From a general historical perspective, it would appear that the Karen have been associated with a cash economy in one form or another for a long time, and with trade relationships (which need not necessarily have depended on the use of money) with neighbouring communities for even longer. For instance, some Palokhi households possess objects of considerable antiquity (see Chapter VII) not manufactured by the Karen themselves, and this alone suggests that some form of trade existed in the past in which the Karen were involved. While most accounts of Northern Thailand and Burma, written by British colonial administrators, from the latter part of the last century have tended to depict Karen communities as self-contained, isolated societies, nevertheless there are scanty but suggestive reports of Karen involvement in economic exchanges with their neighbours. In a description of Mae Sariang in the 1880’s, for example, Hallett (1890:40–1) says that most of the elephants employed in the teak industry there were rented out by the Karen to foresters. Bock, on the other hand, noticed on his journey north of Phetchaburi in the 1870’s, that “the Karen used to come down to buy rice” (1884:87). Evidence still to be found in the present, of Karen involvement in a cash economy or trading networks, in past times may be seen in British Indian Empire rupees and annas that are worn by Karen women to this day as ornaments—either intact as pendants or necklaces, or as earrings and bangles beaten from the silver rupees.
Contemporary research, however, very clearly indicates the existence of a cash component in the subsistence economies of various Karen communities, but the extent and characteristics of this component vary markedly from community to community. The accounts themselves show considerable differences in the attention given to the details of the operation of this component in Karen subsistence systems. The differences in scale, configurations, and importance of the cash component in the subsistence economies of the Karen reported on appear to be the result of a variety of factors: proximity to neighbouring communities, especially Northern Thai, the size of rice deficits incurred in the agricultural sector, the availability of alternative means for making up such deficits, internal demands for commodities ranging from “necessities” to “luxury goods”, and the extent of opium addiction and associated indebtedness in these Karen communities. Hinton (1975:211–30), for instance, describes what amounts to a complex cash sector involving capital accummulation in the form of rearing buffaloes and cattle, and the realisation of profits through the sale of the livestock to Northern Thai, occasional wage labour in Mae Sariang, the renting out of elephants to Thai and Chinese timber contractors, and the sale of forest products. Interestingly enough, Hinton says that rice purchases were small with rice deficits being managed (by those households which suffered them) through the supplementation of rice with maize for domestic consumption. Kunstadter (1978:116–20), on the other hand, says that most of the money in circulation among the Karen (and Lua’) came from the lowlands through wage labour. Agricultural land, however, was mortgaged for rice (or, sometimes, cash) in some cases in order to meet consumption demands that could not be met by domestic agricultural production. No less interesting is the fact that most mortgages were held by the Karen from the Lua’, because the Karen were comparatively better off as they had only small deficits in agricultural production and, then too, these deficits were experienced by only a few households. Where the purchase of commodities is concerned, this was confined to obtaining a few manufactured necessities and luxury items. Hamilton, however, describes in greater detail a more thorough-going participation of Karen in what he calls a “bazaar economy” or “market economy” (1976:184ff.). He does say that this economy has always seen Karen participation and that this has grown increasingly in recent times because of the inability of the Karen subsistence system to meet rice consumption requirements as a result of population increase and a commensurate reduction in the availability of agricultural land. Madha’s account of the workings of the cash sector among the Karen he studied (1980:160ff.) is essentially similar to that by Hamilton. It is clear from both these accounts of Karen subsistence economies that the use of money dominates in the functioning of the cash sector. In contrast to these two descriptions, Cohen’s analysis of Karen indebtedness (1984) shows that opium is widely used as a means of paying for Karen labour in Hmong opium fields, and that opium and rice constitute a major part of the structure of credit arrangments and indebtedness between the Karen and Northern Thai, Shan and Chinese merchants in Karen communities.
Regardless of the extent to which the Karen may have been engaged in a cash economy and trade in past times, it is wholly evident from recent descriptions of Karen subsistence systems that the Karen are very much a part of a cash economy involving economic relations with their neighbours, particularly the Northern Thai; but their participation, and the operation of the cash economies that they are involved in, exhibit considerable variation in the kinds of arrangements which make up this sector of their subsistence systems.
The cash sector in the subsistence economy of Palokhi represents yet another variation in the set of possible economic arrangements and relations, and it is further evidence of the diversity in the symbiotic ties which may exist between the Karen and their Northern Thai neighbours. There is, however, one significant difference between the cash sector in Palokhi and those of the other Karen communities, and it is one which reflects a regional (though by no means a thorough-going) differentiation, or specialisation, of economic systems in which the Northern Thai dominate. This lies in the miang (or steamed fermented tea) industry which the Palokhi Karen are a part of, and which does not appear to play an important role in the subsistence economies of the Karen found to the west in Mae Hong Sorn (Hinton [1975], Kunstadter [1978], Madha [1980]), Hod (Hamilton [1976]) or just south-west of the city of Chiang Mai (Cohen [1984]).
This regional difference in the prominence of miang as an economically important crop is, very probably, not of recent provenance although it may be noted that even in Chiang Mai itself the importance of the crop varies (see, for example, Van Roy [1971] and Wijeyewardene [1971]). While the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is to be found over most of Northern Thailand, it is noteworthy that its economic significance was not commented upon by early travellers such as Hallett, whereas McCarthy (1900:62) who observed its presence in its wild state everywhere in the north was, nevertheless, struck by the extensive miang gardens on the slopes of Doi Suthep close to Chiang Mai. More recent studies, however, show very conclusively the considerable importance of the crop in Chiang Dao involving Northern Thai, Hmong and Lahu (Van Roy [1971], Keen [1978]) not only in the miang industry but in the tea (that is, dry-leaf) industry as well (see also Pendleton [1963:40]) which appears to have been started in the 1950’s as a deliberate Thai entrepreneurial attempt to break into the Bangkok-based Chinese monopoly of the tea trade in Thailand (Van Roy [1971 158–81]). Although these studies have focussed on Chiang Dao, it would seem from the accounts of some Northern Thai, and Palokhi Karen, that the Pa Pae hills area has been part of a miang network (Durrenberger [1974]) leading down to Mae Malai, in Mae Taeng, for some time. And, as with Chiang Dao, the Pa Pae area has been drawn within the ambit of the Chiang Mai-based Raming Tea Company, the largest manufacturer of this kind of tea in Thailand (Donner [1978: 714]), which has plantations in Mae Taeng.
