Ethnic Adaptation and Identity: The Karen on the Thai Frontier with Burma [1 ed.] 0915980673, 9780915980673

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Charles F. Keyeseditor

Ethnic Adaptation THE KAREN ON THE THAI FRONTIER WITH BURMA

ISHI

A Publication of the Institute for the Study of Human Issues Philadelphia

Sefferal Library Sysfefii JnivsrSity of'Wisconsin - Mac^^cSl •./ ■ Street -/dd^son. Wl 53706-1404 U.S.A,

Copyright © 1979 by ISHI, Institute for the Study of Human Issues', Inc. All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems with­ out permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

Main entry under title:

Ethnic adaptation and identity.

Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Karens—Ethnic identity. 2. Thailand—Social life and customs. I. Keyes, Charles F. DS570. K37E86 301.45' 1 '04209593 79-12448 ISBN 0-915980-67-3 For information, write:

Director of Publications ISHI 3401 Science Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 U.S.A.

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C^ZeSl

Contents 'J

Preface vii A Note on Transcription

Introduction

ix

1

CHARLES F. KEYES

Ethnic groups: some theoretical considerations, / / Ethnic identity and adap­ tation of Karen in Thailand, 8

The Karen in Thai History and the History of the Karen in Thailand 25 CHARLES F. KEYES

Were the Karen an autochthonous people in northern Thailand? 26 / Origins of Karen relationships with Siamese tod Yuan, 3! ! Emergence of the Karen in the worlds of the Yuan and Siamese, 36! The structure of Karen relation­ ships with the Yuan and Siamese, 46

A People Between: The Pwo Karen of Western T-hailand

63

THEODORE STERN

The northern Pwo, 67! The central Pwo, 69

The Karen^ Millennialism^ and the Politics ofAccommodation to Lowland States 81 PETER HINTON

Lowland relations with the Pwo Karen, 82 f Lowland relations whfh the Kayah Karen, 87 / The Pwo and Kayah compared, 59 / The role pf millennial movements, 90

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Contents

Ethnic Identity and Sociocultural Change Among Sgaiv Karen in Northern Thailand 99 SHIGERU lUIMA

Sociocultural change in hill and plains Karen villages, 99 / The religious basis of ethnic identity, 107! Sociocultural change and ethnic identity, 115

Ethnic Groups Category, and Identity: Karen in Northern Thailand 119 PETER KUNSTADTER

Methods and evidence, 725! The Karen at home; or who are the Karen? 725 / Karen in Mae Sariang district, 126 / Ethnic stability and cultural change, 130! Karen economic status and ethnic identity, 134 ! Extra-village relationships, 137! Conclusions, 757

In the Mosaic: The Cognitive and Structural Aspects of Karen-Other Relationships 165 DAVID H. MARLOWE

The behavioral basis of ethnic categorical usage, 1681 Karen social structure in comparison to Northern Thai, 176 / Karen-other group relationships, 180! Hierarchy of social relationships involving Karen, 1S9 ! Transformation of hierarchical to pluralistic society, 202

Who Are the Karen, and If So, Why? Karen Ethnohistory and a Formal Theory of Ethnicity 215 F. K. LEHMAN

Karen origins: ethnolinguistic and historical evidence, 277 / Ethnic category words and their shifting application; did “Karen” always mean the people it means now? 229 / A general theory of ethnicity, 232 / Applications of the -theory to Karen identity, 238 / The contemporary dynamics of Karen ethnic­ ity: the Kayah example, 241 / Culture change and ethnic identity: some con­ clusions, 247

References 255 Notes on the Contributors Index 269

268

Photographs (by Charles F. Keyes) appear on pages 95-98.

