Table of Contents
- The Agricultural Calendar
- Swidden Agriculture: Land Use
- Wet-rice Agriculture: Land Use, Inheritance, and the “Management” of Agricultural Land
- Rice Production and Consumption Requirements
- Subsistence in a Regional Context: Miang, Tea, and the Cash Sector of the Palokhi Economy
- Household Economics in Palokhi: Some Examples
The Palokhi Karen are best regarded as subsistence-oriented or, to use Penny’s term (1969:152), “subsistence-minded” producers. They are subsistence-oriented rather than pure subsistence cultivators in the sense that virtually all productive activity, agricultural as well as non-agricultural, is directed towards the satisfaction of basic food requirements. Of these requirements, the consumption of rice is by far the most important as it is their staple food.
The economy of Palokhi consists of two sectors: an agricultural sector which is based on swiddening and wet-rice cultivation, and a cash or market economy which links Palokhi with other communities in the Pa Pae hills and the lowlands of Chiang Mai. Although the cash sector is not directly concerned with agricultural production, it is nonetheless as important as the agricultural sector in enabling the Palokhi Karen to meet their rice requirements. The reason, as I noted in the introductory chapter, is that agricultural production in Palokhi fails to satisfy these requirements and that the cash sector provides a cash income, from various activities, which allows the Palokhi Karen to purchase rice from stores in Northern Thai settlements to make up the deficits incurred in their dual system of swiddening and wet-rice cultivation.
Notwithstanding this, the Palokhi Karen by and large regard swiddening as the dominant mode of agricultural production in their lives, although they are fully aware that wet-rice cultivation is more productive than swiddening, and that they are dependent on an external, market economy for rice to make up shortfalls in their own agricultural system. This view of swiddening, as I show in the next chapter, is very much an ideological one based on their historical experience. The Palokhi Karen say that the Karen have always practised swiddening and that wet-rice agriculture is but a recent development. Indeed, the relationship between these two systems of rice agriculture is expressed in terms of a metaphor of siblingship: “the swidden is the elder sibling, the wet-rice field is the younger sibling” (hy’ kae’ wae, chi’ kae’ py).[1]
Although there is an implicit identification of swiddening rice with the Karen as a people, in an ethnohistorical sense, in the way that the Palokhi Karen express these matters, they are really talking about a development in their known history which is ultimately based on Karen migration and occupation of the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area or, as in some instances, other areas prior to settling in the area. This is because virtually all Karen communities in the area and, indeed, elsewhere so far as I have been able to ascertain, have taken up wet-rice agriculture within living memory, or one generation ago. The only exception appears to be the Huai Dua Karen whose agricultural system rests almost exclusively on wet-rice cultivation; but even they acknowledge that this has come about gradually from a time when their parents or grand-parents practised swiddening.
The perception of swiddening as a dominant form of agriculture, at least in Palokhi, is also related to the fact that the religious life of the Palokhi Karen continues to revolve around swidden agriculture, although some swidden rites have been transferred to wet-rice fields along with some wet-rice agricultural rituals which have been adopted from the Northern Thai. Thus, the annual ceremonial cycle in Palokhi remains oriented about rites associated with the growth cycle of swidden rice despite the fact that the agricultural sector is based on the two systems of rice cultivation. The on-going cultivation of swiddens has, in other words, ensured the persistence of religious conceptions and a ritual life which continue to structure the way in which swidden agriculture is perceived. This perception, regardless of the economic realities in Palokhi is an important one. It accounts for, amongst other things, attitudes towards “work” and “wage labour” between which the Palokhi Karen make a certain distinction, and a sense that they live in an agricultural and social context of their own in which their relations with their neighbours, however much determined by economic necessity, are nevertheless peripheral to an essentially “Karen” way of life.
In this chapter, I show how rice production fails to meet the needs of the Palokhi Karen and how they make up their rice deficits by recourse to a cash economy. Because of limitations of space, and because there are general similarities between the agricultural system of the Palokhi Karen and those of other Karen described in existing studies (Hinton [1975], Hamilton [1976], Kunstadter [1978], Madha [1980]) which make an extended description somewhat unnecessary — at least as far as my major argument is concerned — I shall confine my discussion of subsistence agriculture to the following: an overview of the cycle of agricultural activities in Palokhi; land use in swidden and wet-rice cultivation; and an analysis of swidden and wet-rice production in relation to consumption requirements. Further details (for example, perceptions of the nature of work and wage work, the technical aspects of swiddening and wet-rice cultivation, the terminology of wet-rice cultivation in Palokhi Karen which actually consists of Karen-Northern Thai macaronics, and a list of crops grown in Palokhi swiddens) may be found in Appendices C, D, E, and F (see also Rajah [1983]).
