A New Perspective on Community Spirits Through Cultural Landscapes

What makes a community spirit truly unique? Is it the recipe, the ingredients, or something much deeper?

I am delighted to announce the publication of my latest book, Surascape: Creating the Identity of Community Spirits through Cultural Landscapes, a new framework that explores how local spirits embody the relationships between people, landscapes, history, agriculture, and culture.

Rather than treating community spirits simply as alcoholic beverages, Surascape argues that they are living expressions of cultural landscapes. Every bottle reflects centuries of interaction between rivers, rice fields, farming systems, settlements, local knowledge, rituals, markets, and collective memory. The book introduces “Surascape” as a conceptual framework for understanding these interconnected cultural systems.

The book also provides practical tools for communities, designers, researchers, and entrepreneurs. It presents the Surascape Identity Toolkit, including landscape reading, identity extraction, storytelling, visual language, authenticity assessment, and strategic development pathways that help transform local cultural capital into meaningful place-based identities.

Although the case studies focus primarily on Thailand’s riverine landscapes and community distilleries, the framework is broadly applicable to other traditional food and beverage cultures around the world. The concept can equally support coffee, tea, wine, sake, cheese, or other products whose identities are deeply rooted in place.

This publication represents another step in my broader research on cultural landscapes, heritage, gastronomy, and community-based development, demonstrating how local identity can emerge not from branding alone, but from understanding the landscape that has shaped communities for generations.

he English edition is currently in preparation and will be launched soon. I hope it will make the concept of Surascape accessible to an international audience working in heritage, tourism, gastronomy, creative economies, and place-based development. The printed (hard copy) Thai edition is now available for FREE!!! and can be picked up at the Faculty of Architecture, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand. I look forward to sharing more about this journey in the coming months. Stay tuned!