Karen - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Traditionally hill Karen were subsistence cultivators practicing swidden agriculture. Today, their economy is mainly subsistence-oriented, requiring two sectors to produce enough food for survival: an agricultural sector based on swiddening and wetrice cultivation, and a cash or market economy. Most hill Karen have taken up wet-rice agriculture only within the past generation, and the annual ritual cycle is still associated with the longer swidden rice-growth cycle. Swidden rice fields are generally burned and planted at the beginning of the wet season (March-April) ; rice is harvested in October, threshed in November, and stored in granaries. Swidden cultivators may harvest tea and cultivate maize, legumes, yams, sweet potatoes, peppers, chilies, and cotton. Tobacco, betel leaves and nuts, and fruits including bananas, durians, and mangoes are grown in the valley bottomlands. Plains and valley Karen are wet-rice agriculturalists who follow the same cycle as the Burmese and Mon. Village Karen of all ages participate in hunting and gathering. Hill Karen males still hunt for subsistence, pursuing birds, squirrels, lizards, deer, and wild pigs. They use crossbows, slingshots, snares, traps, and guns. Gathering, a more important food supplement than hunting, is done also for trade; women and children may collect roots, leaves, bamboo shoots, herbs and bark for medicinal purposes, wild fruits, frogs, small lizards, insects, paddy crabs, ant larvae, honey, beeswax, mushrooms, firewood, weeds for pig food, stick 1ac, and snakes. Both plains and hill Karen fish for consumption or trade. Plains Karen follow Burmese techniques. Hill and valley Karen techniques include pond fishing, bamboo poles with lines and hooks, throw nets with lead weights made by male villagers, bamboo fish traps, surrounds using jute rope, and paddy fishing with baskets.

Hill Karen generally keep water buffalo, oxen, pigs, chickens, and dogs. Water buffalo are used in wet-rice production, and oxen for pulling carts. Some buffalo and oxen are raised to be sold for profit. Traditionally pigs were used in ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and lineage rituals. Although pigs are still used for these purposes today, in the Thai hills they are more often raised for sale to the Thais. Christian Karen raise pigs for their own consumption or for trade. Chickens are also used ceremonially, and chickens and eggs are sold at market. Cattle are usually corralled, whereas pigs and chickens are allowed to forage by day and sleep at the household by night. Buddhist plains Karen keep cattle and buffalo. Karen occasionally trap elephants in the wild and are noted as elephant handlers; most mahouts in Myanmar and Thailand are Karen.

Industrial Arts. Weaving, almost exclusively the domain of women, is done in both plains and hill Karen households, but it is more important in the hills. Hill Karen use only the traditional belt loom, whereas plains Karen use either the belt loom or the Burmese fixed-frame loom. In the past, cotton was ginned, whipped, spun on a wheel, dyed, and woven at home. At present some hill Karen still grow and spin their own cotton thread, but much of the thread is bought in local markets. Dye, which was derived from plants or minerals, is now often purchased, bringing new variations in the traditional colors. Articles including clothing, blankets, and highly prized shoulder bags are woven in the traditional Karen symbolic and decorative patterns unique to each subgroup, for household use and for markets as far away as Chiengmai and Toungoo. Bamboo baskets and mats are made by highland women for household use or for sale. Men make most of the tools and implements for agriculture, fishing, hunting, and construction. The machete is the most common tool.

Trade. The cash or market sectors of Karen subsistence economies are important but vary greatly. Traditionally Karen have traded cotton cloth, forest products, game, and domestic animals to Burmese and Mon in exchange for rice, pottery, salt, and fish paste. Hill Karen carry on trade in Burmese, Shan, and Thai markets, whereas lowland Karen are tied into the Burmese economy. The hill Karen studied by Hinton (1975) were engaged in raising livestock and selling them to the Northern Thai, wage labor in the city, renting out elephants to timber contractors, and sale of forest products. Hamilton, Kunstadter, and Rajah described hill Karen participation in lowland wage-labor, trade, and cash-market economies as consisting of the picking and selling of tea and the sale of livestock, forest products, household-manufactured tools, and woven goods. Tourism has become a significant source of income for Thai hill Karen.

Division of Labor. Women gather foods, medicinal plants and herbs and firewood, and engage in paddy fishing; they raise pigs and chickens, carry water, prepare rice for cooking, prepare alcoholic drinks, raise cotton, spin, and weave. Men hunt, tend the buffalo and oxen, plow, build houses, cut timber, and make mats and baskets. Fishing, sowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, and some cooking are done by both men and women.

Land Tenure. Land use and rights to swiddens vary depending on local politics, ecological stability, and population demands on resources. Usufructuary rights to swiddens and fallow swiddens are common. Traditionally each village had its accepted farming areas in which community members were free to use what they needed as long as they selected plots within swiddens designated by the village chief and elders. Today the need to remain on a site permanently in order to own the paddy fields for wet-rice cultivation has forced many hill Karen, particularly in Thailand, to give up swiddening or to overwork and thus lower the productivity of nearby swidden fields.