Although a part of the miang and tea industry centred at Mae Taeng, the Palokhi Karen and the Northern Thai in the Pa Pae hills are only linked with the industry indirectly, that is, through miang merchants and tea buyers. Where the Palokhi economy is specifically concerned, this association is nevertheless a very important one because it provides a considerable income for the Palokhi Karen with which rice purchases may be made when their own stocks of rice are low or exhausted. Apart from miang and tea related activities, however, there is a wide range of income generating activities which the Palokhi Karen engage in — within Palokhi itself, as well as outside in Northern Thai settlements, Lisu villages and units of the Royal Forestry Department in the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa watershed. Similarly, the Palokhi Karen also purchase a diversity of commodities, other than rice, from one another in Palokhi and in these other places. The range and diversity of transactions in the cash sector of Palokhi’s subsistence economy defy easy classification or categorisation because they are numerous and involve small sums of money at any point in time, and often they are made on the basis of ad hoc needs and opportunities.
I should also point out that an important feature of the cash sector in the economy of Palokhi is the autonomy of households and it is this very autonomy which integrates the “internal” economy of Palokhi with the wider economy. The reason is that all transactions which occur in the cash sector of the economy are undertaken by households acting on their own as units of production and consumption, and by individuals. Palokhi, as a village or community, does not act as a corporate group in the economic relations which exist between it and other communities. This, of course, follows from the nature of social organisation in Palokhi and the way that production and consumption is organised according to households. The integration of the subsistence economy of Palokhi with the wider economy, thus, lies in the cash flows generated by non-agricultural production within, and outside, Palokhi through income earning activities, as well as concomitant expenditures on various commodities, and to some extent services, within Palokhi and elsewhere, by households.
In the rest of this section, I present an outline of the more significant features of the cash sector in Palokhi according to general patterns of income earning activities and expenditures.
The most important external sources of income, for the Palokhi Karen, lie in activities associated with the miang and tea industries which constitute an integrated, complex, structure not characteristic of other income earning activities undertaken by the Palokhi Karen. Despite the general decline of the miang economy in Northern Thailand (Keen [1978:267]; Thannarong, pers. comm.) in recent times, this economy nevertheless continues to provide the Palokhi Karen with the greater part of their income obtained from related activities followed, secondarily, by the income derived from the sale of the crop specifically for use in the tea industry.[15] In Palokhi, miang and tea cropping are the major form of subsistence production, second only to the cultivation of rice, in terms of the amount of labour expended and rice obtained (through the cash nexus) from this expenditure of labour. As a type of cash cropping integral to the subsistence system of the Palokhi Karen, it is thus extremely important indeed to the way in which subsistence requirements are met in Palokhi. And, as this particular pattern in Karen subsistence economies, in general, has not been hitherto described, it is therefore worthwhile for comparative purposes to examine, in some detail, the functions of this aspect of the subsistence system in Palokhi.
In Northern Thailand, the growth cycle of the miang or tea plant is, as I have noted before, influenced to some extent by the occurrence of the wet season which, in turn, affects when the leaves of the plant may be harvested. In the traditional miang cropping cycle, leaf-picking takes place four times a year but the duration of cropping at each time, or season, varies because of the effect that the wet season has on the rate of regeneration of new leaf.
In a typical cycle, which Van Roy describes (1971:94), the first harvest (called muuj) takes place in December. This harvest season lasts only for about two weeks, but it provides leaf which is highly prized in miang processing. The second cropping season (hua pii) takes place from March to April, after new leaves have grown during the cool dry and then hot dry seasons. After another month for further growth to occur, comes the third cropping season (klaang) which lasts from approximately July to August. The fourth season (sauj) occurs from about September-October to November. The third and fourth seasons are usually not well separated because during the wet season leaf growth is fairly rapid. These four cropping seasons are to be found in the Pa Pae hills where they are generally closely observed by the Northern Thai involved in the miang economy but they are not as closely followed by the Palokhi Karen for the simple reason that this miang cropping cycle is largely in conflict with the two growth cycles of rice in swidden and wet-rice cultivation. In December, for instance, the Palokhi Karen are still engaged in harvesting and storing their rice from swiddens and wet-rice fields. And, again, in March and April, they are busy clearing, burning and planting their swiddens, while from May to July they are involved in the preparation of their wet-rice terraces and the planting of wet-rice. Even in the klaang and sauj seasons (July to November) a conflict exists because of the need to weed swiddens leading up to the time when the first harvesting of rice must be carried out; but during this period, the stocks of rice in Palokhi have already begun to run down (if they have not been exhausted) and the Palokhi Karen are faced with the competing demands for labour in weeding their swiddens to ensure satisfactory rice harvests and in obtaining rice for the satisfaction of their immediate needs. There is, in fact, hardly an option in this and the Palokhi Karen thus give greater priority to the latter and unreservedly take advantage of the opportunities offered in the klaang and sauj seasons. Many households, however, attempt to anticipate this problem in the allocation of their domestic supplies of labour by working in the hua pii season in between attending to the tasks in swidden and wet-rice cultivation. But, when the harvest season is in full-swing in their swiddens and wet-rice fields, there is a total halt on miang and tea associated activities.
