Karen - Sociopolitical Organization



Social Organization. Traditional Karen social organization is based on the residential units of the household, the lineage segment, the village, and the village complex. Several nuclear households are linked together through matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence to form a lineage segment. The village structure forms around one or more lineage segments linked by marriage and/or descent. The village may split, with one or more segments separating to form daughter villages, resulting in a village complex that shares kin and spirit connections. Several more or less related village complexes make up a local subgroup. Each of the four residential units, the household, the lineage segment, the village, and the village complex, performs specific ritual, social, political, or economic functions. Nonresidential matrilineages may crosscut an area. Lineage rites ( oxe chuko in Sgaw; oxe pgo in Pwo) require the presence of all descendants of the matrilineal group ( dopuweh ) regardless of which village they live in; attachment is to the line, not to the locality. Karen society is generally undifferentiated and unstratified, although status is accorded to wealth and age. Wealth is counted in livestock and rice, with elephant owners enjoying the highest status. The young are expected to defer always to elders in the family and to members of the village council of elders, as well as in intervillage and lineage-segment relationships. Karen ethnic identity, despite geographic and ecological diversity, social and cultural differentiation, a large gap between the illiterate and the well-educated elite, and a variety of religions ranging from traditional animism to Buddhism, Protestantism, and Catholicism, seems to maintain itself in the context of dominant social groups.

Political Organization. The village is the most important political unit. It is headed by a chief or headman ( dang khaw in Pwo) and a council of elders. Chieftainship is hereditary in the male lineal or collateral line. Traditionally the chief had both secular and religious functions, and his authority rested as much on his personal influence as it did on his institutional role. As the spiritual link to the village spirits, he is vested with the power to act on behalf of the village. Kunstadter (1979) has noted the contrast in authority structure between inherently unstable Thai Karen hill villages and long-established, relatively stable valley villages. In the hills, the ambiguity of the inheritance principle by which authority can be established when there is no clear heir has led to frequent fission of villages. The subsequent rapid dispersal of the Karen population has helped them succeed in their demographic and geographic competition with other highland peoples. In contrast to the autonomy and egalitarian political structure at the traditional village level, Karen have lived for generations under the authority of other peoples: Mon, Shan, Siamese/Thai, Burmese, and British. The institution of the elected or appointed headman, separate from the traditional chief, has been imposed by British, Burmese, Thai, and now Kawthoolei authorities to deal by consensus with the bureaucracies of national or colonial governments. The Free Karen State of Kawthoolei is democratic, with an electoral system consisting of village, township, district, and national representatives.

Social Control. Traditionally any disputes were solved through the village headman and council of elders. As both spiritual and political leader, the village headman might deal with behavioral problems through social sanctions and/or spirit propitiation. For example, there are strong sanctions against adultery, which is seen as an affront to the Lord of Land and Water; he must be assuaged by ritual sacrifice by the guilty parties, and possibly even their banishment, to avert a natural disaster striking the community. Today traditional village authority exists in the contexts of Thai, Burmese, and Kawthoolei authority, each with its own political and administrative structures to which villagers must respond regarding criminal complaints, taxation, the recording of marriages, births, and deaths, and so on.

Conflict. Historically intervillage raids and Karen slave raids into Shan territory were common prior to British intervention. Weapons included spears, swords, guns, and shields. Today the primary conflict, which affects both sides of the Thai-Myanmar border, is the ongoing war between the Burmese military and the Karen National Union.


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