[Anthropgrad] Pre-Field Seminar by Prasert Rangkla on MONDAY, 3 Nov 08

[Sin Wen Lau]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series, Semester 2, 2008
Coombs Seminar Room C
Monday, 3 November 2008, 10am

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME AND VENUE.

'Improvising the Borderland: Locality and Mobility of the Displaced 
Karen in Thailand-Burma Frontier'
Pre-fieldwork Seminar by Prasert Rangkla, Ph.D.Candidate, Department of 
Anthropology, RSPAS

A group of people called “Karen” inhabits the border between the western 
frontier of Thailand and the mountains of eastern Burma. The study aims 
to understand the Karen of the borderlands through their displacement, 
mobility, interactions and reflexivity. Prior anthropological studies 
have depicted Karen identity as exemplifying either a natural and 
self-contained essence as a tribal people or as the invention of the 
modern world; representations that reflect polar extremes. When becoming 
displaced from home, they are often portrayed as refugees suffering 
acutely from civil wars or as illegal-migrant workers subordinated to 
state sovereignty and capitalist exploitation. In contrast, recent 
theoretical and ethnographic research contends that mobile minorities 
embedded in asymmetric relations are not passive subjects of received 
tradition or exterior political-economic forces, but rather social 
entities attempting to give meaning to and to shape their owned marginal 
spaces within the ruptured landscape of a spatially-fixed boundary and 
bounded culture. An alternative approach to the study of the displaced 
Karen is, then, the investigation of their ongoing interactions across 
multiple borders and the dynamic reconstruction of their cultural 
identity and locality. The ethnography of the Karen in the borderlands 
will be conducted in Mae Sot valley. The researcher will explore the 
displaced Karen experiences of leaving home and living in neighbouring 
land, as well as certain contested social spaces, such as agricultural 
employment, cultural rituals, religious networks and popular 
performances. Participant observation, the collection of life histories 
and semi-structured interviews will be used in the data collecting process.
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Lau Sin Wen
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT0200
Australia

Telephone : +61-2-6125-3271
Fax	 : +61-2-6125-4896
Email	 : sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au
Website	 : http://rspas.anu.edu.au/anthropology
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