In this chapter, however, I also take the opportunity to discuss the relationship between land use, the inheritance of wet-rice fields, and the role of men in these areas because this is of some importance to my argument regarding the cultural ideology of the Palokhi Karen and religion and ritual activities in which men are dominant as managers of the “symbolic capital” of the community.
My discussion of the cash sector, especially the part played by tea and miang (fermented tea) in the economic system of the Palokhi Karen is rather more extensive as this is an aspect of Karen economic systems which has not been documented before. A fuller discussion of the cash sector is also necessary as I wish to draw out rather more clearly than I have done in Chapter I, the ways in which the Palokhi Karen are integrated into a larger economic system through their need for rice from external sources.
I leave to the next chapter a discussion of the rites of swidden cultivation which form the major component of the ceremonial system in the community, a system which sustains in large part the cultural ideology of the Palokhi Karen.
The rice cultivated in Palokhi swiddens and wet-rice fields grows and matures at different rates because of the different water regimes in these two systems of cultivation. Since the growth cycle of swidden rice is not dependent on the accumulation of water in fields, but on sufficient moisture for seed germination and growth, it is of course planted earlier in the wet season, that is April-May, whereas wet-rice is transplanted only in July. The overall agricultural calendar, however, is based on the longer growth cycle of swidden rice within which the shorter growth cycle of wet-rice is articulated. The year itself has three main seasons — a cool dry season lasting from November to February, a hot dry season which extends from March to April, and a wet season brought about by the south-west monsoons from April or May to October.
The wet season is clearly the most important in swidden cultivation as the rains are necessary for the germination and growth of rice and other crops. The swidden cycle is consequently oriented around this season. Wet-rice cultivation on the other hand, is less dependent on week-by-week rainfall in the wet season, but nevertheless it is not as independent of rainfall as it is in the Chiang Mai plains where extensive irrigation systems fed from up stream storages help to offset the effect of dry spells in the May-October rainy season. At Palokhi, irrigation for wet-rice cultivation is only feasible later in the rainy season (June-July) when the Huai Thung Choa increases in volume. This and the climatic changes in the region also explains why only an annual crop of wet-rice is possible in Palokhi. The occurrence of the wet season, its variable beginning and end is thus the single most important factor in structuring agricultural activities in Palokhi. It also influences the growth cycle of another economically important crop, tea (Camellia sinensis), which the Palokhi Karen pick and sell in order to obtain money with which to buy rice to make up shortfalls in their harvests. Tea cropping, however, is subordinate to the cultivation of rice and I therefore leave discussion of it to later in this chapter.
The cultivation of rice in swiddens and wet-rice fields entails several activities, for example the preparation of fields, planting (and transplanting in the case of wet-rice), weeding, reaping, threshing, and storing of the harvest in each agricultural season. A summary of these activities in the agricultural calendar of Palokhi, approximated to the solar calendar, may be found in Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1, while more detailed descriptions may be found in Appendices D, E, and F.
|
Month |
Karen Month |
Activities in Swidden Cultivation |
Activities in Wet-rice Cultivation |
|
January |
La Talae*
|
Transporting and storing of harvest |
Transporting and storing of harvest |
|
February |
La Thi Phae’
|
Clearing |
|
|
March |
La Thi Khu’
|
Clearing, building fire-breaks |
|
|
April |
La Soe*
|
Burning, building field-huts, planting, fencing, setting traps |
Opening new terraces |
|
May |
La De’ Nja
|
Weeding |
Opening new terraces, repairing irrigation canals |
|
June |
La Nwi
|
Weeding, collecting cultigens |
Planting of dry-bed nurseries, building dams, flooding of fields |
|
July |
La Xau’
|
Weeding, collecting cultigens |
Repairing bunds, ploughing, harrowing, transplanting seedlings |
|
August |
La Ku’*
|
Weeding, collecting |
Weeding terraces maintaining irrigation canals and water sluices in terraces |
|
September |
La Ci My
|
Collecting cultigens |
Weeding terraces, maintaining irrigation canals and water sluices in terraces |
|
October |
La Ci Cha
|
Reaping, stooking |
Breaching dams, draining fields |
|
November |
La Nau
|
Threshing |
Reaping, stooking |
|
December |
La Ply
|
Transporting and storing of harvest |
Threshing, transporting and storing of harvest |
* These month names were not given any meanings by the Palokhi Karen.
