Rajah, Ananda
Description
There are an estimated 242,000 Karen in Thailand making
them the largest ethnic minority in the country second only
to the Chinese. In Burma, they number approximately 2.2
million. The Karen, of whom the Sgaw and Pwo represent the
two largest groups based on dialectal differences, speak a
number of related languages which are now recognised as
belonging to the Sino-Tibetan group of languages. Since the
early part of the last century, the Karen have been the
subject of a number of...[Show more] studies by missionaries and British
colonial administrators in Burma and, more recently, by
anthropologists in Thailand.
Two major areas of interest in the long history of
Karen studies have been the nature of Karen religious
systems which appear to draw on various traditions, and the
nature of Karen identity which appears remarkably resistant
to change. While Karen religious traditions and customs
were a dominant concern in earlier studies, the question of
Karen ethnic identity (or identities) has been the focus of
interest in contemporary studies, matched perhaps only by an
interest in Karen subsistence or economic systems. Though
the more recent anthropological studies of the Karen have
retained an interest in Karen religious systems, related in
most part to the study of Karen ethnicity, it is remarkable that there has not been a detailed contemporary account of
the indigenous, non-Buddhist, non-Christian religion of the
Karen.
This study is concerned with both issues -- the nature
of indigenous Karen religion and the maintenance of identity
in a small Karen community which is firmly located, as much
by necessity as by choice, in a predominantly Northern Thai
socio-economic milieu in the highlands of Northern Thailand.
It is also concerned with sociological explanation as well
as anthropological description, in the case of the Karen,
namely the part played by an indigenous religion (which
draws little from Buddhism or Christianity, both of which
have had considerable influence on Karen elsewhere) in the
maintenance of identity. At one level, therefore, this
study may be regarded as an attempt to fill a gap in the
contemporary ethnography of the Karen, that is, to provide
an account of an indigenous Karen religious system as a
system in its own right but taken broadly to show how it
encompasses different facets of life in one Karen community.
At another level, this study addresses a larger sociological
issue in the study of the Karen: how a cultural identity
may be constituted (and reconstituted as an on-going
process) and the implications that this may have for an
understanding of Karen ethnicity the principles of which,
though perhaps sufficiently established as a matter of
conventional sociological wisdom, have not been adequately
demonstrated in relation to hard ethnographic fact. The major argument in this thesis, stated in its most general terms, is that religion and ritual sustain and
reproduce what is best regarded as a cultural ideology which
provides a cultural identity, and from which an ethnic
identity may be constructed according to the particular
circumstances and details of the contexts of intergroup
relations. In the case of the Sgaw Karen of Palokhi, in
Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, who are the subject of this
study, it is argued that this cultural ideology consists of
the structured relations between what is best described as a
"procreative model" of society and social processes, an
integral part of which is a system of social classification
based on the difference between male and female, cultural
definitions of the relations between the two and the
relationship between men and land, and a "model" of agricultural
processes. The cultural ideology of the Palokhi
Karen is "reproduced" in and through their religious system
and ritual life, which is dominated by men who play a
crucial role, and it is this which provides them with their
distinctive cultural identity.
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