Preface This book had its beginnings in .1967-68 when several of the contribu­ tors (Kunstadter, Mar^we, Hinton, Lehman, and myself) were all engaged in field work among the Karen in northern Thailand. Our periodic meetings gave us the opportunity to compare notes, to argue, and to find common themes in our research. In 1971 I organized a symposium on theCopic of “A Pivotal or Marginal People: The Place of the Karens in southeast Asia,” which was held at the annual meeting of the /^sociation for Asian Studies in Washington, D.C. At the session, Pej^- Kunstadter, David Marlowe, Theodore Stem, and I

delivered preliminary versions of the essays that appear here. F. K. Lehman, who served as discussant at the symposium, subsequently elaborated’upon his remarks in the chapter presented here. Following the symposium, I sent copies of the essays to a number of people, soliciting their comments. After having read the works, Peter Hinton and ShigertJ lijima accepted my invitation to prepare contributions of their own. I was able to discuss their essays with them on visits to Australia and Japan in 1972 and 1973 respectively. Although work on this volume was mainly completed in 1974 and it was originally scheduled for publication in 1977, a combination of circumstances has prevented its being published until now. Given the delay, the contributors to this volume have not been able to take into account all of the relevant literature on the Karen. For Sample, James W. Hamilton’s .study, Pwo Karen: At the Edge of Mountain and Plain (Hamilton 1976), appeared after all the contributors had completed their chsqjters. In the past few years, also, a new genera­ tion of scholars interested in the Karen, and particularly in the Karen

viii

Preface

in Thailand, has begun to emerge. I should like to call attention espe­ cially-to the research carried out by Mr. Ronald Renard from the University of Hawaii on the history of Karen in Thailand, by Anders Baltzer Jorgensen and Kirsten Ewers Andersen of the Institut for Ethnologi og Antropologi, Copenhagen University, on economic and ideological aspects of Pwo Karen life, and by Michael Mahda of Cam­ bridge University on economic aspects of Sgaw Karen life. This work was conceived, as my introductory essay and several chapters by other contributors indicate, as a contribution not only to knowledge about the Karen but also to the efforts to construct theo­ retical interpretations of ethnic group relations. In my Introduction, I have attempted to formulate an approach to the study of ethnic group relations that takes into account both the structure of intergroup rela­ tions and the cultural meanings people attach to their ethnic identi­ ties. In an essay written subsequent to this one (Keyes 1976), I have attempted to explore other logical implications of my position and I have pursued the argument in yet another essay that has recently been completedM(Keyes, forthcoming). Many debts have been incurred in the effort to see this work finally into print and I can but acknowledge only the more obvious ones. All of the- authors, myself included, are very grateful to the government of Thailand for permitting us to carry out our respective researches. I should, like also to express my personal gratitude to the National Science Foundation whose support enabled me to carry out the research on which my own contributions are based and to begin the task of preparing the book. I am also indebted to the Faculty of the Social Sciences at Chiang Mai University (where I served as visiting lecturer in 1972-74), to the Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, and to the Program for the Comparative Study of Ethnic­ ity and Nationality, University of Washington, for arranging for the typing of the manuscript. I benefited greatly from the comments made by members of the Program in the Comparative Study of Ethnicity and Nationality at the University of Washington on my introductory essay and from the discussions I have had with them about various aspects of ethnic group relations. This program also made it possible for Mr. Richard Trottier to work with me in constructing an index to the work. Finally, I should like to thank each of the contributors for their pa­ tience, understanding, and tolerance throughout the long period during which this book has been in gestation. CHARLES F. KEYES

A Note on Transcription Since there is no generally accepted transcription of Kar^ words, I have allowed each author to use his own method. This means that the same term may appear quite differently in the various chapters. For example, the Sgaw expression, “to feed the ancestral spirits,” is rendered au xhre by Marlowe, awkre by Kunsladter, and oxe by lijima. Fortunately,.^the Karen words are few and the contexts are, so far as I can tell, sufficiently clear to permit identification of corre­ sponding words as used by the different authors. For words in Thai (standard Thai) and Northern Thai, I have followed a modified version of the system developed by the Thai Royal Institute, which is used for transcribing from standard Thai orthography. I have attempted to apply this system consistently throughout the book and have'used it even for Northern Thai words, except when a form that more closely represents the speech form is specified. Thus, for example, the Northern Thai term for “Karen” is usually transcribed as yang, from the orthographic form, rather than njang, from the spoken form. CHARLES F. KEYES

ix

>/ J

Introduction Charles F. Keyes

It is worthy of observation that, although residing in the midst of the.‘Burmese and Peguans, t^iey not only retain their own lan­ guage, but even in their dress, houses, and everything else are distinguished from them; and what is more remarkable, they have a different religion. —Father Sangermano, writing of the Karen of Burma at the end of the eighteenth century.

