1 See the landmark study by McCargo, Duncan, Tearing apart the land: Islam and legitimacy in southern Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For a deep ethnography on communal violence, see Askew, Marc, ‘Landscapes of fear, horizons of trust: Villagers dealing with danger in Thailand's insurgent south’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 40, 1 (2009): 59–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the informative account by Dorairajoo, Saroja, ‘Violence in the South of Thailand’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5, 3 (2004): 465–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See the special issue by Bubandt, Niels and Molnar, Andrea, ‘On the margins of conflict: An introduction’, Antropologi Indonesia, special vol. (2004): 1–6Google Scholar.

3 See Horstmann, Alexander, ‘Violence, subversion and social creativity in the Thai–Malaysian borderscape’, in Borderscapes: Hidden geographies and politics at territory's edge, ed. Rajaram, Prem Kumar and Grundy-Warr, Carl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 137–57Google Scholar.

4 See Horstmann, Alexander and Seraidari, Katherina, Intimacy and violence: Fragile transitions in Southeast Asia and Southeast Europe (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

5 See Keyes, Charles F. and Tanabe, Shigeharu, Cultural crisis and social memory: Modernity and identity in Thailand and Laos (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002)Google Scholar.

6 Many communities find themselves unable to catch up with agrarian change and suffer from environmental and material deprivation. Some communities may entirely move to urban centres, such as Hat Yai.

7 For a survey of the relationships in the South, multiple connections and cross-overs, see Horstmann, Alexander, ‘Ethnohistorical perspectives on Buddhist–Muslim relations and coexistence in southern Thailand: From shared cosmos to the emergence of hatred?’, Sojourn, 19, 1 (2004): 76–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See the community study of Angela Burr for an earlier account of coexistence in Songkhla. Angela Burr, ‘Buddhism, Islam and spirit beliefs and practices and their social correlates in two southern Thai coastal fishing villages’ (Ph.D. diss., University of London, London, 1974).

8 See Gesick, Lorraine M., In the land of Lady White Blood: Southern Thailand and the meaning of history (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Gesick provides a beautiful local history of the Songkhla Lake area. See Jacq-Hergoualc'h, Michel, The Malay Peninsula: Crossroads of the maritime silk road (100 BC–1300 AD) (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

9 See Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic interactions on a plural peninsula, ed. Montesano, Michael J. and Jory, Patrick (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 Accordingly, I favour a concept of ritual that emphasises the negotiation of social order and not one that only reproduces social order, although sometimes ritual may indeed reproduce social and normative orders, and at other times challenge them. See Henn, Alexander and Koepping, Klaus-Peter, Rituals in an unstable world: Contingency–hybridity–embodiment (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008)Google Scholar.

11 See the argument of the emergence of alternative modernities in Knauft, Bruce, Critically modern: Alternatives, alterities, anthropologies (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

12 Bubandt and Molnar argue in their introduction, ‘On the margins of conflict’ (2004), that the quality of previous works has been hampered by simplistic arguments about essential culture or journalistic jargon. Here, I want to cite only a few works that avoid both traps: Gravers, Mikael, Exploring ethnic diversity in Burma (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Social dynamics in the highlands of Southeast Asia: Reconsidering political systems of highland Burma by E. R. Leach, ed. Robinne, François and Sadan, Mandy (Leiden: Brill: 2007)Google Scholar; Montesano and Jory, Thai South and Malay North.

13 Gomes, Alberto, Kaartinen, Timo and Kortteinen, Timo, ‘Introduction: Civility and social relations in South and Southeast Asia’, in Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 32, 3 (2006): 4–11Google Scholar.

14 I propose that people may invest cultural resources into peace and sometimes into violence, depending on the political embeddings. Religious syncretism and conflict are not antithetical, and religious syncretism can sometimes be antagonistic. Thus, Bubandt and Molnar, in ‘On the margins of conflict’, argue that the politics of customary law played a decisive role in the violence, not only in reconciliation. In the Thai context, see the excellent discussion of syncretism in Kitiarsa, Pattana, ‘Beyond syncretism: Hybridization of popular religion in contemporary Thailand’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 36, 3 (2005): 461–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Robinne and Sadan, Social dynamics in the highlands of Southeast Asia, p. 308.

16 For a case of intensive cultural and political competition in a syncretic ritual and pilgrimage centre in northern India, see van der Veer, Peter, Gods on Earth: The management of religious experience and identity in a North Indian pilgrimage centre (London and Atlantic Highlands: The Athlone Press, 1988)Google Scholar. This case of cultural competition resulted in acute violence. Syncretism thus can presume violence.

17 On the Manora, see Horstmann, Alexander, ‘The revitalization and reflexive transformation of the Manoora Rongkruu performance and ritual in southern Thailand: Articulations with modernity’, Asian Journal of Social Sciences, 37, 6 (2009): 918–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid.

19 Patrick Jory, ‘Luang Pho Thuat and the integration of Patani’, in Montesano and Jory, Thai South and Malay North, pp. 292–303.

20 Madmarn, Hasan, The pondok and madrasah in Patani (Bangi: Penerbit University Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1999)Google Scholar.

21 These observations are based on my own fieldwork in Tha Sala, Nakon Srithammarat.

22 Carsten, Janet, The heat of the hearth: The process of kinship in a Malay fishing community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 256Google Scholar.

23 In this line, see the (structuralist) argument by Platenkamp, Josephus M., ‘From partial persons to completed societies’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 129 (2004): 1–28Google Scholar.

24 Glö in southern Thailand form close social ties that bind individuals together for life. See Horstmann, ‘Ethno-historical perspectives’.

25 Ryoko Nishii describes a similar ceremony in Satun, in which a Muslim must break with his Buddhist ancestry. In this case a white shirt is placed over a cup containing water, betel and a banknote. Nishii, Ryoko, ‘Coexistence of religions: Muslim and Buddhist relationship on the West Coast of southern Thailand’, in Tai Culture: International Review on Tai Cultural Studies, 4, 1 (1999): 77–92Google Scholar.

26 The Thuat is the guardian spirit, first ancestor and founder of the community and is believed to have made land and water available to the people.

27 Dawa, meaning nothing more than the ‘call to prayer’, has been reinterpreted in the missionary sense as ‘going out and preaching’.

28 See the contributions in Travellers in faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama'at as a transnational Islamic movement for faith renewal, ed. Masud, Muhammad Khalid (Leiden: Brill, 2000)Google Scholar for the history and ideology of the Tablighi Jama'at and for accounts of its becoming a transnational movement. For a case-study of the new presence of the Da'wa Tabligh in southern Thailand, see Horstmann, Alexander, ‘The inculturation of a transnational Islamic missionary movement: Tablighi Jamaat al-Dawa and Muslim society in southern Thailand’, Sojourn, 22, 1 (2007): 107–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.