a saleable product for tourists. According to my surveying, the majority of their customer is foreigner not Thai because outsiders see the cultural product as a decoration or souvenir which is not the original function of monk bowl.

The culture product lose thier meaning for local and need to present the tourist with spectacular, attractive and exotic (Boorstin 1964:103)

A monk bowl keychain which I bought it from Ban bath while surveying.

Moreover, local people also do the refurbishing of a machine-made monk bowl by refurbishing and selling it to tourism at a lower price than an actual handmade one. However, some tourists buy it because of the name’s place and the reputation of traditional monk bowl maker village even it is the refurbished machine-made monk bowl.

This is the picture of machine-made monk bowls from china which will be repair and recycle by local people.

This leads me to the question of how much authenticity of cultural value left when Ban Bath becomes a commodity?

The project aims to explore the amount of the remaining authenticity of cultural value once it becomes a commodity.