Sociokarma and Kindred Spirits: An Acknowledgement

Abstract

Jonathan S. Walters’ sevenfold sociokarma typology considers only two broad categories of karma: that of an individual agent or that of an institution or social group. This brief study reframes Walters’ sociokarma away from agent-centered myopia to relation-centered analysis. With illustrations from the contemporary Thai religious landscape, we can observe how various forms of relational karma intuitively account for spirits and material objects as a given. In other words, “collective karma” must also address entanglements; Entanglements of not only individual agents, be they persons or institutions, but also of ancestors, ghosts, deities, and various material culture—an agency of relations. Hence, ultimately, this note calls for the acknowledgement of spirits and “stuff” as inclusive in conceptions of collective karma.