Creating Pan-Karen Identity

The Wrist Tying Ceremony in the United States

Bibliographic Data

ID11147192
AuthorsHeather Maclachlan (University of Dayton, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume21
Issue4
Pages459-482
Publication date2012-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian and Pacific migration journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0117-1968 • E-ISSN: 2057-049X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/011719681202100402
OpenAlexW2049204829
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited16

A movement to unite all Karen-language speaking people under the banner of a distinct and unified Karen identity has been afoot for more than a century. Buddhist and Christian Karens from Burma, now living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, are forging – and contesting – a universal Karen identity through the celebration of the “traditional” wrist tying ceremony. This articulation of pan-Karen identity is an example of Baumann and Gingrich's (2004) theory of identity construction, which they call a “grammar of encompassment.” This case study shows that the theory, which claims that instances of encompassment are often contested by the encompassed (that is, the subordinate people whose alterity is denied), must be extended. In the United States, it is the encompassers (that is, the Christians who have greater economic and political power) who are the most deeply troubled by the denial of difference demanded by the discourse of encompassment

Aesthetics · Ceremony · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Theology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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