The structure and organisation of the miang economy in the Pa Pae hills is probably similar to that described by Van Roy and Keen especially around the Northern Thai settlements of Ban Pa Pae and Ban Pha Daeng where miang merchants or wholesalers are to be found in the area.[16] Further upland, around the Pang Luang, however, conditions are a little different. In the two Northern Thai settlements nearest Palokhi, that is, Ban Tung Choa and Ban Mae Lao, and Toeloekhi (the closest Karen village) as well as Palokhi itself, the Northern Thai and Karen own miang or tea gardens and are, therefore, independent producers of the leaf.[17] In the Northern Thai villages, however, some miang processing is done but not in the two Karen villages except for domestic consumption.[18] The Northern Thai sell both raw leaf and processed miang to a Yunnanese Chinese wholesaler (who is also a buyer of leaf for the tea industry) based at Ban Pha Daeng. The Karen, on the other hand, sell only the raw leaf which is also bought by the same wholesaler for processing into miang or for resale to the Raming Tea Company. The Palokhi Karen (and, for that matter, the Toeloekhi Karen) generally do not sell their raw leaf to the Northern Thai miang producers in Ban Mae Lao although they do work for them in related activities. This is because the Northern Thai producers lack large supplies of cash, or stocks of rice, to pay for the leaf.[19] The Northern Thai at Ban Mae Lao do not act as intermediaries between the Palokhi Karen and the Pha Daeng wholesaler because the wholesaler comes up to Ban Mae Lao to buy the miang and raw leaf directly from both the Northern Thai and Karen. The Palokhi Karen and, very probably, most of the Northern Thai in Ban Thung Choa and Ban Mae Lao, therefore, are not bound into the socio-economic relationships characteristic of the “entourage” or pau liang, that is, patron-client, systems which Van Roy (1971:101ff.) and Keen (1978:257–8) — following Hanks (1966:55–63) — see as the principal institutional framework of the miang economy of Chiang Dao.[20] There is also no system of renting gardens from miang wholesalers or merchants, with rents being paid in miang, nor is there a cycle of credit and indebtedness (but see below) carried over from year to year — at least as far as the Palokhi Karen in general are concerned. Another related difference is that the raw leaf is sold to the Pha Daeng merchant by the Palokhi Karen, and most Northern Thai growers in Ban Thung Choa and Ban Mae Lao, according to weight rather than bundles (kam) which is the normal practice in Chiang Dao, and payments are usually made in cash, although rice payments may also be made depending on whether or not this is specifically asked for.
The selling and buying of miang and raw leaf is held in Ban Mae Lao and payments are made immediately by the Pha Daeng merchant. During the klaang and sauj seasons, the merchant comes to Ban Mae Lao almost everyday, but generally the frequency of his buying trips depends on the intensity of picking through the hua pii to sauj seasons. The price paid by the merchant for raw leaf is the same whether it is sold by Northern Thai or Karen but they vary depending on the quality of the leaf and the end use of the leaf, that is, as miang or as tea. In April of 1981 (that is, towards the end of the hua pii season), when several Palokhi households picked and sold leaf from their gardens after planting their swiddens, the price of raw leaf for miang was Bht 2 per kilogram. During the klaang and sauj seasons, however, the price increased by as much as two and a half times, with the leaf being bought at the rate of Bht 4.5 and Bht 5 per kilogram, the difference depending on whether the leaf was bought at Ban Mae Lao itself, or Ban Thung Choa which was closer to Palokhi. The Bht 0.5, thus, was a reflection of transportation costs incurred by the Pha Daeng wholesaler. Leaf for tea, however, commands a much lower price but the price is stable throughout the year. In 1981, this was Bht 1.5 per kilogram. Despite the growing tea industry in Chiang Dao and Mae Taeng, the reason why the raw leaf for this industry does not command premium prices in the Pa Pae hills is that the leaf here is used as “filler” for the better quality leaf from the tea plantations in Chiang Dao and Mae Taeng in blending. This kind of leaf is, in fact, called “old tea” or “old leaf” (saa kae or baj kae in Ban Mae Lao and Ban Thung Choa, and la pgha in Palokhi) and it is not used in miang processing. Nevertheless, the fact that it is purchased and used in the tea industry means that the Northern Thai and Karen have an additional source of income from their gardens which has, to some extent, offset the progressive loss in incomes resulting from a gradually declining miang industry.
Where the Palokhi Karen are specifically concerned, the urgency of the need for rice during the growing season of rice in their swiddens and terraces, and the considerable importance of the miang and tea industries in enabling them to meet this need, may be gauged from the fact that a large proportion — if not all — of the income derived from the sale of raw leaf, each time, is immediately converted into rice at the point of sale, that is, at Mae Lao. As soon as they are paid for their leaf, they purchase rice from either of the two Northern Thai shops in the village.
However, not all of the income earned by the Palokhi Karen outside of Palokhi, in miang and tea related activities, comes from the sale of leaf. The Palokhi Karen also earn money from wage labour for the Northern Thai in clearing miang gardens, chopping firewood which is required in the process of steaming miang and portage because some Northern Thai own miang gardens near Palokhi. There is a regular demand for Karen labour, especially in the klaang and sauj seasons, in Northern Thai settlements because there is a shortage of young adult males to perform the heavier tasks associated with the cropping of miang.
