Abstract
In this chapter, I explore the unchanged core of Myanmar villages and clarify what kind of society the village in Myanmar. I compare village structures in Japan, Thailand, and Myanmar from the perspective of what kind of “cohesion” the villages have, that is, village communality. First, I survey the academic literature on Japanese and Thai village studies, and organise these studies into the thesis of group or organisation and the thesis of subjective cognition. I apply this logic to the reality of Myanmar’s rural villages to construct a theory of Myanmar village society. This is a unique attempt, which has no predecessors. While seeming similar to Japan, the village groups and organisations in Myanmar, as well as the village itself, are generated and function on completely different principles.
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Notes
- 1.
In this and the next chapter, I define a “group” as an aggregate of people who have common goals and interests (joint goals), some sense of belonging (proactive communality), and some continuous interaction (communication). In contrast, I define an “organisation” as a structured group, that is, a group in which everyone’s status and roles are differentiated, clarified, and institutionalised, and which also has a sustained system of command. An “organisation” is more than the sum of individuals (members)—it shows unique emergent properties that cannot be reduced to individual characteristics. Having said that, the difference between a “group” and an “organisation” is often ambiguous in Myanmar villages, so in this and the next chapter, if there is no particular need to separate them, I do not distinguish between a group and an organisation but treat them collectively as “groups and/or organisations”.
- 2.
Kyūson (old village) expanded through amalgamations from the Meiji era onwards, forming administrative villages. Kyūson and ōaza correspond roughly to the early modern villages in the feudal domain during the Edo period, but not necessarily to buraku. Therefore, in this and the next chapters, the geographic and social area called ōaza, buraku, or village, which corresponds to the common village described below, is called “village” in Japan.
- 3.
For definitions and legislations on villages, village tracts, and townships, see Chap. 2.
- 4.
Needless to say, there are many case studies that have led to these theories of village societies in Japan and Thailand. In the case of Myanmar, in order to construct the theory of village society in this chapter, I will take up cases of villages that are diverse in terms of region and period, both in my own case studies and in the literature cited. In other words, my theory of village society does not apply to only one village at one point in time. However, this is not to deny the possibility that this theory has a certain regional or historical character.
- 5.
The literal translation of “shizen-son” is “natural village”, but as we shall see, it cannot necessarily be said to be a naturally formed village. Therefore, it is translated as “common village”.
- 6.
The term “community” used in this chapter refers to a local society formed on the basis of regionalities and communal feelings, in which members have a sense of shared values and belonging and are subject to certain regulations. I believe that “collective” like Japanese “village society” and “community” have different social structures. In this chapter, I do not distinguish between “collective” and “community”, but in the next chapter, I will make a distinction between them to further clarify the characteristics of Myanmar village society.
- 7.
A particularly important point to be discussed about the traditional Japanese village is that it is a society with autonomous rights, such as administrative rights exercised through village gatherings, judicial rights as seen in murahachibu (village ostracism), the right to levy non-statutory taxes such as buraku fees, and property rights such as the total ownership of membership land. Therefore, it should be called an “autonomous village” (Saito, 1989: ii).
- 8.
Cooperation can be defined as “two or more persons combining their efforts”. In this book, cooperation is divided into two types: cooperation between two people is called “dyadic cooperation”, and that of more than two people is called “general cooperation”.
- 9.
The frequent migration of households around Zeepinwea Village, described in Chap. 6, may be considered a residue of this movement.
- 10.
However, even before the early modern period, Japanese villages had a sense of cohesion in the form of communal living, collective cultivation, and the management of village halls (Fujiki 2010: 54–57, 68). In the early modern period, these spontaneous villages were overtaken by the shogunate’s domain system, which developed nationwide, forming the villages of the early modern period.
- 11.
As the theory of “autonomous village” emphasises, there is no doubt that the character of the Japanese village was defined by its historical relationship with upper political power. However, the response to power has always been at the village level probably because the village has also been a unit of livelihood, complementing the productive activities. Note that village meetings and village levies can also be seen in Myanmar villages, so it cannot be entirely ruled out that Myanmar villages can be autonomous villages.
- 12.
The word sàun, which means “to protect”, becomes zàun depending on the word before it. This is called “euphonic change of unvoiced to voiced sound”.
- 13.
As Suzuki and Aruga say, in Japan, the cooperative nature of “life” encompasses all aspects of community, including production, consumption, political economy, religion, and so on. In this chapter and next chapter, I distinguish between “production” and “life”. “Production” here refers to activities to produce goods and services as commodities. “Life” refers to the activity of producing non-commodity goods and services to be consumed in the community, and the activity of consuming the goods and services provided by this activity or “production”.
- 14.
For the geographical conditions and ethnic composition of each village, see Takahashi (2000: 60–73).
- 15.
As mentioned in the section on adult children’s migration in Chap. 6, it is presumed that the intermarriage zone is gradually expanding among the younger generation and that intra-village marriages are declining accordingly.
- 16.
In both villages, the number of compounds and the simple total number of kinship relations do not match because some multi-households compounds have more than two households living together.
- 17.
Myanmar does not have such a clear custom as in Thailand that all offspring households should inherit both compound and farmland equally after the death of parents. Although compounds are often divided after the death of the both parents, their boundaries are mostly ill-defined. Farmland is often divided and handed over by parents during their lifetime, and there are a handful of cases where residential lots are not divided after the death of a parent.
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Takahashi, A. (2023). Myanmar Village Society: Comparing with Japan and Thailand. In: Regime Changes and Socio-economic History of Rural Myanmar, 1986-2019. Studies in Economic History. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3272-6_7
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