Remarriage for divorced men or women is a relatively simple matter. But, here again the marriage ritual would depend on the status of their new spouses-to-be. If, for instance, a hitherto unmarried man marries a divorcee, then the ritual recognises his unmarried status in the killing of a boar, and the two are then married by a simple wrist-tying ceremony. The same applies to a divorced man who marries a woman who has never been married before, but in this case a sow is killed for the wrist-tying ceremony.

Remarriage, as with first marriages, also results in the formation of xae by the married couple and the birth of their children. This xae, however, is regarded as separate from that which a divorcee shares with his or her spouse and children from a previous marriage. This is also extended, of course, to the children from the second union. Thus, in these circumstances, two distinct ‘au’ ma xae must be performed according to the two xae which exist in such situations of remarriage. If the children of a divorcee are ba’ xae, for example, the ritual may only be performed by their parent. Their stepparent and stepsiblings may not participate in the ritual. Conversely, ‘au’ ma xae for their stepsiblings will be performed by their parent and stepparent; they themselves can have no part in the ritual.

These sociological and ritual arrangements are fully reflected in the kin terms which are employed in such circumstances. It is interesting to note that although the Palokhi Karen have no terms for “stepfather” and “stepmother”, the terms pa and mo are not used in reference or address for stepparents. Instead, the terms phati and mygha are used. If further specification of the nature of the relationships is necessary, then these collateral kin terms may be modified by the terms pa and mo as suffixes. By the same token, stepchildren are referred to and addressed as phodo’. Stepsiblings, however, use real sibling terms in both reference and address. It is also worth noting that step-relationships, where they are recognised (that is, stepparent/stepchildren) are sloughed off with the appearance of a further generation: thus, a person’s stepchildren’s children will refer to and address him, or her, as phy or phi. This is what we might expect in view of the observations made earlier about the terminological system. The structure of ‘au’ ma xae and the use of kin terms in situations characterised by divorce and remarriage, thus, recognise the separateness of marital unions and the offspring from these unions just as it is in the case of first marriages, and evident in the rest of the kinship system and the ritual.

I have in this chapter described the kinship system in Palokhi, the naming system, the system of sex differenttiation, marriage, and residence and the formation and fissioning of domestic groups. These three systems and ‘au’ ma xae are interrelated at several levels to form a complex whole in which there is a discernible ideology linking key features in these systems and the sociology of marriage and domestic groups. Central to this is a logic of sexual difference, the primacy of the conjugal bond as a procreative union and the role of males in senior generations in managing reproduction in younger generations.

In the next chapter, I consider the broader sociological implications of the kinship system in Palokhi for subsistence production which were left unexplored in this chapter.