Special Structure and Ecology of Red Karen-Shan Inter-Ethnic Relations in Province Mae Hongsorn (Thailand) Emphasizing Environmental Health Aspects (Karen Ethno-History, Karen in Thailand: Comments from the Anthropology and Linguistics of the Kayah, the Shan and Burma).

摘要

This report is based upon fieldwork among the Red Karen (Kayah) and the Shan, conducted in Thailand during 1967 and 1968. It is intended to summarize, in the context of a commentary upon the symposium, A Pivotal or Marginal People: The Place of the Karens in Southeast Asia (convened by Dr. C.F. Keyes at the 1971 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, DC), the contribution of that field research to the formal theory of ethnic category systems. I agree fully with the proposition (cf. Luce 1959a) that we must look to the hills of the Southern Shan States of Burma and the immediately adjacent hills on the west of the Kayah State when we look for the area of the greatest internal diversity of historically known Karen languages. However, we have to be extremely wary of a simplistic inference from this kind of situation, for it does not necessarily tell us anything about an Urheimat, or original homeland, for the Karen. (jes)