The Cocreation of the Songkran Festival in Thailand And the Codestruction of Its Cultural Significance

Abstract

This article investigated the codestruction of cultural significance through the cocreation and evolution of a hallmark cultural event, using the Songkran Festival, Thailand, as a case study. The Songkran Festival began within an agricultural society rooted in Buddhist cultural inheritance. Traditionally, Thai people cocreated the celebration by offering food to monks ( Puñña ), and releasing fish or birds on Maha Songkran (i. e., the last day of the previous year) in April. They built sand pagodas or Chedi Sai at Buddhist temples to compensate for sand that was removed under their feet over the previous year. They also reunited with family by traveling back to their hometowns to pay respects to family elders and ancestors. After that, they would pour water from a silver bowl onto each other's shoulders as a sign of blessing, and the water represented wishes for good rainfall for the New Year's harvest. The cocreation between tourism sectors, local businesses, and the festival stakeholders transformed festivities into foam parties, special events, and leisure activities to stimulate tourism demand and to generate economic benefit. Consequently, these new celebrating practices codestructed the cultural significance and core values of the Songkran Festival. Therefore, this study sought to understand the evolution and cocreation phenomena in the festival that leads to codestruction of its cultural significance and core values through document analysis and semistructured interviews. The findings were thematically reported into four crucial themes that present key characteristics of codestructed cultural significance in the Songkran Festival: social change, public participation, the proliferation of leisure activities for economic gain, and commercialization of the Songkran Festival. The implications of this study contribute to expanding the understanding of the coexistence between cocreation and codestruction phenomena in cultural events.