Power Protection, Social Relationships and the Ethnographer

ABSTRACT

Thailand’s Shan people are Buddhists but their ideas of power as protection are not explained with reference to Buddhism. Juxtaposing their ideas with the cases made for Thai and Javanese helps clarify commonalities and specificities within Southeast Asia. My understanding of power in Shan terms derives from fieldwork encounters. I trace how my understandings grew with repeated fieldwork and with my increasing embedding in social networks in the research community. Former strangers are now close friends and semi-family. Examining this process helps clarify power’s embedding and negotiation in social relations. Powerful beings are in theory free from the consequences of their actions, but in real life they are entangled in shifting networks of mutual obligations, exchanges and benefits.

KEYWORDS:

• Notions of power
• fieldwork
• ethnography
• Shan

Acknowledgements

My research was supported by Midwest University Consortium on International Affairs and a Fulbright post-doctoral research grant. I thank Lorraine Aragorn, Hjorleifur Jonsson, Holly High, and Richard O’Connor fruitful for discussions of my paper and for moral support during COVID-19 lockdown. I also thank my colleague Bruce Whitehouse for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The eight precepts include the original five but with improper sexual behavior changed to sexual activity and three additional precepts: no solid food after 12 noon, no jewellery or other bodily adornment, and not sleeping in a high and wide bed.

2 I use ‘he’ advisedly since men primarily get these tattoos.