Lanna Ritual Media: Women’s Communication, Role, Power and a Negotiation of Space

Abstract

                   Lanna society is matriarchal in which women play important roles in their household’s production systems and determine the patterns of beliefs and rituals in the family. For Lanna ritual media like Ancestor’s Spirits and Ghost rituals, these are communication spaces that allow women to occupy. However, at present the space of ritual media is not just for women, but it is also for men and LGBTs. Consequently, if women want to enter the contesting space to compete, negotiate or reproduction to a contested space and create a sacred space through the original Lanna ritual media, women must take on the social role, status, communication and capital as well as the understanding of the power relations between women and men and the understanding of social structures in order to continue to contest for the Lanna ritual media which they once exclusively owned.