While the agricultural cycle is dependent on seasonal changes, the calendrical system of the Palokhi Karen itself reflects the importance of swiddening in the past and in their present life. There are also certain significant features about the system and associated beliefs which play a role in determining the availability of labour for agricultural activities in Palokhi. Although the full workings of the Palokhi calendar are still unclear to me, it is nevertheless possible to pick out aspects of the system which are relevant to this discussion.[2]
The calendar is a lunar one and the lunar year (ni) is divided into twelve months or “moons” (la). Each month is reckoned from when the new moon appears, which is spoken of as “the rising of the new moon” (thau la sau), to when there is no moon which is called “the moon dies” (la si). The month is divided into two halves, corresponding to the waxing and waning phases of the moon, which are marked by the full moon (la pghe) and no moon (la si). In the first half, the moon is thought to “rise” (thau) while in the second half it is thought to “descend” (lau). These two terms, thau and lau, which reflect the cyclic nature of the moon’s appearance provide a good indication of how time is conceived of in Palokhi Karen thought, with agricultural processes as a central consideration.
In various agricultural rituals (see Chapter VI), the cyclic nature of agricultural seasons is implicitly described in terms of metaphors of “rising” and “descending”. The transition between the old and new agricultural seasons (between wet-rice harvesting in November-January and swidden planting in April-May) is also described in these terms: this transition, which is marked by the rites of the New Year, is called “the descent of the land” (kau lau we) and “the rising of the new year” (thau ni sau). Although these expressions do not constitute symmetrically paired oppositions, it is significant that the transition from one year to another should be described in terms of two different processes, one of which is seen as a descent while the other is seen as an ascent, or a rising. The first expression has to do with a belief that the land itself “rises” towards the end of the rainy season along with the rice crop. As we have already seen (Chapter III), the growth of the rice crop is in fact described by the same term, thau, which is an idiom central to “marriage” and the attainment of adult or reproductive status.
It is clear that in Palokhi usage (and perhaps more generally among the Karen) “rising” is a powerful metaphor with wide applications, all of which are concerned with process or development. After the rainy season, the land “descends”. The “rising of the new year”, however, parallels the description of the waxing moon, but it is significant that the year is never spoken of as “dying” unlike the moon. The Karen use of thau and lau in describing temporal phenomena points to a conceptualisation of time in terms of dynamic rather than static oppositions. It indicates that (similar to the Head Rite) agricultural seasons, as they are conceived of by the Palokhi Karen, repeat themselves in their constituent features and succeed one another through a renewal according to what might best be described as an idiom of natural “organic” rythms rather than as a simple return to a previous state.
The waxing and waning phases of the moon are again divided in half by the quarter phases of the moon, called la dau’pha’. The Palokhi Karen believe that work — which refers essentially to agricultural work — should not be done on la si, la pghe, and la dau’pha’. The prohibition on work is, however, by far the more important on la si and la pghe than on la dau’pha. The reason is that the Palokhi Karen have acquired from the Northern Thai the idea that the eighth and fifteenth days of the two phases of the lunar month (pet kham) are Buddhist holy days (wan sin), when in fact their own tradition recognises the fifteenth days as significant days through the prohibition on work. The ban on work on the eighth days, therefore, is derived from the Northern Thai. Although this is given some cognisance, the ban on work on the eighth days is not rigidly adhered to, and it explains why the Palokhi Karen (who are not Buddhist in any real sense of the term) do not observe it. The prohibition on work which is more strictly observed on la si and la pghe is important is determining the amount of labour time available in Palokhi: it means that in each agricultural year, at least 24 days (that is, almost one lunar month) are not given to agricultural work.
