Right Type Journal Article

Karen no Minzoku to Jenda is the result of a plus year relationship between the author Hayami Yoko and the community of Senyakhi, a Karen village in Northern Thailand. The rich-ness of ethnographic detail, depth of analysis and vibrant pulse of personal experience makes this a dense but engaging narrative. Hayami Yoko, professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies, demonstrates the power of Kyoto’s commitment to field-based re-search. The Karen are now well-known in the litera-ture on mainland southeast Asian as a people “living in the middle, ” straddling a pliable bound-ary between marginalized upland society and lowland mainstream society. Hayami’s previous major work Between Hills and Plains: Power and Practice in Socio-Religious Dynamics among Karen ' ( is solidly located within this framework. In Sai to Tsunagari, Hayami has stepped outside of this comfortable framework, into a broader and more illuminating discussion of identity and interaction, center and periphery, self and other. At one level, the book deals with what it has meant to be Karen for the women and men of the community as Thailand moved through differ-ent stages of “development. ” At another level, Hayami elaborates how differentiation) partic-ularly through the lens of gender relations) melds into opportunities for new connections. The book is composed of three main analytica