Western military uniforms, costumes and royal regalia were much admired and assimilated into Thai culture. So, this meaning corresponds to the concept of ‘privacy’ in Thai language of ‘being private’ or ‘living privately’ (khwam pen yu suan tua).
It is important to further notice that this concep- tion of privacy is basically collectivistic – not, as Westerners tend to assume, individual. That is, as Ramasoota makes clear, ‘being private’ in traditional Thailand applies primarily to the shared family space in which family members undertake a wide range of activities – including rituals, cooking and eating, and sleeping – as demarcated from the world outside: ‘‘It is the kind of privacy that is shared by intimate members of the same household. By this token, individualistic privacy is said to have no place in traditional Thai culture.’’2
Niels Mudler likewise points out that privacy and individualism are Western concepts that are not applicable to Thai society, for Thai life is played out in public.3 However, a person’s private affairs should be kept private which implies that a Thai has both a right and obligation in the sense that he has to hide his own psychological problems within the bounds of expected behavior; this includes the right to expect other people to respect his private affairs which would cause him to lose face if made public.
The second meaning of ‘privacy’ in Thai culture connotes the right to be left alone or non-interference which can be equated to ‘private affairs’ or ‘my private affairs’ or ‘my business’ (‘rueng-suan-tua’ or ‘rueng- suan-tua-khong-chan’ or ‘tu-ra-khong-chan’). Personal or private businesses or affairs should not be interfered with in Thai culture, e.g., quarrels within the family, the punishment of a child by his parents, and so forth. This notion is the legacy of the feudal heritage of Thai society where the master or lord of the household owned and commanded the lives and destinies of all his subordinates under his autocratic rule.
The lack of a Thai word for ‘privacy’ reflects the traditional Thai village life and the heritage of the feudalistic values in Thai history. The traditional Thai village house consists of a large room which