Notwithstanding the lack of any demographic data on the Northern Thai in the area, it seems clear that this shortage of young men in Northern Thai settlements has been due to their migration as a result of two principal factors. The first is the activities and projects (for example, road construction, house-building, reforestation, the growing of pine and coffee seedlings, horticulture of ornamental flowers, and so forth) of the Royal Forestry Department’s Watershed Unit which have created opportunities for employment within the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa area well away from these Northern Thai settlements (Kunzel [1983], n.d.). The second, paradoxically, is highland-lowland or, more specifically, urban migration representing a reversal of the trend which originally brought the Northern Thai to the Pa Pae hills. This has undoubtedly been caused by the construction of the Mae Malai-Pai all-weather road which began in 1979 and reached Ban Mae Lao in 1980–81. The construction of the road itself provided employment opportunities in the labour gangs working on the road for young men in the area. The most significant effects of the road, however, were the vastly increased ease and frequency of communications and transportation between the highlands and lowlands, and their lower costs. When the road reached Ban Pa Pae, for instance, there were at least five privately operated “four wheelers” (sii lau, that is, modified pick-up trucks with a roof and two, or sometimes three, rows of benches) making daily runs between Mae Malai (in Mae Taeng) and Ban Pa Pae, which was extended to Ban Mae Lao as construction of the road progressed. The one-way fare between Ban Pa Pae and Mae Malai was Bht 15 in 1981, and Bht 20 between Ban Mae Lao and Mae Malai. In mid–1981, even before road construction had reached Pai, a twice daily privately operated bus service was started, plying between Pai and Chiang Mai (though less regularly in the wet season) charging Bht 20 for a one way fare.[21] Thus, while young Northern Thai men have found employment opportunities else-where away from their villages, similar opportunities have opened up in these villages for the Palokhi Karen.
The average wage rate for manual labour prevailing in Northern Thai settlements (and in units and sections of the Royal Forestry Department) in 1981 was Bht 30 per day for men, and Bht 25 per day for women. These rates applied to the Karen as well, but it may be noted here that Palokhi women do not go out to do wage work in Northern Thai villages. The work of clearing miang gardens, however, commanded higher rates (Bht 40 per day) because it is hard work and it also requires a great deal of care in order not to damage the miang bushes as the undergrowth is slashed away.
Within Palokhi, however, miang and tea is picked and sold on a household basis (from household owned gardens which average 2 raj in size) similar to the organisation of rice production in the village. Nevertheless, in 1981, a form of employment by one household of other Karen in Palokhi was organised because of the special circumstances of the household. This is so exceptional that it deserves some comment.
It is unusual on two counts. First, the Palokhi Karen as a rule do not work for one another for remuneration of any kind and this, I think, is to be explained by the egalitarian nature of their society in which the asymmetric social relations implicit in the structure of wage work would be a contradiction or inconsistency. Wage work would also highlight differentials in wealth which are usually played down in the community. Second, the employment of several people by this household was in itself unusual given that the Palokhi Karen do not generally engage one another in wage labour.
This household was one of the two which had moved to Palokhi in 1980 after working for several years in the Flower Plantation of the Royal Forestry Department’s Watershed Unit. The plot of terraces which the household had opened in 1980 was still too small to meet the rice needs of the household by a very large margin and so La Zi, the head of the household, decided to organise miang picking on as large a scale as possible not only as an attempt to make up the household’s very considerable rice shortage in 1981 (which was evident even when the 1980 harvest was brought in), but also with the hope of making some profit as well. As the household did not own a miang garden, La Zi therefore rented two gardens (totalling approximately 5 raj) from Kino the Karen merchant in Ban Pa Pae (which the latter had bought from Puu Taa along with plot I, noted earlier); the rent was set at a flat fee of Bht 1,500 payable at the end of the year. Given the conditions of the miang and tea economy in the area, that is, generally stable, if low, prices and direct access to a buyer, the viability and success of the enterprise obviously hinged upon the volume of leaf sales that could be attained which depended, in turn, on the availability of extra-household labour for leaf-picking, especially as the household’s own supply of labour was made up of La Zi and his thirteen year old son, his wife being for all practical purposes house-bound as she was nursing a child she had given birth to in that year. Although most of the households in Palokhi had their own gardens to crop, La Zi was nonetheless able to “employ” several people in his enterprise because of the additional income that thus became available through working for him. It is worth noting that this was not regarded as “wage work” but as “help” — an indication of how the inconsistency between the asymmetry of wage labour relations and the ethos of egalitarian social relations may be overcome by semantics. The inconsistency, or contradiction, was perhaps not as great as we might imagine it to be because the wage work arrangements could hardly be said to constitute institutionalised relationships. Nor were there credit arrangements (or indebtedness) as payments for the leaf picked by La Zi’s Karen “employees” were made immediately the leaf was sold at Ban Mae Lao or Ban Tung Choa. This, of course, was only possible because the Pha Daeng merchant made spot payments for the miang and tea leaf sold at these two villages.
It is worth noting that the system of payments for the work done in this enterprise was essentially similar to that of the Northern Thai. La Zi’s “workers” (who included his sister and, occasionally, some of her children) were paid according to the amount of leaf that they brought in, namely, Bht 2 per kilogram. The leaf was miang as this fetched a higher selling price than leaf for tea. Towards the end of the klaang season, however, rice payments were made in addition to cash at an appropriate exchange rate according to the price of milled glutinous rice (in the Ban Mae Lao shops) which varied between Bht 99 and Bht 110 per taang of broken rice, the cheapest kind available in these shops. Rice payments, however, were usually made in smaller quantities, that is, litres (of which there are 22 to a taang in the highlands), and the corresponding prices were Bht 4.5 and Bht 5 per litre.
