Enacting Morality on Shifting Moral Ground: Young Plong Karen Women in Southeastern Myanmar

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which young Plong Karen Buddhist women enact morality in southeastern Myanmar. Focusing on how one young Plong Karen woman navigates her own moral status, I draw out the highly performative and experimental aspects of ethical subject making which simultaneously coheres with and transgresses Plong Karen moral ideals. Drawing from recent work from the ‘ethical turn’ in anthropology (Keane, Webb. 2015. Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press), I emphasise the freedom of young women to enact a moral register of their own making as they navigate multiple and sometimes conflicting social worlds. I argue that while outsiders may perceive inconsistencies and incompatibilities within the various moral registers enacted by young women, they themselves experience little contradiction moving within and between them.