This special issue comprising 13 articles is mainly related to the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations in the making of mainland Southeast Asia in recent decades, focusing on the Tai-speaking peoples and their neighbors across national boundaries : the Shan in Myanmar and Northern Thailand; the Tai Lue in Northern Thailand and Xishuangbanna, southwestern China; the Lao in Northeast Thailand and Lao P. D. R.; the Karen in Myanmar and Thailand; the Mien in China and Thailand; the Lisu in Thailand and China; the Akha, who have moved to the towns in Thailand; and the Kachin, who struggle for survival on the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and China.
 The dynamics of formation and transformation of each group in the face of nation-state building, which draws national boundaries over their life-worlds, and of the recent development of inter-regional relations in the area, is described in detail based on firsthand data obtained from long-term field surveys conducted mainly in the 1980s and the 1990s. Sharing the notion that ethnicity is not fixed and bounded but mobile and relative, and recognizing that the sociohistorical formation of the region. conditioned by political power and the modes of cultural expression, has drastically changed in the new environment, the authors discuss various themes observed in fields that are mostly peripheral to the nation-state : the recent development of interregional relations across national borders; the duality of Buddhist ritual on the national border; the invention of ethnic symbols; the fluidity of ethnic identity in the process of migration; multiplicity of ethnicity between the majority and minority groups; the presentation of self-culture in the context of tourism; gender and ethnicity in changing village community; and so forth. Others concentrate on the relationship between the natural environment and the peoples who have been peripherized in the nation-building and on the theoretical problem in analyzing the mode of ethnic construction.
 The descriptions are concerned with the process of socio-cultural change including the deinstitutionalization of ethnic label and its usage observed in each group of the region and at the same time seek new paradigms to interpret the transnational network of relations which will reconfigure mainland Southeast Asia in the age of globalization.

View full abstract

This paper examines the construction of ethnic identity and the expression of ethnicity among the Tai Lue of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan province, by focusing on the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations between the Tai Lue and the Han since the establishment of the People's Republic of China. After the liberation, all factors in Tai Lue society considered as feudalistic were thoroughly dismantled and reorganized in a socialist mold. As a result of process, the Tai Lue faced a great crisis in maintaining their cultural identity. In addition, the radicalism during the Cultural Revolution further severely suppressed their ethnicity. However, the development of the market economy since the 1980s, including the extension of inter-regional linkages and cross-border networks, has brought new possibilities in the promotion of Tai Lue ethnicity.

View full abstract

This paper is an attempt to present a perspective for ethnological analysis of Shan people living in Burma. “Shan” was originally used to refer to Tai-speaking people by the Burmese. The Shan have been politically and culturally influenced by the Burmese through historical contacts between them, and I will refer to this process as “Burmanization.” In parallel with this phenomenon, the Shan must have experienced a kind of “Shanization” that seems to have raised their own ethnic self-consciousness.
 When we study about the inter-ethnic relationship between the Shan and the Burmese, “Ko Shan Pyi” (Nine Shan States) emerges as one of the keyterms, for both sides have records of nine legendary chiefdoms or mong of the Shan. According to some records, Mogaung (Mong Kawng) was the leader among the chiefdoms, having been founded by a legendary hero who came from Mong Mao. Mong Mao is thought to be the earliest site of the Shan in Burma. But Mogaung is now located not in Shan State but in Kachin State and is merely an imagined centre of the Shan.
 The Shan who migrated to Kachin State have been more Burmanized than those in Shan State. Therefore, the latter seem to have preserved their own culture. They must have adjusted to the environmental conditions of the Shan plateau, through which the Irrawaddy and Salween Rivers pass. This area, historically called “Kambawza, ” may have been the cradle of Shanization.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to descirbe and analyze the peripheral situation of the border region in Northern Thailand.
 Historically, the inhabitants of the Shan States, including the Shan and other ethnic groups, had continually immigrated into Maehongson to seek refuge from feuds among Shan chiefdoms, or to seach for new land. Because of the difficulty of transportation in this area, these immigrants were free from the constraints of the nearby political centres: Lannathai in Chiangmai, Burmese in Mandalay, and minor Shan chiefdoms in the Shan States.
 With the colonialization of upper Burma by the British in 1886, the concept of state borders with territorial sovereignty was introduced in this area. The agreement on the border between the British Shan States and Northern Thailand placed Maehongson under Thai sovereignty.
 While the majority of the inhabitants of Maehongson have become Thai nationals, new immigrants cannot obtain Thai nationality. So the Shan in Maehongson are divided into two categories: those who have Thai nationality and those who do not. This distinction has assumed increasing importance as the Thai government has strengthened its administration of the border area. The Shan who have Thai nationality enjoy privileges from the Thai government. But the Shan without Thai nationality are discriminated against as “illegal foreign immigrants. ”
 Against this social background, the religious practice of the novice ordination among Shan villagers in Maehongson can be seen to construct new relations between the Shan who inhabit the border area of Thailand and are divided into Thai nationals and foreign immigrants by modern nation-state formation. The sponsor-ordinand relationship in novice ordination provides an alternative path through which the Shan without Thai nationality can participate in the border regional society in Thailand.

