One of the most striking aspects of the attire of the Palokhi Karen, obvious even to the most casual observer, is the difference between the dress of unmarried women, including young girls, and that of married women. There is no difference, on the other hand, in the dress of young boys, unmarried men and married men.

Young girls and unmarried women wear a white, smock-like dress reaching to the ankles. The dress is usually decorated at the hem and sleeve-ends with a red band or two, or some embroidery. Married women, however, wear a black blouse, half of which is embroidered over with various designs and stitched-on beads made from Job’s Tears (Coix lachryma jobi), which forms one part of their dress. The other part consists of a tubular, wrap-around skirt similar to a sarong. The skirt is conspicuous for its basic red, with narrow bands of black and white created by the ikat technique of dyeing yarn for the warp of the cloth with tie resists. Young boys, unmarried men, and married men wear a red pull-over shirt which is usually decorated with a dark, narrow band across the chest, tassles and a fringed hem. These shirts are worn short, ending at waist-level, with indigo-blue or black cotton Northern Thai-style trousers, or blue denim jeans. Both kinds of trousers are purchased from shops in the Northern Thai settlements of Ban Mae Lao or Ban Pa Pae.

In this system of dress, the primary opposition is white/red followed by a secondary opposition white/black according to chromatic distributions. That is, the costumes of young boys, unmarried men, married men and women are all characterised by the dominance of the colour red. The costumes of young girls and unmarried women, on the other hand, are distinguished by the colour white whereas the costumes of married women are conspicuous for the colour red and black. The distribution of the colour red, quite clearly, parallels the distribution of the feature “procreativity” amongst the sex terms discussed earlier. This concordance in the distribution of features, and their referents, in these two systems must be taken, at the very least, as prima facie evidence of a conceptual association between the colour red and “procreativity”. Similarly, the distinctiveness of the terms mykoe’nau and nau, and the colour white, must indicate a similar association between the colour and the property or condition “non-procreativity”. In other words, there is an isomorphism in the iconicity of these two systems. But, what then of the secondary opposition white/black? As this contrast appears only in the sub-class “female humans”, its symbolic value must therefore lie in the further distinction that it establishes specifically between “non-procreative” and “procreative” female humans.

The overall significance of the concordance between the distribution of terms with the attributes “procreative” and “non-procreative” and colour symbolism in male and female dress must be that “procreativity” is a state or condition that is inherent in, or intrinsic to, animals both male and female, and male humans whatever their status, but not female humans. It is a state which women only enter into when they are married, that is, when their fecundability or “procreativity” is realised in them through a cultural process, that is, marriage.

It is worth noting here that apart from the symbolism of colour in the system of dress in Palokhi, there is also a practice associated with the use of married women’s skirts which has nothing to do with dress as such. It consists of tying the used, worn or unserviceable skirts of married women to the base of fruit trees (usually papaya) in house gardens. It is not marked by any ritual activity nor is it the focus of any special attention. The practice is simply termed “dressing up (with) the skirt of the tree” (ky’ thau se ni). The Palokhi Karen, however, state quite explicitly that this helps the tree to bear fruit. There is, in other words, a conceptual association between married women’s skirts — and, hence, married women — with the notion of procreativity or fertility. It is significant, however, that swidden crops, the wet-rice crop and fruit trees in the forest are not similarly treated with married women’s skirts. The implication of this is clear: women and their procreativity or powers of reproduction are linked with the domestic domain.

This examination of kinship terminology, the naming system and the system of sex and gender differentiation in Palokhi makes it evident that these systems do not exist in isolation. They are, in fact, interrelated in consistent and specific ways which may be summed up according to three considerations: the primacy of the conjugal bond or marital tie in the kinship system, continuity of links of affiliation in the naming system and teknonymy, and the classification of men and women as “non-procreative” and “procreative” in the system of sex differentiation. They hold together in — to use Sorokin’s term (1957:7–19) — a “logico-meaningful” integration. I suggest that the interrelationships of these systems, in this manner, constitute a model or paradigm of social organisation in Palokhi. I consider, next, other aspects of this “procreative model” of society in Palokhi.