Enacting Morality on Shifting Moral Ground: Young Plong Karen Women in Southeastern Myanmar

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which young Plong Karen Buddhist women enact morality in southeastern Myanmar. Focusing on how one young Plong Karen woman navigates her own moral status, I draw out the highly performative and experimental aspects of ethical subject making which simultaneously coheres with and transgresses Plong Karen moral ideals. Drawing from recent work from the ‘ethical turn’ in anthropology (Keane, Webb. 2015. Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press), I emphasise the freedom of young women to enact a moral register of their own making as they navigate multiple and sometimes conflicting social worlds. I argue that while outsiders may perceive inconsistencies and incompatibilities within the various moral registers enacted by young women, they themselves experience little contradiction moving within and between them.

Keywords:

• Myanmar
• Karen
• Morality
• Youth
• Gender

Acknowledgement

The study leading to this work was generously supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program and the Endeavour Awards. The author wishes to thank Philip Taylor for his guidance in the early stage of the research and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

[1] In this article I employ pseudonyms for all individual villages and for respondents’ names in order to protect their identities.

[2] Whilst Plong people are commonly referred to as ‘Pwo’ in studies of the Karen, I prefer to use the term ‘Plong’ as people refer to themselves and their language in this way. I also use ‘Karen’ rather than ‘Kayin’ (in the Burmese language) to reflect common terminology in English-language scholarship on the Karen and in the publications of Karen civil society groups.

[3] Since March 2011 political reforms in Myanmar have been wide-ranging, including the reintroduction of formal democratic processes. In Myanmar's southeast, national-level changes began to be felt most resoundingly following the signing of a preliminary ceasefire agreement between the central government and the ethno-nationalist organisation, the Karen National Union (KNU), in January 2012. The scale and extent of Myanmar's changes and the fragility of peace negotiations have been written about in more detail elsewhere (Chambers et al. 2018; Cheesman and Farrelly 2016; Jones 2014a, 2014b; South 2018; Thawnghmung 2017).

[4] The 60 year ethno-national civil conflict in southeastern Myanmar meant that long-term ethnographic research in Karen areas of Myanmar has been extremely difficult for international researchers until recently. The protracted nature of the ethno-nationalist conflict has also generated strong Karen political exile identities in Thailand (see Cheesman 2002; South 2007, 2011; Thawnghmung 2012).

[5] This region of Myanmar has been described in the literature primarily as a conflict zone (Rogers 2004; Smith 1999, 2007; South 2008, 2011; Thawnghmung 2008, 2012).

[6] The devastating impact of military rule and civil conflict still resonates in Plong Karen society in its many intractable problems.

[7] The Pāli term sila is also commonly used to refer to the five Buddhist precepts: avoiding the consumption of meat, drugs, alcoholic drinks and the use of weapons.

[8] According to the 2014 national census, of the 1.5 million people living in Karen State 84.5 per cent are Buddhist (Ministry of Labour 2016, 3). While the national census cannot be relied on for a completely accurate estimate of the number of Buddhist Karen people, especially without the release of data on ethnicity, this proportion is broadly reflective of the many hundreds of Karen people encountered throughout the author's fieldwork.

[9] This includes during dreams or when the soul leaves the body in an accident.

[10] For a more detailed description of this ritual see Rangkla (2014).

[11] The Leke religious sect combines both Buddhist teachings and Karen traditions. They have their own religious spaces of worship and come together on Saturdays to celebrate—dressing in Karen clothes, eating vegetarian food and reading the Holy Toah.

[12] Lay meditation during Thingyan is very popular and seen as an avenue of spiritual renewal, endorsing temporary withdrawal from the materialistic world (Jordt 2007).

[13] The thabyay leaf also holds important symbolic value to interact with supernatural elements and is used during the new year celebrations to ward off ghosts and malevolent spirits.

[14] The two languages transliterated in this article are Eastern Plong Karen and Burmese. The transliterations I use in the text are given in parentheses, preceded by an indication of the language: K. for Plong Karen and B. for Burmese. In using locally relevant terms in this article it is important to note the fluidity and complexity of language in this region of Myanmar. Hpa-an is a highly dynamic linguistic space and people often switch rapidly between Burmese, Eastern Plong and sometimes S’gaw Karen.

Additional information

Funding

The study leading to this work was generously supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program and the Endeavour Research Fellowship.