Ethnic Groups: S^e Theoretical Considerations The observation made by Father Sangermano at the end of the eighteenth century provides us with the question that underlies all of the essays in this volume: How can 3 to 3.5 million people, living in Thailand and Burma,’ retain a distinctive ethnic identity even though they are culturally diverse, have never had an independent nation­ state, and have always been subjected to pressures exerted upon them by the politically and economically more powerful peoples with whom they live? Although the people known as the Karen are intrin­ sically interesting in their own right, the question posed here about them has implications that are not limited to the ethnography of Southeast Asia. Ethnic pluralism, once thought to reflect “primordial attachments’’ that give way as modernization occurs (cf., for ex-

1

Current Borderlands of Burma and Thailand Including Areas of Karen Settlement

Introduction

3

ample, Geertz 1963), has reemerged as a significant, and sometimes explosive, factor in advanced industrialized society. In this introduc­ tion, I should like to attempt to pull together some of these implica­ tions, first in general theoretical terms and then with specific refer­ ence to the Karen as described in the following chapters. The conventional, and still popular, conception of an ethnic group is that of people who share a common culture, speak a common language, and belong to a common society. This conception has been sharply challenged by a number of anthropologists who have been confronted with particular ethnographic situations where the applica­ tion of this conception would produce a highly distorted analysis. Perhaps the most well-known of such ethnographic situations is that of highland Burma. E. R. Leach, who carried out research in this area, found that the Kachin, recognized by those of the area as well as by the anthropologist as one of the two major ethnic groups of the region, included people who spoke a variety of mutually unintelligible languages and who displayed marked variations in culture. Rather than forcing his data into conventional categories, Leach concluded that “the ordinary conventions as to what constitutes a culture and a society -are hopelessly inappropriate” (Leach 1954: 281). Leach •argued, instead, that ethnic groups, such as the Kachin, should be conceived of as social, not cultural, entities, whose definition is a function of structural opposition to other such social entities. In the Kachin Hills of northern Burma, Leach found there was a fundamen­ tal opposition between two groups, Kachin and Shan, in their relative access to political power. Following Leach, a number of other students of Southeast Asian ethnography have also analyzed ethnic group relations in terms of structural oppositions (see Lehman 1967A, 1967B; and Moerman 1965, 1968). Moreover, this view has gained wide acceptance in an­ thropology at the expense of the view that the world can be divided into discrete ethnic groups or “cultunits” (Naroll 1964) that possess common distinct cultures and common distinct languages. Recently, Fredrik Barth has attempted a general theoretical formulation for use in the study of ethnic groups and boundaries. For Barth, ethnic grortps are also societal entities that result from a structural differentiation between interacting groups (Barth 1969B: 10). Determination of group membership is not a function of a shared common culture but of “ascription and identification by the actors themselves” (i??^0). Such ethnic identity, Barth further argues, “classifies a person in terms of his basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his ori­ gin and background” (Barth I969B: 13). Barth also observes that the members of an ethnic group will