Given the clear comparative advantage of picking and selling leaf directly to the Pha Daeng merchant, we may well ask the question why the Karen worked for La Zi. The reason is that even if they had wished to pick and sell more leaf, they could not do so because of the small size of their own gardens (for those who owned them) and to increase the area of their gardens would have required additional expenditures of labour in clearing these gardens to begin with. From their point of view then, the work for La Zi was supplementary to cropping their own gardens.
I should also point out here that there was, in fact, one household in Palokhi which was employed in miang picking virtually throughout the whole of the klaang and sauj seasons by a Northern Thai to whom they were indebted from the previous year (1980) for rice that they had obtained on credit. This was H5 the household whose head, Thi Pghe, had died in 1978 and which rented out plot G because the eldest son Chi Choe was still not old enough to cultivate the wet-rice field. The debt was paid gradually (but not completely even by January 1982) in the form of miang leaf picked in the gardens of the Northern Thai, Thaun, near Palokhi calculated at the rate of Bht 2 per kilogram, the standard rate paid for leaf-picking by owners of miang gardens as was the case with La Zi’s enterprise. This, however, was an exceptional case of indebtedness associated with miang cropping in Palokhi.
Apart from miang and tea related activities, however, the Palokhi Karen also earn a substantial cash income (though not as much) from external sources through other economic activities. Unlike the sale of leaf, or miang connected wage labour, these activities are not linked with the wider economy of the Pa Pae hills in a systematic manner. These activities are diverse and they are performed on an ad hoc basis as, and when, the opportunities for them arise and, of course, when the Karen themselves are able to take advantage of these opportunities. The income earning activities are, very broadly, wage labour, and the sale of goods, livestock and services.
The main forms of wage work in 1981 were clearing of compounds and house-building for the Northern Thai of Ban Mae Lao, clearing of miang gardens, chopping of firewood (for miang steaming) in various Northern Thai settlements, planting, harvesting and portage work for the Karen merchant from Pa Pae during these two seasons when he came to stay and overseer the cultivation of his wet-rice field by a share-cropper, portage work for some Northern Thai engaged in collecting rattan from the forests around Palokhi, and carrying stores for a section of the Royal Forestry Department’s Watershed Unit.
The goods sold by the Palokhi Karen included forest products and certain items made by a few households in the village. There were only three types of forest products which were of any economic significance for the Palokhi Karen in 1981. These were pine wood (Pinus kesiya) and the bark of two trees, known by their Northern Thai names, kaj and kae (Ternstroemia spp. and Combretum spp. respectively). The sale of pine wood constituted the most important source of income of these three forest products. Indeed, a large part of the cash income of households with no wet-rice fields and only small swiddens, and households with opium addicts, was derived from this source. The reason is that the demand for pine wood (as fire starters and torches) in Northern Thai villages where the people have no access to pine trees is generally consistent throughout the year. The Palokhi Karen also use the pine wood for these two purposes and they obtain the wood by chopping mature pine trees (which are found in stands in parts of the forest around Palokhi) and then chopping up the felled trees into large splinters for use whenever their supplies in their homes run out. The pine wood is sold at a price of Bht 2 per kilogram in Ban Thung Choa and Ban Mae Lao when the wood is fresh, but the price drops to Bht 1.5 per kilogram if the trees have been left on the ground for some time because the inflammable resin dries up to some extent under these conditions. The bark of Ternstroemia and Combretum are sold to a Northern Thai in Mae Lao and another Northern Thai in Ban Mae Lak. According to the buyer in Mae Lao (who purchased only Ternstroemia), the two kinds of bark are resold in Pai for the manufacture of incense sticks.[22] The selling price of Ternstroemia bark was Bht 4 per kilogram and that of Combretum, Bht 1.5 per kilogram.
One other source of income, though an irregular one, obtained from the exploitation of the forests around Palokhi is the sale of barking deer (Cervulus muntjac) meat which is highly esteemed by both the Palokhi Karen and Northern Thai. Hunting of the deer is done individually, or in pairs, at night with muzzle-loading caplock guns and the aid of modified flashlights bound to the head (somewhat like miners’ head-lamps) and operated by a rudimentary switch device strapped to the waist. If the game is brought in by a pair of hunters, it is shared between the two of them regardless of who actually shot the deer. Households which bring in barking deer usually cook as much of it as possible, and sell the rest of the meat, organs and entrails to other households and in the two Northern Thai settlements. In Palokhi, prime meat is sold between Bht 30 to Bht 40 per kilogram, as in the Northern Thai villages. Most households in Palokhi, however, would buy cheaper cuts. When the meat is sold in the Northern Thai villages, usually a whole haunch is taken for sale at a price varying between Bht 100 to Bht 120 and it may be bought by one household or by several who then divide the meat amongst themselves.
The sale of livestock also provides an occasional source of income for the Palokhi Karen. The most commonly sold livestock are chickens and pigs which Northern Thai from the two nearby villages, workers from sections of the Watershed Unit, and Lisu from Ban Lum come to buy in Palokhi. The Northern Thai villagers and forestry workers usually buy chickens and pigs to rear, while the Lisu buy mainly chickens for certain curing rites which are said to require large numbers of chicken offerings. Some Palokhi households also obtained an income in 1981 from the sale of cattle and buffaloes reared on agistment and the buyers of these animals were either Karen or Northern Thai.