View full abstract

This paper describes the dynamics of inter-ethnic and inter-regional relations among the “Lao, ” a Tai speaking people, most of whom reside in Northeast Thailand and Lao P.D.R. on either side of the Mae Khong River. It focuses on definitions of the “Lao” among the neighboring “non-Lao” peoples and the recent development of promotion of self-culture associated with the processes of nation-centered tourism. An attempt is also made to clarify the process of differentiation and involution of Lao identities in terms of socio-historical setting of the region in the construction of nation-states under different conditions.
 The formal designation of Lao has disappeared in Northeast Thailand, where the alternative regional identity of “Isan” has been propagated through the centralization of provincial administration over the past century in parallel with the spread of the educational system. In Lao P.D.R., Lao formally denotes nationality in general, whereas the non-Lao peoples still have other identifications to define themselves in each local context. However, the informal (living) expressions of the “Laoness” which are identified in the relationship with neighbors are still observed in peoples' memories and activities in both regions.
 The recent development of tourist policy along the Mae Khong River has accelerated the promotion of their formal-cultural identities in different ways. Fragmented ethnic cultures are often employed in showing their peculiarities, which is often reified like as biological indications in the eyes of foreigners without paying attention to the local ways of definition of their reality. Lao identification, in a sense, has no meaning in institutional terms, but is still alive in their everyday usage to differentiate themselves from others in terms of socio-economical and political-cultural superiority to the non-Lao.

View full abstract

This paper focuses on how the Tai Lue of Thawanpa districts, Nan Province, Northern Thailand express their ethnic identity.
 After the Tai Lue migration from Sipsong Panna to Thawanpha in the 19th Century, their cultural patterns became almost undistinguishable from those of the Tai Yuan, the majority population in Northern Thailand.
 Although they have mostly lost their own language, Tai Lue can identify themselves based on their system of rituals for guardian spirits, especially the legend of migration from Sipsong Panna expressed in the pantheon of spirits. However, at the individual level, they do not dare to express the Tai Lue identity in their everyday life, which is the same as that of Tai Yuan.
 The expression of Tai Lue identity in recent years has been to promote Tai Lue culture among outsiders as part of a village development program.
 In this movement, monuments have been built at two villages which are competing with each other in rural development. They imply the historical memory of each village, and have become important expressions of Tai Lue identity instead of the pantheon of spirits.
 Tai Lue culture has been promoted at the village level, not the individual level. Now it is being promoted at the transnational level.
 It is often reported that the Tai Lue in Thawanpha maintain a strong identity. In fact, however, “being Lue” now means “performing as a Lue”; rather, it is “not being Lue, ” the loss of identity at the individual level, that is progressing.

View full abstract

The People's Republic of China is one of the few countries with an official definition of ethnic groups. Most of the official nationalities were created and begun to be introduce to Chinese society in the 1950s. Now some nationalities are given ethnic symbols by outsiders, for example, drum towers and wind and rain bridges as symbols of Dong nationality.
 This paper tries to explain how the ethnic symbols of Dong nationality were born and have prevailed in Chinese society, mainly by analysis of articles in Chinese newspapers, periodicals and books on Dong nationality, and examination of the process and influence of the exhibition of Dong ethnic architecture and customs held in Beijing in 1985. From these analyses three points become clear.
(1) There are mutual interactions between the center and the peripheral elites of Guizhou Province. Appeals by the peripheral elites to the center for purpose of improving their stigmatized regional identity are especially important.
(2) There also are competitions for symbol which based on regional ethnic identity among local Dong elites. The local Dong elites of Guizhou Province want to claim superiority over other Dong by emphasizing that the drum towers are the local ethnic symbol of the Dong of Guizhou Province.
(3) On the other hand, according to Chinese ethnological theory, it is thought that all members of the same nationality should have/have had a common culture and language. It is applicable to the case of Dong nationality.

