James Taylor's recent book, Buddhism and postmodern imaginings in Thailand: The religiosity of urban space, is a frustrating read. On the one hand, Taylor is addressing phenomena in the Thai religious sphere that absolutely need to be addressed. For too long, there has been a tendency for scholars of contemporary Thai religiosity, and in particular Buddhism, to focus on just a few movements, such as Dhammakaya and Santi Asok (with the occasional detour to a figure such as Buddhadasa or Phra Payutto). While Taylor does look at Dhammakaya here as well as contemporary aspects of the forest monks movement, he also addresses a broader variety of materials, including the carnivalesque aspects of some contemporary Buddhist forms and the development of cyber-Buddhist communities in Thailand. This is a welcome development, and the book is largely framed as an effort to make sense of Thai religiosity after the 1997 financial crisis. On the other hand, despite focusing on appropriate materials, Taylor's work is flawed, both in its research and its argument. While there are interesting and valuable insights in all of the chapters of the book (many of which were previously published elsewhere), this book is a case where the sum does not equal the value of its parts.

Taylor's primary point would seem to be incontestable, and yet worth making. Thai society has changed a great deal in the last several decades. There has been significant urbanisation and the country has become increasingly tied into regional and global networks of commerce, education and religion. Spaces of social action, both geographical and conceptual, have changed, and ‘new articulations of Thai Buddhism are significantly implicated in local–global historical and socio-cultural contexts’ (p. 2). This in turn necessitates a ‘rethinking’ of the place and practice of religion in Thailand. Laudably, Taylor attempts to analyse Theravada Buddhism in Thailand as an object in motion, not simply a static combination of ideology and institution. He is, as he says, situating ‘the vernacular, particularized religious narratives in relation to wider global forces and sentiments’ (p. 2). It is the primary problem – and disappointment – of the book that he does not actually do this.

There are several different problems that I want to highlight here. Perhaps the biggest weakness of the book is the way Taylor deals with critical theory. He takes the postmodern to be a perspective that abandons singular narratives, citing the notion that it is a space in which ‘contradiction and paradox sit side by side’ (p. 2). This is fine but it is not clear how far or effectively Taylor takes this view. Much of the text is awash in references to critical social theory from various disciplines but often these references get in the way of the points he seeks to make. His argument is thus filled with jargon, such as referring to Bangkok as a ‘postmetropolis’, without making it clear the way that this helps us understand how Bangkok functions or the effect that has on religious institutions or practices. In other words, Taylor's marriage of theory with material from Thai Buddhism neither enhances our understanding of Thai religiosity, nor of the critical theory itself. At its weakest points, Taylor's use of theory simply gets in the way of having done extensive research. For example, when Taylor talks about new Buddhist cyber-communities – a topic that does need to be addressed – he largely discusses what effects cyber-communities have without actually engaging in what Thai Buddhists do or say online!

Perhaps the richest material within the book is a revisiting of the forest monks. Taylor's first book was a consideration of the forest monks in relation to the efforts of the Thai state to domesticate Thai frontiers. Here he examines the forest monks of Achan Man's lineage in relation to the ‘body of the nation’ (i.e. some of the ways monks engage with politics) as well as how the mobility of this lineage signals a conflict between monks and the state. This material (which comprises three of the eight chapters) is rich and well examined. Leaving aside the fact that these forest monks are not really examples of ‘urban religiosity’, Taylor's focus on this lineage highlights an additional problem with the book. While he never states the matter quite in this way, Taylor's emphasis on these monks indicates that he sees them as paradigmatic of what Thai Buddhism is at its core, or perhaps should be at its core (he describes the monks' wandering in the first half of the twentieth century, for example, as ‘enduring’ and ‘a/temporal’). This in part is why he sees the messiness and kitsch of many modern wat as postmodern, rather than as simply Thai. I am not suggesting an eternal essence to Thai Buddhism as messy/kitschy, just as I do not think Taylor sees the forest monks as the essence of Thai Buddhism, per se. Rather they provide the baseline for how he understands Thai Buddhism, and as a result, I think it causes him to misread aspects of Thai religiosity.

As I said, this is a frustrating book. Taylor clearly knows a lot about Thailand, and he looks at things that scholars of Thai Buddhism and religion should be looking at. Indeed, as a result of this, even with its serious flaws, this is probably a book that scholars should read (and indeed individual chapters might be useful for teaching with). However, Taylor's desire to bring critical theory to bear on Thai Buddhism and religion gets in the way of his actually doing so.