The Roles of Temples in Conveying Ethnography Identity in Photharam District, Ratchaburi Province

Abstract

Photharam was a district encompassing 71 temples. There was a variety of 5 ethnic groups including Thai-Mon, Thai-Vientiane, Thai-Chinese, Thai-Yuan, Thai – Khmer with Laotian origin. A temple played a role for each ethnic group as the center of religions and traditional ceremonies. Therefore, a temple appeared to be a means to communicate publicly the traditional stories, through its arts and religious activities. This study aimed to investigate the roles of temples in communicating or conveying the identity of ethnicities, as well as to develop a guideline to promote more roles of the temples in strengthening the ethnography identity communication.  The samples consisted of 80 people across the 5 ethnic groups in Photharam District, with the average age of 45.4 years. The research tool was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean, and S.D. The result was found that the level of the role of temples in communicating the ethnography identity was at a high level, (x̄ = 3.54). The highest level of the role that the temple did was as the center of religious and traditional ceremonies, in which was reflecting each ethnic identity,   (x̄ = 3.63). The level of the development of the guideline to promote the roles in order to communicate the ethnography identity was rated at a moderate level, (x̄ = 3.25).