4

Charles F. Keyes

share some features of culture; however, he suggests that this shared common culture is best regarded “as an implication or result, rather than a primary and definitional characteristic of ethnic group organ­ ization” (Barth 1969B: 11). Here I must disagree with Barth. It is not necessary to insist, as Barth seems to think those who see ethnic groups as culture-bearing units do, that members of ethnic groups share a total “assemblage of cultural traits” (Barth 1969B: 12) for culture to be a defining characteristic of ethnic groups.Rather, eth­ nic identity itself provides the defining cultural characteristic of ethnic groups. The “origin and background” of individuals, from which, Barth says, fethnic identity is derived, are not communicated geneti­ cally or in some mysterious way. Rather, they are communicated, and constantly revalidated, in cultural expressions such as myth, religious belief, ritual, folk history, folklore, and art. These cultural expres­ sions, these symbolic formulations of ethnic identity, provide indi­ viduals with the meanings that make relationships between ethnic groups meaningful. “These cultural expressions of ethnic identity, and not some arbitrary list of cultural traits, provide the culturally distinc­ tive character of ethnic groups. Although it may offend certain modes of Western thought that would have ethnic identities be mutually exclusive, it is both theoreti­ cally possible and empirically verifiable that individuals may hold more than one ethnic identity concurrently. Take the case of villagers in northeastern Thailand with whom I have carried out research (Keyes 1966A, 1966B, 1967). Such villagers sometimes identify them­ selves as “Lao” when interacting with Thai government officials or with others from central Thailand. This identity finds expression in a folk history wherein they trace their origins to a common source with the Lao of Laos, in their beliefs that certain of their cultural traits— for example, the ceremony of calling the “soul-stuff” {su khuan}—are shared by the Lao of Laos and not by the Central Thai (whether all of these traits are distinctive is irrelevant; see Moerman 1968), and in one version of their folk ethnic taxonomy. On the other hand, when such villagers make visits to present-day Laos, which not a few of them do, they often identify as “Thai.” This identity finds expression in the history villagers learn in school (education is compulsory for four and in some areas seven years), in rituals that link them as subjects to the king of Siam, and so on. Finally, on some occasions, in both Thailand and Laos, northeastern villagers will identify as “Isan,” a term that means “northeastemer.” This identity is more than merely regional, for to villagers it implies a distinctive cultural heritage drawn in part from the Lao, in part from the Thai, and in part (as manifest in folklore, various legends, etc.) from a local tradition

Introduction

5

found only in northeastern Thailand. Most villagers in northeastern Thailand have a choice of which of these three identities to use and many will use all three in different contexts. Groups that can draw upon more than one ethnic identity have a flexibility in adapting to multiethnic contexts which is not available to groups that are re­ stricted (or that feel restricted) to a single identity. This point is particularly relevant to the Karen case, as we shall see below. • Although the cultural distinctiveness an ethnic identity provides is a necessary condition for the existence of an ethnic group, it is not a sufficient condition. As we have already seen, there must also be structural oppositions between groups for ethnic boundaries to exist. Following J. S. Fumivall (1939, 195Q, many students of ethnic group relations have argued that the significant (and for some, the only) structural opposition is that which divides people in their access to productive resources and/or to wealth. To my mind, viewing ethnic groups as being the product of a “cultural division of labor’* (to use a phrase suggested by Michael Hechter®) is too constricting. For ex­ ample, in the case of the Kachin and Shan discussed by Leach (1954), the structural opposition was fundamentally a function of differential access to power in the Kachin Hills of northern Burma. In contempo­ rary American society, structural oppositions have emerged between ethnic groups competing for access to knowledge as communicated within the educational system. In other cases, the opposition has been between those who have differential access to legal rights as citizens and/or before the bar of justice. In numerous cases known to anthro­ pologists (see L6vi-Strauss 1949), the critical distinction is made on the basis of who should have access'to the reproductive capacities of particular women. All of these examples have in common a structural differentiation between groups in their competition for scarce re­ sources. That is, the members of an ethnic group share a common interest situation as well as a common cultural identity. It is in these terms that I view the structural opposition between ethnic groups. Ethnic groups may stand in structural opposition to several dif­ ferent groups in relation to different resources. In Thailand, for ex­ ample, an individual may be Chinese in contrast to Thai when seeking a job, but may also be TTiai in contrast to other Southeast Asians in competing for a fellowship to study in a foreign country. The situation ■where all ethnic group boundaries fall along the same cleavage is the limiting, not the type, case. Given the structured opposition between groups, ethnic identities serve to make meaningful the interaction among groups or their mem­ bers. The Ban Ping villagers of Chiengkham district in northern Thai­ land, whom Michael Moerman has studied, explain (to themselves

6

Charles F. Keyes

and to others)‘that the differences in various practices between them­ selves and townspeople is a function-of their “Lueness.” Such an explanation is functional, as Moerman shows, since villagers'thereby “avoid* opprobrious class identification'through asserting the higher priority of a non-stratifiable ethnic identification” (Moerman 1968: 1^2). The villagers’ practices'are not indicators of class inferiority but, on the contrary-, “the foci of ethnic pridfe” (p. 162). Ethnic identi­ ties serve not only to invest long established social relations with meaning but als