Abstract
The study of ethnicity has long since moved from a realist version of “ethnic group” which attributes concrete and observable cultural and other traits to such groups, to a more situational, fluctuating, and subjectively defined view of ethnicity. However, little attention has been paid to the fact that even as ethnic boundaries are negotiable and fluctuating, and even as the contents of these boundaries are never substantively definable, it is women more than men who experience the boundaries as less flexible, and it is also women who bear the burden of the “ethnic” symbols, traditions, and labels.
This paper addresses this issue by examining the Karen of Northern Thailand, with emphasis on women's choices regarding both reproductivity and ritual practices, which in some ways support women's status at the same time that they confine women's lifestyle. It attempts to analyze the point at which gender and ethnicity cross by discussing the processes by which norms governing women's activities, marriage and motherhood contribute to the marking and substantiating of boundaries. In doing so, the paper describes the scope and orientation of choices made by women, thereby attempting to draw out the various forms of power and constriction experienced by women in the Northern Thai periphery today, and how they choose to cope with them.