View full abstract

The Mien of Northern Thailand have migrated with their swidden cultivation. While this migration was the result of their mode of production until recent years. Mien myth also holds that the migration has continued since the time of their mythical ancestors. This myth of ancestral migration (the crossing-the-sea myth) is widely known among the Mien of China and Southeast Asia. However, a great distance in time and space separates the personal memory of real migration in recent decades and the migration of their mythical ancestors in ancient times. This distance is intermediated by another cultural institution. Each household possesses a document recording the sites of the tombs of its patrilineal ancestors. A Mien can learn of his ancestor's course of migration by reading the document, which is indispensable for a kind of ancestor worship ritual. The migration is an ethnic symbol of continuity between mythical Mien ancestors and present Mien persons. The tomb-record document intermidiates between each Mien's personal memory of migration and his mythical ancestral migration and intensifies this symbol of Mien ethnic continuity.

View full abstract

The Lisu are an Ethnic Minority who arrived on the periphery of Northern Thailand at the beginning of this century, after Thailand had started as a newly formed nation-state in the face of the threat of Western colonialism. Even though they trespassed across the national boundary of Thailand, they enjoyed an anarchic state at the onset, and experienced no strong interference from the government until the frontier region became a strategically important area for national security. With this situational change, the Thai government started administrative integration of ethnic minorities including the Lisu.
 The Salween river has long functioned as a natural index for the Pan-Lisu self-classification and the Lisu used to have dichotomous self-division along this river, such as the Lisu of “Upper Part of the Salween” and “Lower Part of the Salween” or “Northern Bank of the Salween” and “Southern Bank of the Salween.” However, owing to the political subsumption of the Lisu by the government, this dichotomy also began to be replaced by a new dichotomy; namely “the other side of the border” and “this side of the border.” In a sense, the notional merger of the national boundary and the Salween river can be observed here.
 The Lisu in Thailand now appears to be in the process of acquiring a new identity as “Thai Lisu.” which crosses and modifies the indigenous sub-group classification across national boundaries.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

The impact of forest policy on people is described through a case study on the east side of the Pegu range, Myanmar. Here, the Forest Village policy has been applied since the 19th century, when the British governed Burma and managed the forests. Its purpose was to supply, at low cost, labour for teak taungya plantations, and to regenerate areas affected by shifting cultivation in remote and under-populated areas. A so-called Karen area was lent to the Karen who lived in the reserved forests, where cultivation was prohibited in principle. They were allowed to practice shifting cultivation but had to work for the government, especially on plantations, whenever requested. The impact of this policy on their life was relatively low because plantation work was irregular and the area from which the Karen area was excluded was small. Additionally, unoccupied land existed outside the Karen area and the manpower of the government was limited, so they could migrate according to their custom if they had any complaint.
 The present government still applies this policy. Consequently, the Karen have maintained their own life-style, which is identical to that in the surrounding Burmese villages. The plantation work has increased but its impact is still small. However, increasing population and rising demand for land might change the balance between the government and people in the future.

View full 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.

View full abstract

The vast region of mauntains, plateaus and valleys extending across northern Thailand, Laos, Yunnan Province of China, northern Burma and northeastern India is home to many ethnic groups, including the Lahu, Lisu, Karen, Kachin, Shan, and Chin. These ethnic groups constitute a minority in several countries and are often suppressed by governments which an ethnic majority controls. As a result, they sometimes fight against these government's centralism and assimilation policies in order to protect their own ethnicity, identity, culture, language, and area. In Burma, conflict between the Burmese government and ethnic minorities seeking autonomy or independence has continued since 1948. This is a case of activity by ethnonationalists.
 The ethnic groups have legends and myths about their origins and clans, their ancestral kingdoms and wars of ethnic resistance. Such legends and myths often become elements that encourage ethnonationalism.
 While ethnonationalism has played major role in resistance struggles that required ethnic unity, it also sometimes disturb relations within an ethnic group. For example, in Burma, Kachin society was damaged by trouble that originated in an excess of ethnonationalism, which upset the balance of relations among different linguistic groups of Kachins.
 I think that it is important to understand that relationships of coexistence of various lives in nature have a longer history than the State, nation or nationalism.

View full abstract

This paper attemps to reconcile the two different tendencies in the study of ethnicity in terms of objective and subjective approach. The bifurcation of the argument into these two aspects derives from the processual nature of ethnicity construction, which is to be analysed in view of how a certain difference among other differences is picked up and is activated so that the hypothetical ‘ethnicity’ is materialised or reified through the process of what I call the ‘hypercycle of difference’ according to Eigen's biochemical process of autocatalysis.

View full abstract