ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the part two of this book. The part focuses on social life in the Karen communities, especially on aspects related to the marital bond. It discusses teenage culture among Pwo Karen youths, beginning from the pre-marital courtship, emphasizing romance, the joys and anxieties of adolescence. Of all the courtship occasions, funeral singing is depicted as the most exciting for Karen youths, and Fink mentions the importance of the oral tradition that is sung on these occasions by Karen youths in pairs. The lively account of the actual scene allows one to see how teenage romance in Karen society takes a strange form yet evokes familiar feelings. The part reviews the basis of the ‘morally upright’ Karen, the purity of their maidens and the monogamous emphasis as envisioned by outsiders, by seeking the contexts in Karen social life in which discourse on ‘sexuality’ or sexual morality are embedded.