The manufactured articles sold by the Palokhi Karen were essentially of two kinds. The first was winnowing trays which one household made in 1981 specifically for sale to Northern Thai and Karen in other villages as a means of obtaining some extra cash for purchasing mainly “luxury” goods as the rice obtained from its wet-rice field was almost sufficient for the needs of the household. The second was muzzle-loading caplock guns and associated repairs and blacksmithing work. One household (H13a) specialised in this and, in fact, gunsmithing and black-smithing was the economic mainstay of this household. Toeloe, the head of the household enjoyed a considerable reputation for the guns he made and his customers were Palokhi and other Karen, as well as Northern Thai from various villages in the area. The household cultivated swiddens but these were invariably small because their domestic supply of labour was limited to Toeloe’s wife, Gwa Chi’ his daughter, and Cha Pghe his fourteen year old son. This was augmented when his son and family came to live in Palokhi, but only to a limited extent as this son was more interested in opening up wet-rice fields to support his own family. Despite the lucrative business of making and repairing guns and iron tools, the income thus obtained failed to enable the household to successfully supplement the rice from its swiddens because Toeloe was an opium addict and a large proportion of this income was spent on opium. Indeed, in several instances, he was in fact paid in opium. The price of a gun varied between Bht 100 and Bht 120 (if cash payments were made) depending on the length and thickness of the iron barrels. Payments could also be made in kind in the form of barrels where a buyer would bring in two barrels (which are actually common plumbing pipes about a metre in length) purchased at Ban Pa Pae; one of the pipes would be turned into a gun, while Toeloe would keep the other to be used later as a barrel or a source of iron in repair work, or for turning into bush knives, sickles, and so on. Repair work, on the other hand, was charged lower rates depending on the nature of the repairs involved. The replacement of a hammer, for instance, cost only Bht 15, but the total replacement of the trigger mechanisms would cost Bht 30 or Bht 40 depending on whether some of the old parts could be refashioned or re-used. The sale of services by Palokhi Karen was confined to two people, Rae’ the ritual specialist and Chi’ the tattooist (whose services were much sought after by the Karen in the area) who also claimed to be a ritual expert of sorts. Their clients were Northern Thai and Karen (from Palokhi and elsewhere) but their earnings were irregular throughout 1981.
As I have noted in the foregoing description of the various forms of income earned from external sources, the Palokhi Karen also do earn cash (or rice) incomes within the village as well. It follows from this that if households earn incomes in this way, then these incomes at the same time represent expenditures on the part of other households. The array of goods (but not services) bought and sold in Palokhi are, however, more limited than that in the transactions between Palokhi and other communities because a number of items which some households sell to people from other communities are either available to all (for example, pine wood) or are, in any case, owned by households (for example, livestock). Those items which are transacted generally represent items which are manufactured through a specialisation of labour in Palokhi, specifically, guns and iron tools made by Toeloe, or various commodities “retailed” by some household or other which happens to have a stock of these commodities purchased from stores in Northern Thai villages or from Karen from elsewhere, which other households lack at a particular point in time and are, for one reason or another, unable to go and purchase them outside Palokhi. Ritual services and tattooing also represent a form of specialised “production” from this point of view, and are similarly sought after, when illness strikes, and are likewise paid for.
It is, however, worth noting that in the early months of 1981 (approximately January to March), the two households which settled in Palokhi (from the Flower Plantation), “set up shop”, as it were, and earned some money from other households in Palokhi by selling on a small scale various goods which were, nevertheless, obtainable in Ban Mae Lao. When these two households moved to Palokhi, they brought with them considerable stocks of rice (which was not sold) as well as tinned food, biscuits and preserved fish and shrimp paste. They were primarily for their own use, but because they existed in Palokhi, several households purchased these items from these two households. Their profit margins were very small, but the two heads of these households (La Zi and Thi’) were encouraged enough to purchase, in bulk, more of such items at Ban Pa Pae (for which they got discounts) and which they continued to sell in Palokhi. This, however, was discontinued when the need for cash to buy rice became more urgent. It is interesting to note that this set an example which another household followed on two occasions in the year. This household, and Thi’ as well, purchased large stocks of corn whisky in anticipation of a marriage between a man in Palokhi and a woman in Pong Thong and the round of rites protecting swiddens (bghau hy’) in the growing season of swidden rice. The profit margins in this enterprise were very good indeed by Palokhi standards, but it also involved considerable effort as well. The corn whisky was purchased from a Lahu—the only Lahu in the area whose sole activity was manufacturing the whisky—in Mae Muang Luang at a price of Bht 11 per 375 ml. bottle and sold in Palokhi at Bht 18 per bottle.
From the foregoing, it should be evident that households in Palokhi are quite firmly linked to an “external” cash economy which provides them with various sources of income. The Palokhi Karen, however, also purchase many items outside Palokhi, mainly in the Northern Thai settlements of Ban Mae Lao and Ban Pa Pae. The largest expenditures incurred by households, on any single item, are rice purchases. These purchases by households with rice deficits, as I have shown, lie in the region of approximately Bht 49,135. All rice is purchased in stores and not from Northern Thai cultivators of rice. The reason for this is that the Northern Thai themselves are not self-sufficient in rice and therefore do not have surpluses which the Palokhi Karen may buy. Thus, all the rice that goes into making up the shortages of rice in swidden and wet-rice cultivation in Palokhi (and, for that matter, in Ban Tung Choa and Ban Mae Lao) comes from the Chiang Mai plains. As the rice from the lowlands is made available in the Pa Pae hills by store-keepers and merchants in Pa Pae and Mae Lao, their role in the integration of what, for convenience, we may call the highland and lowland economies of the region is, therefore, a significant one.
