ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the changing discourse on 'sexuality' in the context of the dynamics of Karen positioning in the hills of Thailand. It discusses how ‘sexuality’ is embedded in varied other discursive contexts. Far from being prim and humourless hill people, life and conversation in a Thai Karen village is rich with sexual banter and connotations. What is interpreted by Westerners as codes of morality and sexuality is embedded in the communal practice of maintaining social, natural and cosmic order, while the monogamous family is sanctioned in family ritual and its varied attending rules. Transgression in sexual activity is solved by communal rituals or otherwise ultimately by expulsion of the culprit from the community. Discourse of immorality is couched in terms of spatial mobility and crossing ethnic boundary. The chapter argues that the community-based sexual morality is jeopardized by changing communal practices and show how the emphasis has shifted as mobility, especially to urban centres, has increased.
