Join us on Wednesday, April 30 as Klemens Karlsson of Uppsala University and affiliated researcher at RCSD presents his book “A Sense of Place and Belonging – The Chiang Tung Borderland of Northern Southeast Asia,” published by Northern Illinois University/Cornell University Press.

This book is an interdisciplinary study of Chiang Tung (Keng Tung), a marginalized borderland between the dominant cultures of the Burmese, the Chinese, and the Siamese/Thai, and how people identify themselves as belonging to that specific place, a sense of place and belonging.

It presents the dramatic history of Chiang Tung and the Tai Khuen people in Myanmar’s Eastern Shan State, with wars and forced resettlements, but it also presents the glorious Buddhist culture of Chiang Tung with roots in Lan Na Tai and Sinhalese traditions, but with its own individuality and distinctiveness. It discusses the Buddhist tradition in a historic geopolitical context, as well as with its affinity with the cult of territorial spirits.

The book ties together myths and memories told by local people and written in local chronicles, with the unique performance of the Songkran festival which dramatizes a symbolic agreement between the Tai Khuen people and the indigenous Tai Loi (Lua/Lawa) people about the ownership of land.