In Pa Pae, there are three main stores, and in Mae Lao there are two stores which sell rice. All these stores or shops operate in very much the same manner and the principal store in Mae Lao may be taken as being representative of their functions as far as the Palokhi Karen are concerned.[23] The store is owned by a Northern Thai family but it is, effectively, run by the eldest daughter in the family. The family migrated upland to Mae Lao from Mae Rim in the plains in 1967 to join some relatives who had moved to Mae Lao earlier. The family did not acquire wet-rice fields but went directly into merchandising on a small scale. The store holds stocks of a large variety of goods typical of bigger stores in the rural areas. All the stocks are purchased in Chiang Mai from two markets, Wororot Market and Lam Yai Market. The rice which the Palokhi Karen buy at the shop comes from Chiang Mai where it is bought in bulk, that is, jute sacks (kasaub or taaj); in 1981, rice bought by the store) cost Bht 430 per sack. Although Wilaj, the daughter, occasionally made buying trips to Chiang Mai, most of the goods from Chiang Mai were usually brought in by sii lau operators who were “entrusted to do the buying” (faak syy) though, in fact, this arrangement amounted to hiring the services of these operators. The rice that was bought in Chiang Mai in this manner was transported to Mae Lao at a cost of Bht 30 per sack and the total cost of a sack of rice to the store was, therefore, Bht 460. In Mae Lao, the rice is sold, as I have mentioned earlier, in smaller measures or units, namely, taang or litres. In these smaller units, the price of rice was set by the store at Bht 120 per taang, and given that there are 6 taang to a sack, the profit on one sack of rice was thus Bht 260. These rates and profit margins apply generally to all the shops in the area, although the retail price of rice in Ban Pa Pae was slightly lower than in Mae Lao. From the point of view of the Palokhi Karen there is, however, little advantage in buying rice in Pa Pae because they have to pay Bht 10 for a return trip by sii lau as it is too far away for them to walk there.
Besides rice, the Palokhi Karen also purchase a range of goods which may be roughly categorised as food and non-food items. Most of the food items are items which are not available in Palokhi swiddens, for example, shrimp paste, pork crackle, dried, salted and occasionally fresh fish, sardines, noodles and biscuits and sundry confections much favoured Palokhi children and which parents rarely fail to indulge them with. Some food items which are grown in Palokhi swiddens are, nevertheless, purchased because supplies have run out, for example, chillies, eggplant, and tomatoes. Tobacco is also bought frequently although this is grown in swiddens but the amount thus obtained never meets the demand for it in Palokhi.
Non-food items include batteries (for flashlights and radios which some households possess), clothes, plastic sheets, cotton yarn (because cotton is not grown in Palokhi swiddens), needles, thread, footwear, kerosene (for lighters which are also purchased along with flints), bush knives, sickles, ploughshares, caps and lead shot (for the caplock guns), sulphur and potassium chlorate (for making gunpowder with domestically produced charcoal), aluminium buckets or pails, plastic scoops, enammelled metal dishes, and so on. Some of these items, particularly food, are also bought from a woman from Ban Thung Choa who regularly makes trips to Palokhi to sell her wares. An important aspect of the purchase of non-food items is that many of these items can by no means be regarded as necessities since the Palokhi Karen could easily produce them using wood and bamboo (for example, domestic utensils and houseware). They are, nevertheless, purchased for their “aesthetic” or “luxury” value and this suggests that insofar as these items are concerned, their supply in Northern Thai shops creates their own demand.
One important category of purchases in terms of the proportion of domestic income spent by a few households is opium and items related to its consumption, namely, oil or candles which are needed to warm up the opium preparatory to smoking, and aspirin powder (known by the Thai term, jaa kae puat, “pain relievers”) which is used to “cut”, or dilute, the opium in order to stretch out consumption of the drug as much as for the analgesic properties of the patent medicine. Opium is purchased from a variety of sources: Wilaj’s shop (which obtains the opium from Lisu growers further up the Mae Malai-Pai road), the Lisu of Ban Lum or Mae Muang Luang, and other Karen who obtain it from these, or other similar, sources. The opium is usually sold in its smallest commercial unit called tua in Northern Thai (meaning “body” and also a classifier for animals) which is equivalent to the weight of an old sataang called sataang daeng (“red sataang”) which is now no longer in circulation. The weight of the coin is approximately 4.8 grammes. Half units, however, are also sold and purchased. The price of opium in 1981 remained stable at Bht 40 but fell to Bht 30 per tua in January-February 1982 when the harvest season began.[24] Palokhi Karen opium addicts tend to buy opium in small quantities because they lack enough ready cash to buy the drug, but as with many other commodities, the purchases are generally regular and frequent.[25]
[15] Around 1975, the selling price of raw leaf was approximately Bht 8 to Bht 10 per kilogram, according to the Palokhi Karen. The price in 1980–1 was about half this.
[16] In Ban Pa Pae, there were at least two Northern Thai merchants or wholesalers, and the Karen merchant mentioned earlier. In Ban Pha Daeng, there were two merchants — one a Northern Thai and the other a Yunnanese Chinese. Their participation in the miang economy appears to be only one of a number of activities that they are involved in some, for example, were also shopkeepers. In a socio-economic study of the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Thung Choa river system Thannarong et al. estimate that 3.9 per cent of the 254 Karen, Lisu and Northern Thai households (that is, 10) were engaged in miang production. Almost all these households were Northern Thai. Although the study does not bring this out, there can be no doubt that a far greater number of households in the watershed are also involved in the miang economy, if not as producers, then most certainly as occasional pickers and sellers of raw leaf for these 10 households, similar to the Palokhi Karen. Durrenberger (1974), in his short paper on economic networks and interrelationships in the area (based on his 1968–70 fieldwork on the Lisu at Ban Lum, now the site of the headquarters of the Royal Forestry Department’s Watershed Unit) notes the importance of miang in the area. He says specifically that the Karen of Huai Pha Chao, that is, Huai Phra Chao (the Karen village nearest Ban Lum) produced miang which was also produced in Ban Pa Pae.
