This research project aims to synthesise a body of knowledge about ritual media and the development of local community, examining the uses of ritual media for social development as well as investigating the empowerment of local ritual media. To achieve this goal, the project adopts functionalism and a concept of cultural reproduction, alongside with a documentary analysis and a fieldwork study. The result found that a knowledge building about ritual media has evolved in three phases. In the first phase, it is in various academic fields and institutions where postgraduate researchers have generated knowledge of ritual media. Although these researchers are concerned with a description and a conservation of local rituals, their production of knowledge tends to be static, not perceiving rituals as communication, and placing the researchers’ status as “outsiders” of the observed field. In the next phase, from 2003 to 2006, it is the Project of Folk Media and Human Well- Beings (Sor Por Sor) that plays a vital role in knowledge generating about local rituals. Researchers in this Project conduct a participatory action research with a principle of “cultural rights”. Defining rituals as symbolic and structural, they use an interdisciplinary analysis of ritual media, introducing new conceptual and methodological approaches, and initiating the best practices of ritual media. With these approaches, the output of this Project is a set of “practical theories” of ritual media and the development of local community in Thailand. Finally, from 2008 to 2009, it is the third phase in which the Research Project of Participatory Cultural Management emerged and was proposed by the Department of Cultural Promotion (previously known as Sor Wor Chor). Researchers in this Project are interested in producing “theoretical practices” about ritual media and the development of local community. Drawing upon a set of knowledge generated by Sor Por Sor in the second phase, these researchers thus adjust it to a real condition of ritual media and local community.