Very generally, bans on work in Palokhi appear to be part of the process of the symbolic management of time associated with ritual transformations in individual statuses or social states. For example, when a man and woman marry, they may not work for three days after the completion of their marriage ceremonies. Divorced couples are also not supposed to work for one day after the final ‘au’ ma xae’ which dissolves their marriage, while households which perform the ritual in the normal course of events do not work on the day or days when the ritual is held. Similarly, when a child is born in the village, all work ceases on that day (Chapter VI, pp. 395–6). Bans on work are thus integral to the way in which time is organised and structured in Palokhi. The bans on work on la si and la pghe are, similarly, a part of this process. Indeed, there could be no more suitable way of representing time in Palokhi. Work is something that is done “all the time” in the agricultural cycle and its prohibition, particularly when it is enjoined upon all members of the community, could not be more experientially disjunctive of the flow of time and life. The existence of this prohibition at those points of the lunar cycle — the very means by which time is measured — when the moon’s phases undergo a change, and the absence of any ritual activity whatsoever (unlike those I have mentioned) suggest that it is indeed a key feature in the representation of time in Palokhi.
I turn now to a brief discussion of the months in the Palokhi calendar in order to show that it is essentially based on the swidden cycle, even though individual households depend heavily on wet-rice cultivation and their earnings from wage labour outside the village.
The first month of the year is called La Talae but the Palokhi Karen were unable to provide a meaning for this month name. Marshall (1922:49–50), who records a similar name (Th’ Le), says that it means “the searching month, when the villagers hunt for a new village site”. This, however, cannot be the meaning in Palokhi, although the Palokhi Karen do indeed begin their preparations for house-building in this month which corresponds approximately to January. The second and third months, however, offer positive evidence that the calendar is associated with the round of swiddening activities. According to the Palokhi Karen, the second month, La Thi Phae’, is “the month of clearing” (which Marshall also claims is the meaning of this month), while the third is called La Khu’ which means “the month of chopping” or “the month of felling”. These two months correspond roughly to February and March when the Palokhi Karen do, in fact, commence clearing their swiddens. The remaining months of the year do not, however, pertain to swiddening activities and appear to describe seasonal phenomena. The month La De’ Nja (May-June), for instance, is said to be “the frog, fish month” because they abound at this time of the year, following the onset of the rains which usually appear in mid-April. Marshall, however, who gives the same month name says that it means “the lily month, when the wild lilies bloom” but this is a meaning which the Palokhi Karen do not appear to have any knowledge of. The months which fall roughly in September and October are named La Ci My and La Ci Cha and are said to mean “the month of little rain” and “the month of few stars” respectively. The latter has the same meaning as that given by Marshall, while the former according to Marshall means “the month of a little sunshine, when after the heaviest rain there is a little fair weather”. “Little sun” is, in fact, the literal meaning of the month name, but the Palokhi rendering of this name derives from a folk etymology relying upon the expression for rain my kho chu, which means “the sky (literally, “the sun’s head”) rains”. La Nau (October-November) contains an oblique reference to the final stages in the cycle of swidden cultivation, according to Palokhi explanations; it means “the month of weeds” which begin to appear in swiddens once the rice has been reaped.
[1] In most, if not all accounts, of Karen agricultural systems characterised by a dual system of swidden and wet-rice cultivation, wet-rice agriculture is supplementary to swiddening and has come about as a later development. Hinton does however offer the suggestion (1973:249) that the Karen in the Mae Sariang area may have been wet-rice cultivators in Burma but on migrating into Northern Thailand (to escape Burmese oppression in the last century) took up swiddening because there was a shortage of land for wet-rice farming. Hinton acknowledges that this is speculative, however, because there is insufficient data from Burma to substantiate this. Grandstaff (1976:162, n. 7) argues against this and says that there was in fact no shortage of land for wet-rice agriculture in Northern Thailand because of low population densities in the region in the last century. I think Grandstaff is correct in this because there is sufficient evidence to show that Northern Thai populations were indeed small in the last century and that it is only within the last one hundred years or so that population growth has increased tremendously making land for wet-rice cultivation a scarce resource (see, for example, Wijeyewardene, in press). Further evidence may also be found in the nature of warfare in Northern Thailand and Burma where local populations in conquered territories were forcibly relocated in plains areas in order to cultivate rice to support urban populations — the “put vegetables in baskets, people in cities” formula (Kraisri [1965:6–9]). This has been the case with at least one Karen community still to be found in Hang Dong whose ancestors were taken prisoner in Burma and resettled there (Renard [1980:132]).