[17] In Palokhi, nine households owned miang or tea gardens and the mean size of these gardens was 1.9 raj. Most of these gardens were cleared from the forest for cropping, but some were sold to other Karen who migrated to Palokhi later in the history of the settlement. The ownership of these gardens is, in its principles, no different from that of wet-rice fields. The size of these gardens is not a reliable means of gauging their productivity, nor is it particularly useful for a description of how the Palokhi Karen crop the leaf. Some gardens have more, and some less, miang bushes. Furthermore, when the Palokhi Karen clear the undergrowth in their gardens, preparatory to picking the leaf, they may in fact clear more or less than the stated areas of these gardens. Those households which do not own gardens will often simply clear a part of the forest where miang bushes may be found in order to pick the leaf to sell, if they need money to buy rice. For these reasons, I therefore have not attempted to present a record of the ownership of these gardens and related transactions (since 1960) as I have done for wet-rice fields, nor do I give a breakdown of the areas of miang gardens owned by households in Palokhi.
[18] The Palokhi Karen produce miang for domestic consumption by the steaming method similar to that of the Northern Thai. Unlike the Northern Thai, however, they also drink tea as strong infusions with rock salt, especially after evening meals. The consumption of tea in this manner is greater than the fermented product. The tea is usually black tea, although some green tea (from the fermented leaf) is also prepared.
[19] The Northern Thai, by and large, and the Palokhi Karen are really in much the same position when it comes to miang and tea cropping. The Northern Thai, however, do employ the Palokhi Karen in certain tasks connected with miang and I discuss this later as well as the reasons for this.
[20] While not denying that the socio-economic relationships, which Van Roy describes, may be found in Chiang Dao and elsewhere in Northern Thailand, Wijeyewardene (1971) has, however, questioned Van Roy’s use of the term pau liang to describe a “politico-economic role”, that is, as an equivalent of the sociological concept “patron”. Wijeyewardene suggests that the term is probably best viewed as one of address and a part of the complex of systems of address in Northern Thai society (see also Wijeyewardene [1968]). The evidence from Palokhi does, I think, lend some support to Wijeyewardene’s interpretation of the use of the term pau liang. Any Northern Thai term which the Palokhi Karen use undoubtedly reflects its use in an essentially Northern Thai context and may be taken as a reasonably reliable indicator of the Northern Thai use of the term. It is indeed the case that the Palokhi Karen address the Pha Daeng merchant by the term pau liang, but when they reported their sales of leaf to me, he was usually referred to as “the Cin Hau”, that is, “the Yunnanese Chinese”.
[21] Even before the all-weather road was constructed, there was motorised traffic between Chiang Mai, Mae Malai, and Pai (see also Durrenberger [1974]) and there can be no doubt that the road has been an important part of the economic networks linking Pai and Chiang Mai, with the larger Northern Thai settlements in the area, such as Ban Pa Pae, acting as nodes in these networks for some time.
[22] Combretum quadrangulare is a host for the stick lac insect (Pendleton [1963:221]), but as the bark of Combretum collected in Palokhi does not have lac secretions, the bark is clearly not collected for lac.
[23] The stores all stock similar kinds of goods in general, but the two largest shops in Pa Pae (run by a Shan and a Yunnanese Chinese) have a greater variety. The stores in Mae Lao do not have the sort of creditor-debtor relationships with the Karen as described by Cohen (1984).
[24] According to the Palokhi Karen, the price of opium in 1979 was about Bht 50 per tua. Cooper (1984:155) reports that the price of opium in Homg villages per sataang measure (that is, tua) in 1974 was Bht 6 in February, Bht 15 in November, Bht 20 in mid-December, and Bht 10 in February 1975.
[25] There was one exception to this in 1981 when Chi’ and two Karen elephant drivers from Mae Rim (who had come to Pa Pae to do logging work) devised a scheme to buy a large quantity of opium in Mae Hong Sorn for their own use as well as to earn money by selling the opium. This was an exception to the general pattern of opium purchases by the Palokhi Karen, but because it involved a considerable sum of money by Palokhi standards, some details of the scheme are worth noting here. One of the elephant drivers, Wa’, knew of a Hmong village in Mae Hong Sorn where opium could be bought at a price of Bht 10 per tua. Initially, he and Chi’ had agreed to go to Mae Hong Sorn to look for a certain type of dye (which Wa’ knew could be found there and which was not available in Palokhi) for a particular tattoo which he wanted done by Chi’. Chi’ had, in fact, a reputation for tattooing and the esoteric ritual knowledge associated with it. As they were going to Mae Hong Sorn for the dye, they also decided to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain the cheap opium and hence the scheme. Chi’, however, had no money and Wa’ therefore agreed to lend him some for the venture. As they conceived the plan originally, they had grandiose ideas of carrying out the project with a working capital of Bht 4,000 but eventually this was brought down to Bht 2,000 after incurring the expenses of travelling to Mae Hong Sorn by road. In Mae Hong Sorn, Chi’ was able to earn about Bht 800 from tattooing alone, and he used this money to purchase the dye which cost him Bht 500. At the Hmong village, they bought Bht 2,000 worth of opium (that is, 200 tua or, approximately, 960 grammes) and they returned to Palokhi through forest tracks, passing various Karen villages, some three weeks later from the day they left (7 June). The market value of this amount of opium in the Mae Muang Luang-Huai Tung Choa watershed, at 1981 prices, was Bht 8,000. Wa’ and Chi’, however, sold 125 tua (840 grammes) for Bht 7,000 in one sale to a Northern Thai in Ban Tung Choa keeping the rest of the opium for their own use and for smaller sales. The Bht 5,000 profit was shared between the two of them. Chi’, of course, had to repay the Bht 1,000 loan, but he was still left with Bht 1,500. His fee for tattooing Wa’ with the dye (which gave birth to the whole enterprise) was Bht 200.