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charged words and ideas in the lexicon of social science.” (Nash 1989: 1) Similarly, “ethnic dress” seems
also to have a clear referent. Yet, when examined closely, its use has varied widely, often becoming a
synonym for a encompassing other categories such as religious or occupational dress. Ethnic dress has
been noted as an aspect of ethnicity, but it has been neglected analytically. This study sets out to correct
this neglect.

The intensification in the (re)production of cultural markers in general and clothes in particular in
contemporary southern border provinces is strongly linked to the “multicultural region” promotion in deep
south. The current issues of the Thai Malays regarding clothing cannot be separated from its long-term
quest for ethnic recognition, enjoying, protecting and promoting one's own cultural values and heritages.
Though the costume is elitists’ drive project, it is getting acceptance. If the promotion of the costume
continues and keeps its momentum, it is expected that it would be a part and parcel the people’s culture
and serve as an identity marker of the group underlining an “Us” and “Them” distinction.

The Thai Malays in southern border provinces are one of the ethnic groups in Thailand who started
to develop and promote their language for education, administration, legal purposes and so on. Moreover,
they began to (re)write their histories, and promote their “traditional” costumes and have started to
identify the colour, symbols and signs associated with their ‘distinctive’ cultures. The attempt to find
symbolic representations, in some case, resulted in producing cultural unhipness in Deep South. Hence,
the main objective of the research is, to trace the changes and continuity in the ‘cultural’ identity of the
community and examine the incentives for creating new platform for preserving Malay ethnic identity. The
research examines the links between the costume and the Malay people’s ethnic culture, history and
religion. Knowing people’s reflection and reaction regarding the ‘newly recall’ to observe Malay costume
was a main objective of this research study.

Methodology
In this research, the researcher intends to look on how local people interpret and understand the

signs, symbols and colours of their cultural costumes, how they define some items as cultural costumes
and how this connects to their identity. The researcher also eager and interested to see how the Thai
Malays relate such meaning to the material culture (in this case the cultural costumes – The researcher
limited herself to costumes and traditional dress because of the fact that it is the cultural costumes that
are under serious trends in my observation). To get as much information as possible regarding these issues,
the research required the researcher to look at the case within the social context of the local people under
the study. Hence, the research will be conducted in the natural setting of the community and researcher
is able to meet the community face to face. In other words, the interpretive research paradigm, which
considers reality as socially constructed and knowledge as subjective (Chilisa, 2012), will be followed and
applied to see the different interpretation and understanding of the community regarding the issue under
investigation.
Ethnography will be among the methods used to interact with research field work. As Hammersley

and Atkinson define it, ethnography is a method or set of methods where the ethnographer or researcher
overtly or covertly takes part in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching, listening,
asking questions, collecting available data to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the researcher
- cited in (Walsh, 2012). In fact, the researcher did not implement the classical kind of ethnography method
because of time and financial limit but will successful in going in to the study area and staying at the
communities setting for observation, interview and focus group discussion.

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