[2] I cannot, unfortunately, present a detailed description of how the calendrical system operates in Palokhi because of insufficient data. Although I have, for instance, a full list of the names of months in the Palokhi calendar, the Palokhi Karen were unable to supply the meanings of some month names. It is interesting to note, however, that there is a fair degree of concordance in month names between the Palokhi calendar and the list of months (in Sgaw Karen) supplied by Marshall (1922:49–50) and Iijima (1970:15–6). Only Marshall offers the meanings of month names (some of which I discuss in this chapter) but they do not all agree with those in Palokhi that are available to me. The following is a list of month names (approximated to the solar calendar) as they are found in Palokhi, and as they have been recorded by Marshall and Iijima.
|
The calendar in Palokhi |
The calendar according to Marshall |
The calendar according to Iijima |
|
|
January |
La Tale |
Th’ le |
La Plu |
|
February |
La Thi Phae’ |
Hte ku |
Tha Le |
|
March |
La Khu |
Thwe Kaw |
Te Peh |
|
April |
La Soe |
La khli |
Te Li |
|
May |
La De’ Nja |
De nya |
La Sa |
|
June |
La Nwi |
La nwi |
Dei Nya |
|
July |
La Xau’ |
La xo |
|
|
August |
La Ku’ |
La hku |
La New |
|
September |
La Ci My |
Hsi mu |
La Ku |
|
October |
La Ci Cha |
Hsi hsa |
|
|
November |
La Nau |
La naw |
Chi Mu |
|
December |
La Ply |
La plu |
Chi Sah |
With the exception of the two months, Thwe kaw and La hkli given by Marshall and the omission of two months by Iijima, the general agreement in months names is remarkable. The current “official” Karen calendar, that is, the calendar published by the Karen National Union in Karen State of Burma or Kawthoolei, as they call it, is identical to Marshall’s calendar. Month names, particularly in lunar calendars, can be useful in helping to ascertain how such calendars may be brought into phase with the solar, or sidereal, year (apart from other means such as observations of stellar shifts) as they may indicate a relationship between months and regularly occurring seasonal phenomena (see, for example, Fox [1979]). Often, the months may be named to coincide with such phenomena. In Palokhi, some of the months which are named after seasonally occurring phenomena, are slightly out of phase with these phenomena and there is no indication that the months are named, or that the calendar is adjusted specifically to coincide with such phenomena as a means by which the lunar calendar is phased in with the solar calendar, each year. Where Palokhi is concerned, the question of how the calendar is adjusted to the solar or sidereal year is, obviously, an important one as this has a direct bearing on when decisions are made to clear, burn and plant swiddens before the onset of the rainy season which is a regularly occurring annual phenomenon. I do not know how this is done, but it is likely that it involves observations on the movements of the stars. In a rite that is performed on the first day of planting (which I discuss in the next chapter), for instance, the position of the Great Bear or Big Dipper (Cha Koechau, literally, the “Elephant Stars”) is taken into account. No one could explain the significance of the star in this ritual. Marshall (1922:53) however says that it indicates north for the Karen. Whether or not this is important in the calendrical system of the Palokhi Karen is not clear to me. It may be noted that for the Northern Thai the commencement of the agricultural season in April (which is roughly when the Palokhi Karen plant their swiddens) is indicated by a shift in the sun from the sign of Pisces to Aries (Davis [1984:99]). A problem related to the question of how the lunar year is brought into phase with the solar or sidereal year is, of course, intercalation. Intercalation itself is simple enough as all it entails is the addition of an extra month at appropriate intervals, and it is possessed by most if not all lunar calendrical systems. The real problem, however, lies in determining when this is to be done and this depends on the considerations that I have mentioned above. However, I failed to obtain any information on this in Palokhi. In the official Karen calendar of the Karen National Union, intercalation is done by means of repeating the month of Ci My and the two months are designated “First Ci My” and “Second Ci My”. 1980 was an intercalary year in this official calendar. This calendar, however, should not be regarded as being necessarily representative of traditional Karen calendrical reckoning and calculations. Marshall, in his description of the Karen calendar, found it impossible to determine how intercalation was arrived at by the Karen.